Strategies Iranians Use to Trick Westerners into Accepting What They Want Iranian leaders fear only strength and the credible willingness to use it by Harold Rhode

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21851/iranian-strategies-tricks

Iranian leaders have mastered the art of patience, procrastination, and opportunism, waiting for the right moment to strike.

As long as it [Iran’s regime] remains in power, the West, Israel, and moderate Arab allies remain in danger.

For Westerners, negotiations are about compromise and achieving win-win outcomes….. For Iranians, negotiations occur only after one side has already won. The winner dictates the terms; the loser must submit.

From their perspective, there is no such thing as a win-Iranians treat signed agreements as temporary tools, not binding commitments. They may sign documents “to accommodate” others, but rarely intend to honor them. Agreements are stepping stones toward ultimate victory….

While Arabs may directly blame adversaries for wrongdoing, Iranians prefer subtlety, maneuvering opponents into surrender while making them believe they are still in control.

The Iranian message: America submits, Iran dictates.

The only sustainable solution is to support the Iranian people in freeing themselves from their regime.

The threat posed by the Iranian regime is far from over. Iranian leaders have mastered the art of patience, procrastination, and opportunism, waiting for the right moment to strike. Although weakened, the regime is not mortally wounded. As long as it remains in power, the West, Israel and moderate Arab allies remain in danger.

Iran’s leadership consistently probes and tests its adversaries, convinced that time and persistence will eventually deliver victory. The way Iranian and Western leaders understand negotiations reflects this difference in worldview.

For Westerners, negotiations are about compromise and achieving win-win outcomes. Each side gains something, and both leave the table stronger. For Iranians, negotiations occur only after one side has already won. The winner dictates the terms; the loser must submit.

Is The U.K. On The Verge Of Civil War?

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/21/is-the-u-k-on-the-verge-of-civil-war/

It might be easy to dismiss the growing unrest in Britain, where crowds of fed-up and violently angry citizens are suddenly taking to the streets to end what they see as the tyranny of woke multiculturalism and horribly failed immigration policies. But right now, it looks as if the country could be nearing some kind of national breakdown or split, one with major global ramifications.

Are we going a little too far in seeing a possible breakup or civil war? Not at all. The social pressures from a near non-stop influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, have been building for decades in Britain, long one of the most generous nations in taking in immigrants from its former colonies abroad.

But that generosity came with a high price: Large numbers of unassimilated immigrants in most cities who share neither the culture nor religion of their hosts, and commit serious crimes in their neighborhoods. They form “rape gangs” that groom young victims and “share” underage British girls as if it were a sport.

The response by Britain’s establishment elites, and even its police, has largely been to ignore the offenses – and accuse those who point out the problems of being racist.

But recent remarks from prominent retired British Col. Richard Kemp can’t be ignored. He warned that Britain and the rest of the West face a “primary threat” from the “hard left and Islamist extremists who have, together with other causes, come together to threaten the cohesion and the culture, the entire culture and political existence of the West.”

Kemp, who served in the Gulf War, Bosnia and Afghanistan, and also held senior intelligence and security positions in government, noted: “I don’t know what the timeframe is, but I would go so far as to not just predict civil unrest, but civil war in the U.K. in the coming years if this situation continues, which I believe it will.”

In recent days and weeks, thousands of protesters and counter-protesters have gathered outside “asylum hotels” around the country. The hotels are used to temporarily house newly arrived illegals.

Britain’s silent majority wants its nation back, but it knows it won’t get it without a fight. The left is used to intimidating its foes into silence through online campaigns, threats of violence, and loud demonstrations in the street organized by groups such as “Stand Up To Racism” carrying signs like “Defend Refugees, Stop the Far Right.”

Russiagate: Dismantling the Democrats’ hoax By Mike Robertson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/08/russiagate_dismantling_the_democrats_hoax.html

At the long-anticipated U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15, President Trump stressed that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was well aware that his country had not interfered in the 2016 election. This unexpected remark amid talks on Ukraine war settlement referred to a massive legal work conducted by the intelligence community aimed at exposing that “treasonous conspiracy.”

That is, in mid-July this year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealed that the so-called Russiagate investigation was politically motivated and inspired by the Democrat party, particularly the outgoing Obama administration in late 2016. The disclosures reinforced suspicions long held but never conclusively substantiated: the Russia-interference claim was not merely flawed but deliberately constructed to undermine Trump’s presidency.

Russiagate in a Nutshell

On January 6, 2017—just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration—the U.S. intelligence community released a new assessment concluding that “Russia interfered in the election to favor Trump.” This statement reversed six months of prior assessments, which indicated there had been no recorded foreign meddling through cyber operations.

The strong claim had a profound and long-lasting impact. It is not just about Trump’s first term being severely obstructed. Many of his top-tier supporters were “canceled,” some of them sent to jail under false “evidence.” Trump himself suffered massive reputational damage that had almost buried his political career. Overall, the meddling accusation campaign resulted in better electoral positions for the Democrat party during the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Besides, Russiagate prompted some anti-interference bills to be passed by Congress. Many of them included sanctions on Russia and other adversaries of the U.S. which led to higher tensions with Moscow, Iran, and China. Some pundits say this plot could have triggered numerous wars, including hostilities in Ukraine.

Moreover, the accusations led to a long-lasting investigation by the FBI and other agencies, which cost American taxpayers a hefty pile of money. The initial FBI investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, transformed into Special Counsel Mueller’s probe, and it damaged the federal budget for some $35 million. Durham’s subsequent probe cost some $7 million, and other congressional investigations expenses up to $5 million.

Education and Wealth Trump All Identity Politics Under Trump, we stand a chance of returning to our Constitution. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/education-and-wealth-trump-all-identity-politics/

One of the strangest and dysfunctional ideas in our society has been “identity politics.” This creation sprang from Cultural Communism’s exploitation of the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society’s federal legislation and agencies’ redistribution of taxpayer money. The purpose was to keep the newly franchised black citizens mired as victims still oppressed by racist whites, and to make blacks political clients of the Democrat left, a project launched in the U.S. by Stalin decades earlier.

The effort was a success if measured by the subsequent predictability of black voters’ loyalty to Democrats. They have remained loyal despite a lack of reciprocation by the Dems. For example, look at black politicians who have ignored the persistent scandal of black-on-black violent crime. The current Democrat assault on the police and efforts to reduce fighting crime is disproportionately dangerous for “black lives,” who don’t “matter” to Dems as much as we’ve been told.

After the Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow law, savvier American leftists knew that the improvement in black lives starting in the 1920s and increasing in the postwar period, and the growing distaste for racism, would create difficulty for the Democrat left’s plan to capture black votes.

So, they continued to treat blacks as victims, thus creating a reliable constituency. In fact, the black vote has gone Democratic for decades until Trump’s second presidential election achieved the highest number of black voters by any modern Republican candidate.

In addition, either unknown or indifferent to the moral hazards when the Dems started federal redistribution of Great Society funds in the Sixties, the plan actually worsened black lives. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley catalogued the earlier decades of improvement, as well as the decline after the Civil Rights Act, the Great Society programs, and their malign moral hazard of the federal dole that worsened black lives:

Between 1890 and 1940, for example, black marriage rates in the U.S. were higher than white marriage rates. In the 1940s and ’50s, black labor-participation rates exceeded those of whites; black incomes grew much faster than white incomes; and the black poverty rate fell by 40 percentage points. Between 1940 and 1970—that is, during Jim Crow and prior to the era of affirmative action—the number of blacks in middle-class professions quadrupled. In other words, racial gaps were narrowing. Steady progress was being made. Blacks today hear plenty about what they can’t achieve due to the legacy of slavery and not enough about what they did in fact achieve notwithstanding hundreds of years in bondage followed by decades of legal segregation.

Pakistan: The Horrifying Plight of Minority Children Welcome to Islam. by Uzay Bulut

https://www.frontpagemag.com/pakistan-the-horrifying-plight-of-minority-children/

According to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), there are 51 Muslim-majority countries. Yet, none of them treats non-Muslim communities with respect and dignity. The brutality that Muslim regimes and societies inflict on non-Muslims is extreme — and children are often the target.

When it comes to discrimination against non-Muslim children, including Hindus and Christians, Pakistan is one of the most radical and alarming cases.

Minority children in Pakistan face systematic abuse and discrimination. This includes barriers to education, abductions, incidents of child “marriages,” child labor, discrimination in public services, and forced conversions to Islam.

A new report by Pakistan’s National Commission on the Rights of the Child (NCRC) highlights the severe challenges faced by children who belong to religious minority groups. It calls for immediate action by the government to curb the high levels of discrimination emanating from systemic bias, social exclusion, and institutional neglect.

The report, titled “Situation Analysis of Children from Minority Religions in Pakistan,” also raises the crucial issues of forced conversion, child marriages, and child labor faced by minority children:

The worrying trend of systemic discrimination affects every part of the minority population’s daily life, especially their children. Minority children frequently face discrimination from classmates and educators in schools. They also have to deal with curricula that could reinforce negative preconceptions about their religion. Isolation, below-average academic achievement, and, in many cases, school dropout are the expected outcomes of such an educational setting.

Minority households’ financial situation presents an equally alarming image. Many individuals are caught up in cycles of bonded labor, especially in brick kilns and the agricultural sector, where entire families, including their children, work in cruel conditions.

The introduction of a “Single National Curriculum” in Pakistani schools in 2020 denigrates religious minorities. It enforces the teaching of the Quran and subjects like Mathematics and Science in an Islamized manner. Many schoolbooks also incite hatred against religious minorities, including Christians.

Antisemitism Is Proliferating in Our Public Schools Jews face discrimination in many K-12 schools and colleges. By Larry Sand

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/21/antisemitism-is-proliferating-in-our-public-schools/

As I recently noted, UC Davis—a research university with 40,000 students—has a well-documented anti-Jewish problem. In April last year, the StandWithUs Center For Legal Justice filed a formal complaint with the Department of Education, claiming “a pervasively hostile, antisemitic campus climate, with incidents of unlawful discrimination and harassment, for students.” Not surprisingly, in November, Davis was ranked as one of the most anti-Jewish universities in the country by the advocacy group StopAntisemitism, which gave Davis a grade of “F.”

Davis is hardly an isolated case. A federal probe of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the school acted with “deliberate indifference” to threats against Jews and violations of their rights during an antisemitic encampment in the spring of 2024.

In a letter to UCLA leaders, Justice Department officials stated that Jewish and Israeli students at the school “were subjected to severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment that created a hostile environment by members of the encampment,” including being “assaulted, verbally harassed, and physically prevented from accessing parts of the UCLA campus.”

DOJ officials explained that UCLA received complaints from Jewish students that the school took no meaningful action to eliminate the hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students caused by the encampment until it was disbanded. The DOJ also alleged that they violated the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI due to antisemitism and race-based discrimination. As a result, in July, the university settled a lawsuit with Jewish students for $6.45 million.

University presidents at other California institutions face growing pressure to explain discrimination against Jewish students and faculty.

Nationally, 83% of Jewish college students have experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, according to a recent poll.

Anti-Jewish bigotry also exists in K-12 schools. In late 2024, the Sequoia Union High School District in California’s Silicon Valley faced a lawsuit over widespread antisemitism experienced by students, with administrators standing by and allowing it to worsen. When SUHSD parents and students raised concerns—through emails, petitions, and formal complaints—the District responded with “bureaucratic obfuscation and outright denial, demonstrating a deliberate indifference to SUHSD’s Jewish students. Emails were ignored, and meetings were canceled without explanation,” the lawsuit states.

What Is the Democrat Alternative to Trump? Democrats rage at Trump’s every move but offer no real alternative—only fury, obstruction, and failed policies voters have already rejected. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/21/what-is-the-democrat-alternative-to-trump/

The Pavlovian Left goes berserk at the mere prospect of each new Trump initiative.

Its escalating reactive venom and hysteria are calibrated to the success of Trump’s latest policy.

Yet the new hard-left Democratic Party offers no counter-agenda to explain its furor.

Still less do Democrats attempt bipartisan efforts to craft shared legislation.

Take foreign policy.

Democrat senators trashed the recent Trump-Putin Alaskan summit as a failure. Then they became depressed when, just days later, an entourage of European leaders and President Zelensky of Ukraine suddenly flew to the White House.

The Euros praised Trump for offering some sort of negotiated pathway to peace after over three years of war and some 1.5 million dead, wounded, missing, and captured on both sides—on Europe’s doorstep.

So why did Democrats object to such negotiations by Trump?

Was the reason that no such thing occurred during the Biden administration, when Putin invaded Ukraine, after his earlier invasions during the Obama era?

What is the left’s alternate plan? The old Biden idea of supplying Ukraine with enough money and arms to keep fighting and dying, but with no path to either victory or a negotiated peace?

Would they prefer a fourth, fifth, or sixth year of war, or an additional one million casualties?

The more Trump pressed almost all NATO members to pay their promised two percent of GDP on defense, the more Democrats grew irate over Trump’s overseas influence.

NATO members now want to raise defense spending to five percent of GDP and gush that Trump is “Daddy.”

Democrats steamed at that, since Europeans are supposed to hate Trump, not admire him for rebooting NATO.

Would they prefer the old, disarmed NATO?

Under the Biden administration, over 10 million illegal aliens flooded the country, sometimes 10,000 a day at the southern border.

I’m a War Scholar. There Is No Genocide in Gaza John Spencer

https://x.com/SpencerGuard/status/1948010761957052628

John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the coauthor of the book  Understanding Urban Warfare.

In his New York Times op-ed titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It”, Omer Bartov accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. As a professor of genocide studies, he should know better. Genocide is not defined by a few comments taken out of context, by estimates of casualties or destruction, or by how war looks in headlines or on social media. It is defined by specific intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. That is a high legal bar. Bartov did not meet it. He did not even try.

I am not a lawyer or a political activist. I am a war expert. I have led soldiers in combat. I have trained military units in urban warfare for decades and studied and taught military history, strategy, and the laws of war for years. Since October 7, I have been to Gaza four times embedded with the Israel Defense Forces. I have interviewed the Prime Minister of Israel, the Defense Minister, the IDF Chief of Staff, Southern Command leadership, and dozens of commanders and soldiers on the front lines. I have reviewed their orders, watched their targeting process, and seen soldiers take real risks to avoid harming civilians. Nothing I have seen or studied resembles genocide or genocidal intent.

Bartov claims that five statements by Israeli leaders prove genocidal intent. He begins with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s comment on October 7 that Hamas would “pay a huge price.” That is not a call for genocide. It is what any leader would say after the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history. He also cites Netanyahu’s statements that Hamas would be destroyed and that civilians should evacuate combat zones. That is not evidence of a desire to destroy a people. It is what professional militaries do when fighting an enemy that hides among civilians.

Bartov presents Netanyahu’s reference to “remember Amalek” as a smoking gun. But this is a phrase from Jewish history and tradition. It is engraved at Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, and also appears on the Holocaust memorial in The Hague. In both places, it serves as a warning to remain vigilant against threats, not as a call for mass killing.

He also highlights Defense Minister Gallant’s use of the term “human animals” to describe Hamas fighters. That is not a war crime. After the slaughter, rape, and kidnapping of civilians on October 7, many would understand or even share that reaction.

Unable to find intent among those actually directing the war, Bartov turns to far-right politicians like Bezalel Smotrich and Nissim Vaturi. These individuals do not command troops, issue orders, or shape battlefield decisions. I have studied the actual orders. They focus on destroying Hamas, rescuing hostages, and protecting civilians whenever possible. Their rhetoric is irrelevant to the legal case.

Russia and Ukraine: Why Are We Negotiating with Evil? by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21848/negotiating-with-russia-evil

Rubio, talking about the war in Ukraine, completely missed the fundamental issue: Should the United States be trying to reach a deal in the first place?

The answer is no: The U.S. should not be trying to broker any settlement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a mass-murdering, genocide-committing aggressor.

No one wants to see more people die, but trying to end this war by agreement will ultimately make the world less safe.

Did the U.S. try to reach a “deal” with the Third Reich? How about Imperial Japan?

A “deal” with aggressors always opens the door to more aggression.

“We don’t negotiate with evil; we defeat it.” — Vice President Dick Cheney, reportedly spoken in 2003.

“The only way to reach a deal on anything, whether it’s in business or in politics or in geopolitics, the only way to reach a deal is for each side to get something and each side to give something,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press on August 17.

Rubio, talking about the war in Ukraine, completely missed the fundamental issue: Should the United States be trying to reach a deal in the first place?

The answer is no: The U.S. should not be trying to broker any settlement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a mass-murdering, genocide-committing aggressor.

Rubio should heed his own words. “This guy lies, habitually lies,” the then senator said in March 2022 about the Russian leader.

Gavin Newsom: the chameleon who destroyed California The Democratic presidential frontrunner has turned the Golden State into an economic and social disaster. Joel Kotkin

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/18/gavin-newsom-the-chameleon-who-destroyed-california/

Gavin Newsom may be saddled with an awful record. But the California governor is rapidly emerging as a leading bet – even a frontrunner in some polls – in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. How is this possible?

The simple answer is that Newsom might be the ultimate candidate for the attention-deficient generation. He is a political chameleon who changes positions compulsively – not according to facts, but to whatever best seems to fit the national mood. We witnessed this after last year’s presidential election, when he began ‘bro-washing’ his slick image with some cringe-worthy appearances on podcasts. One of these even included an embrace of gun ownership – a surprise to many of his supporters who had voted for him on the basis of his strong anti-gun record.

Newsom follows what may be charitably described as a flexible ideology. He flip-flops even on his core issues, such as climate change. Newsom, an avid supporter of Net Zero, basically fell on his knees before Big Oil in April, when two companies announced they were shutting their Californian oil refineries as a result of oppressive green regulations.

Newsom has proven equally slippery on woke social issues. In recent years, he made California a ‘refuge’ for transgender children, supporting the experimental use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy on minors. Indeed, these policies were central to Newsom’s assaults on rival states Texas and Florida. But he shocked trans activists in March by admitting that having biological males compete with women was ‘unfair’. Clearly, he had sensed which way the political wind was blowing.

Now, the chameleon has changed his colours once again. After trying to appeal to MAGA voters in the aftermath of Trump’s November victory, he is back leading the ‘Resistance’. Last week, he promised to redraw California’s congressional districts to the advantage of Democrats. In June, as US federal agents targeted undocumented immigrants in California, Newsom accused Trump of a ‘brazen abuse of power’. Like all aspiring Democrats, he regularly denounces Trump as a fascist.

But Newsom has an even bigger, more vulnerable Achilles’ heel than his shifting political positions. It is the undeniable economic and social decline he has overseen as governor of California.