Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Hillary Dodges Them All. Are We Sunk? Bibi's Repeated Red Line. More Bad Policy Ideas.

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Hussein Aboubakr Mansour on October 7th and the Left

by Marilyn Stern
Middle East Forum Webinar
J


Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, a Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and analyst focusing on Muslim anti-Semitism, Islamist ideology, and American universities, spoke to a January 29 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:

The populist Leftist support on U.S. university campuses for the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel might be seen as counterintuitive, given that the Left's progressive ideology touting women's and gay rights is "anathema" to global Islamist movements.

Explanations for this seemingly "bizarre" merger between the Left and Islamism have ranged from their shared animus of the West in a "marriage of convenience," to misguided Western Leftists who sympathize with Hamas in their "passion for the oppressed." In the latter case, these Leftists are Hamas's useful idiots, whose sympathies are being manipulated.

Although Leftist slogans parroted by marchers in pro-Hamas demonstrations use the "social justice, equality, [and] anti-racism" banner to corral followers, many of them know little about the conflict or the anti-Israel slogans that activist organizers incite adherents to chant (e.g., gullible students are largely ignorant of which river or sea when chanting "from the river to the sea").

Notwithstanding that there is some truth to these two explanations, there is a third reason for this "confluence of Western revolutionary thought of the Left and Islamist ideology." In the decades since the 1980s, the two political movements have become more aligned in their "intellectual structure" than is generally acknowledged. This is the key explanation for the Islamist-Leftist reaction to October 7.

Generally, statements issued by the Islamist movements differ depending upon whether they are broadcast in Arabic or English. Thus, Hamas's GoPro videos of its live-streamed atrocities were stamped with the Arabic propaganda phrase "the revolution of those who resist." Hamas's Arabic broadcasts merged the language of Islamic warfare and Jew-hatred with that of "revolutionary anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, [and] anti-Westernism."

owever, its English broadcast statements and publications omit Islamic themes, relying instead on "anti-racist, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialist" language. The disparity is often explained as a deception for Western consumption, but, crucially, Hamas was more influenced by "revolutionary ideologies" than traditional Islam's historical and political development.

Revolutionary ideologies were prevalent in the Middle East in the 1960s, 1970s, and during Hamas's formation in the 1980s, thereby producing a "hybrid" ideology of Islamic-Leftism. The dynamic of the "hybrid ideology of the Left and Islam" is also employed in strategies used by the mullahs in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The governance theory of Islamic jurisprudence used by Ayatollah Khamenei is "an Islamification of the rule of the intellectuals," which is the Marxist way of ruling epitomized by the Communist Party.

Robert Malley, the Obama/Biden administration's pro-Iran envoy until his security clearance was revoked last year, published a book in the mid-1990s that examined the Algerian liberation war against the French during the mid-1950s to early 1960s. He concluded that the Algerian uprising, rather than a jihad, was "just a new stage of the Third World Marxist revolution" with Islamic motifs. Today, the international Left has adapted this revolutionary framework in its "tangible" support for Hamas.

The international Left offers ideological support to Hamas through its indoctrination by joining with Islamists in a campaign to persuade Western politicians to pressure Israel for a ceasefire via massive and disruptive street demonstrations. Material support for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is funded by international Leftist non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Despite efforts by the Israeli government and the U.S. Senate to stop funding that ultimately aids terrorism, the international Left pushback keeps the financial pipeline flowing.

The Left's "intellectual formation" is revealed in a 1967 essay written by Paul Sweezy, the founder of the Monthly Review, a Marxist publication that began circulating in the U.S. in the 1940s. Following Israel's Six-Day War in 1967, Sweezy wrote that the war with Israel was significant for the Communist movement because it defined "the struggle of the epoch" – the global struggle against capitalism and the "entire structure" of the U.S.

February 2024's Monthly Review "doubles down" on Sweezy's 1967 essay by stating that the Palestinians "are the forefront of the struggle against capitalism and the United States, and their struggle defines the struggle of everyone for freedom all over."


In the Left's broad-brush Marxist narrative, America is cast as the "oppressor" capitalist power that dominates the international order, and its support for Israel is an extension of its power structure. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a lightning rod for the Left's perceived core struggle "of all humanity against oppression." Within that framework, Hamas harnesses Leftists on behalf of the "oppressed" Palestinians. The Islamic-Leftist alliance synthesizes each movement's ideological belief that "basically the struggle against Israel means the end of oppression of everybody everywhere."

Unfortunately, there is no way to separate the Islamic-Leftist alliance from the new generation of U.S. Islamists because the ideologies have merged over time. Hamas and Hezbollah are products of modern movements embodying the "decomposed Marxism" of the 1960s that combined with destructive "elements from their own native cultures."

Historical facts have become "weaponized" in an effort to establish the legitimacy of a competing "historical narrative," and therefore historical theories are unable to solve the problem of Israel's security needs post-October 7. This can only be done through "concrete military measures" on the ground and subsequently by the actions of "politicians and diplomats."

Marilyn Stern is communications coordinator at the Middle East Forum.

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If we continue to have elections whose results  we do not trust, then the fascist neo-Marxists will have won and our Republic will soon take it's rightful place on the dump heap of history.

https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1755237896091570527?s=46&t=UKXO38RhBpK5y4MY5xV34g

And:

Judicial Watch announced recently it filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, challenging a Mississippi election law permitting absentee ballots to be received as long as five business days after Election Day.
Read More
And:

Finally:

Dear PragerU Supporter,

 

What lies ahead for America? Can we expect this year to be a repeat of 2020?

 

Is another lockdown coming? Will there be violence and riots in the streets? Will we have a free and fair election?

 

As corporate and political elites desperately cling to their power, and legacy media continues to spread lies and conceal truth, more division, dishonesty, and manipulation seem inevitable. 

 

This is a pivotal moment for our democracy, and we need your support to defend the America we know and love. 

 

Amidst these looming challenges, there is also great cause for celebration. More and more people are waking up to the truth. The deceitful agendas of legacy media, the political elite, and their cronies in Big Tech and Big Pharma are being exposed. 

 

At PragerU, we're on the front lines, fighting to reclaim our culture, education, and the values that define America. By reaching millions online, in homes, and now in schools across the nation, we're making significant strides.

 

Because of the generous support of donors like YOU, we have been able to shine a light on truth. 

 

If we reach enough young people with the truth about American democracy and our cherished liberties, we can turn the tide. 

 

2024 could be the best year yet. But it won’t happen without a fight. We must reach the next generation and take back American education and culture. 

 

We are doing that every day by reaching millions online, at home, and now in schools, as PragerU has become an approved educational resource in multiple states across the country. 

 

Eyes are opening and minds are changing, but our work is far from over.

 

We must instill American patriotism, true history, civic knowledge and responsibility, and the Judeo-Christian values that founded our great nation. These values were once the cornerstone of civil life in America, and with your help, we can make them foundational once again.

 

We invite you to join the fight for truth. Your support fuels our mission to reach the next generation, ensuring that the values that built America remain alive and strong.

 

Donate now and stand with us in securing America's future.

 

Together, we can make 2024 a year of unity, strength, and true American values.

 

In liberty, 

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With the Abraham Accords, Dubai’s Arab Health 2024 Attracts Israelis

 

By Seth Vogelman and Sherwin Pomerantz

 

The ELAL flight from Dubai on Thursday night, February 1st after the Arab Health 2024 Exhibition closed there was filled with Israelis, some whom were returning from vacation and others who presumably had been at the event, attendees who wanted to see what was going on worldwide in the health science sector.  Arab Health 2024, with over 110,00 visitors is the second largest show of its kind in the world after MEDICA which is held annually in Dusseldorf, Germany.

 

Atid ED Ltd., the company with which we are both affiliated, attended the annual event in the framework of our US state trade agency service package, in our role as regional export promotion representatives for the State of Illinois’ Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity.  It is important to note that we have been traveling to Dubai from Israel regularly since 1999 and have been managing a booth at Arab Health every year since 2006, well before most Israelis were able to access that region.

 

Arab Health is the Middle East's biggest healthcare event.  The 2024 edition, aimed to build on the billions of dollars in deals that were secured at previous year’s exhibitions.  This, the 49th edition of the exhibition, ran from January 29th to February 1st at the Dubai World Trade Center.  The event, with over 3,450 exhibitors and professional health care visitors from 180 countries, featured over 40 international pavilions (including the UK, United States and Canada) to showcase their latest healthcare products and advancements.

 

Statistically, the GCC’s healthcare sector is projected to reach $135.5 billion by 2027, according to a 2023 report by advisory firm Alpen Capital, with an annualized growth rate of 5.4% from $104.1 billion in 2022.  It is no wonder then that Israeli health care professionals were eager to be there, even with a war in progress here.  Clearly, they saw the potential business opportunities that were possible, and wanted to position themselves to take advantage of them at the appropriate time.

 

For the record, Israel’s exports of goods and services to the UAE in 2021, the last year for which current figures are available, were $342 million, making the UAE Israel’s 20th largest export destination.  Imports from the UAE that year were $980 million.  Of course, those numbers do not take into account the impact of Israeli tourism to the UAE.  In 2022 more than 150,000 Israelis visited the UAE 

 

In addition to the obvious opportunities at the event, it was interesting to watch the event recover from COVID-19.  EDI Trade Director Seth Vogelman was there in January 2020 at perhaps the ground zero location when Corona hit the world.  The massive Chinese pavilion emptied overnight and suddenly people with various types of surgical masks were walking the show.  The event was eventually cancelled, to be replaced by an on-line version, as well as a truncated one of smaller scale until the COVID-19 pandemic ebbed.

 

2024 saw the return of Arab Health in full force, with large crowds and reports of success by almost everyone who attended.  Even though this year was the first time that day-of-event registrants were charged an admission fee (about the equivalent of NIS 100 or so), that only seemed to increase the professional quality of the attendees.

 

Although we were there officially representing Illinois, we made a point of visiting with companies from other states we represent here as well as the many Israeli companies who had representatives on the floor. The Abraham Accords has made it possible, of course, for any Israeli business person who wishes to do so to travel to Dubai and the advent of direct, non-stop flights has made the entire trip much easier than previously. Even with the war going on there did not seem to be any open animosity to Israelis being in Dubai.

 

For those of us living here in Israel, the show is just one example of the fact that in spite of the dramatic challenges Israel has faced since October 7th the world business community remains interested in what we do here and continues to be committed to pursuing business relationships that have potential for mutual profitability. There is little doubt that once the current hostilities end the world will, once again, beating a path to Israel’s door. May it be soon.

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BIBI lays the bottom line out once again.

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Netanyahu: Israel won’t accept ‘delusional demands,’ victory ‘within reach’

Bowing to Hamas will lead to another massacre and a "major disaster" that no Israeli citizen will tolerate, said the Israeli prime minister.

Israel will not agree to the “delusional demands” Hamas is making to release the 136 remaining hostages being held in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address on Wednesday night.

Bowing to the terrorist organization’s demands will lead to another massacre and a “major disaster” that no Israeli citizen will accept, he emphasized, speaking from his office in Jerusalem.

“We are on our way to total victory,” he declared. “Total victory over Hamas will not take years. It will take months. Victory is within reach.

“The IDF is working miracles and working methodically to achieve all the goals that we set,” said Netanyahu.

Hamas has given an official response to a hostages-for-ceasefire framework proposed by mediators, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced at a press conference in Doha on Tuesday.

“I would like to inform the media that we have received a reply from Hamas with regards to the general framework of the agreement with regard to hostages,” said Sheikh Mohammed. “We are optimistic, and we have delivered the response to the Israeli party.”

On Wednesday, Hamas presented a new counteroffer in response to Israeli objections to its demands for a permanent ceasefire and the release of many Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.

The War Cabinet, which is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza, is expected to meet on Thursday to discuss the ongoing negotiations.

Hamas’s latest proposal consists of a three-stage process spanning four and a half months. In the first phase, the terror group would release all of the remaining female hostages, as well as all those under the age of 19, the elderly and the sick. In exchange, Israel would release women and minor security prisoners.

The second stage would see the release of the remaining living male hostages, with bodies being released in the third stage, at the end of which an agreement would be reached to end the war. Negotiations towards ending the war would start in the first phase, according to Hamas’s proposal.

‘Position will lead to the continuation of war’

In the draft text, the terror group expresses “hope” for the release of 1,500 terrorists, a third of them “heavy” prisoners with life sentences.

The terrorist group is also demanding a total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the start of the Strip’s rehabilitation and an increase in aid.

Israeli officials previously said Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the war makes the draft a “non-starter.” The release of 1,500 terrorists, including murderers, is likewise out of the question, they said.

“Hamas’s answer was formulated so that Israel would refuse it. Their position will lead to the continuation of the war and [will lead] our forces to other places in Gaza—soon,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken during a meeting earlier on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.

“From day one, Israel has had hope that every hostage be released. We’re looking forward to the release of 136 Israeli hostages who are being held contrary to all the laws of war and armed conflict,” said Avi Hyman, spokesman for the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

“There’s a historic precedent for when we last received hostages back to Israel [in November]. Israel applied tremendous military pressure on Hamas, and that’s what led to an agreement. … The IDF is applying huge military pressure against Hamas, bringing them to their knees, and we hope that they will soon acquiesce and release all 136 hostages,” Hyman added.

The IDF killed around 40 Palestinian terrorists during close-quarters combat in the southern Gaza Hamas stronghold of Khan Yunis on Wednesday and arrested 50 gunmen.

A total of 105 hostages, mostly women and children, were released last year as part of a ceasefire deal that Hamas broke when it refused to hand over the last group of captives. The terrorist group had previously released four hostages, and Israeli forces freed one.

According to official Israeli figures, 136 hostages remain in Gaza. However, at least 31 of them are confirmed to have died, and Jerusalem is assessing unconfirmed information indicating that another 20 additional captives have also been killed.

The names of the deceased have not been released, a representative of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum stressed on Wednesday, noting that “there is nothing new in the status of the Bibas family, also after yesterday’s press release from the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.”

Kfir Bibas, 1, has been held hostage since Oct. 7, when he was kidnapped along with his father, Yarden; his mother, Shiri; and his brother Ariel, 4. As of last month, Kfir has spent a quarter of his life in captivity.

Hamas and its terrorist allies abducted 253 people during their rampage across the northwestern Negev, murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and wounding thousands more.

Some 50 % of Israelis are opposed to a hostage deal that would see an extended pause in fighting and the release of thousands of terrorists, according to a poll conducted by Channel 12 last week.

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To accomplish this we must rid ourselves of Biden and the entire Obama squad  of White House leftovers pulling his strings:
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Make Iran Fear America Again

Tehran plays Biden like a piano. He urgently needs to seize the initiative.

By Walter Russell Mead


And:

ANOTHER REALLY BAD FOREIGN POLICY IDEA — APPEASING IRAN

By Yonoson Rosenblum-Mishpacha Magazine

If Joe Biden is not reelected in 2024 — either because he withdraws from the race, or because he is defeated at the ballot box — the chief reason will likely prove to be his open-door policy at the United States southern border, through which over 370,000 illegal immigrants are now pouring every month. Biden began his presidency by rescinding all his predecessor's executive orders regarding immigration, including the highly effective requirement that asylum-seekers first present their claims abroad prior to entering the United States.

But the manner in which the United States is being yanked around by the Iranian mullahs will be a close second. Nor are the two crises unrelated. The open southern border makes it easy for Iran to bring operatives into the United States. Among the hundreds of thousands of illegals entering the United States monthly are approximately 50,000 from Venezuela, whose Marxist leaders are closely allied with Iran.

FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress three months ago, "As the world's largest state-sponsor of terrorism, the Iranians, for instance, have directly, or by hiring criminals, mounted assassination attempts against dissidents and high-ranking current and former US government officials, including right here on American soil. And... Hezbollah, Iran's primary strategic partner, has a history of seeding operatives and infrastructure, obtaining money and weapons, and spying in this country going back years."

Biden's poll numbers began to plummet during the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, during which the US abandoned more than 10,000 locals employed by our forces to their fate at the hands of the Taliban and left behind tens of billions of dollars of our most advanced military hardware. And those poll numbers have never rebounded since.

His approach to Iran, however, is Afghanistan on steroids. Though there are strong isolationist tendencies on both the American right and left, even the isolationists, certainly those on the right, do not wish to see America humiliated. And they will be even less happy when the price increases and supply delays sure to be caused by allowing the Iranian-backed Houthis to close the Red Sea to shipping begin to hit hard.

Between Inauguration Day in January 2021 and March 2023, American forces in Iraq and Syria were attacked 78 times by Iranian proxies, the head of US Central Command told Congress. That was nothing compared to the three and a half months since October 7, during which there have been 165 attacks on American forces alone, culminating last week in three US Army servicemen at a border patrol station in Jordan being killed by an Iranian-supplied attack drone.

After nearly a week of delay following that drone attack, American bombers finally hit 85 Iranian-affiliated sites in Iraq and Syria. But only after first alerting Iran to the timing of the American response, and giving them ample time for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders to repair back to Iran. Nellie Bowles, the Free Press's resident satirist, captured the moment well: "The key to military strategy is to announce it loudly and clearly a week or two ahead of time, that's what it said in The Art of War, I'm pretty sure."

Prior to those air strikes, the Biden administration's initial response was to assure Iran that it did not seek escalation of tensions (Secretary of State Blinken) or view itself as at war with Iran (National Security Council spokesman John Kirby). "The US does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world," President Biden announced.

To mitigate pressure for a strong American response against Iran, senior administration officials leaked "intelligence findings" that Iran does not have complete authority over its regional allies. Yes, Iran sends its regional proxies, through the IRGC's Quds Force, money, weapons, and senior military advisors, sets up command-and-control infrastructure, and provides its allies with battlefield intelligence and target selection, but the mullahs may not specifically order each strike by one of its subsidiaries. In the eyes of the administration, then, all the above are not enough of a smoking gun to label Iran a major adversary.

IN TRUTH, the extreme deference to Iran has long been American foreign policy. And it is largely based on the assumption that the one result that must be avoided at all cost is military confrontation with Iran. As long ago as the November 2006 issue of Commentary, Arthur Herman of the Hudson Institute described a consensus that "had taken root in the minds of America's foreign-policy elite... that military action against Iran is a sure formula for disaster" ("Getting Serious About Iran: A Military Option"). Better to think about how the United States can live with a nuclear Iran, in the minds of those same savants.

President Obama fully shared that assumption. He came into office determined to placate Iran for past wrongs suffered at American hands, including CIA involvement in the overthrow of the Communist-leaning Mossadegh government in 1953. He believed that doing so would encourage Iranian moderation in pursuing its nuclear goals.

In addition, he developed a truly loopy theory that by elevating Iran to the role of regional hegemon, with a Shiite crescent extending from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, he could create a balance of power between Shiites and Sunni regimes that would allow American withdrawal from the region. As observers as disparate as the Alter of Slabodka and economist Thomas Sowell have noted, the greatest damage is usually done by bright people with boundless self-regard. Obama's plan to strengthen Iran could serve as a prime exhibit. Joe Biden, for instance, would never have thought of such an idea, though he would subsequently sign on to it.

The idea that Iran would ever become a status quo power failed to take seriously the regime's theological roots. From the beginning, Ayatollah Khomeini described his goals in terms of the spread of Islam worldwide, not in terms of Iran's national interests. That theological bent is fully captured by the name of regime's strongest arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its international arm, the Quds Force, devoted to the recapture of Islamic lands, chief among them Jerusalem.

While negotiating the JCPOA nuclear treaty with Iran, President Obama asserted from time to time that "all options," including the military, were on the table, but no one took him seriously, least of all the Iranians, particularly after Obama abandoned all his previously announced "red lines" in Syria, in the face of Bashir Assad's use of chemical weapons against his own people.

Similarly, Obama dropped all his previously announced red lines in negotiating the JCPOA agreement, which effectively sanctified Iran's developing nuclear weapons by 2030. Far from lessening the danger of nuclear war, the JCPOA virtually guaranteed a nuclear arms race in the Middle East among some of the world's least stable regimes. And rather than allowing decreased American involvement in the region, efforts to appease Iran have only deepened American involvement, to the point that President Biden openly frets today about events in the region triggering a world war.

The Obama administration policy of maximum conciliation and appeasement of Iran ended with the entry of Donald Trump into office. He promptly tore up the JCPOA, which had never been ratified as a treaty by Congress, and reinstituted strong sanctions on Iran. The result was to reduce the amount of money the mullahs could funnel to their terrorist proxies surrounding Israel on every side and to create economic instability in Iran that only strengthened internal opponents of the regime.

JOE BIDEN, HOWEVER, entered office determined to reinstitute the JCPOA and prepared to shower Iran with whatever it wanted in exchange for its agreement. The direction of the new administration was signaled by the appointment of Robert Malley as chief negotiator with the Iranians, the same position he had held in the Obama administration.

Malley is the son of Simon Malley, a Jew of Syrian and Egyptian descent who was one of the founders of the Egyptian Communist Party and a close friend of Yasser Arafat. The son fully inherited his father's anti-Western views. Martin Peretz, the former publisher of the New Republic and Harvard professor, described his world view in Tablet: "Any opponent of American postwar international expansion is on the side of the angels, and a worthy candidate for rapprochement."

In terms of the Middle East, Malley has been a consistent advocate for realignment toward Iran and away from America's traditional allies, Israel and the Gulf states. After the failure of the July 2000 Camp David summit, he and Hussein Agha, one of the chief Palestinian negotiators, wrote a long article in the New York Review of Books, seeking to remove the onus from Yasser Arafat for the failure of the conference. Malley's views distinguished him from President Clinton and every other member of the American negotiating team.

Malley's anti-colonialism and suspicion of America's role in the world was more closely aligned with that of Barack Obama than any of the latter's senior advisors, and he quickly became one of the chief architects of the Obama administration's Iran policy. Biden's tapping him for the same role in his administration was thus a flashing warning light.

Upon taking up the position of chief Iran negotiator for a second time, Malley pushed hard to secure sanctions relief for figures and organizations at the center of Iran's sponsorship of global terrorism and the harshest clampdowns on the Iranian people themselves. Among those removed from sanctions list were the masterminds of the 1984 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Argentina; Ebrahim Raisi, currently Iran's president, and known as the "Butcher of Tehran" for handing out death sentences to over 5,000 opponents of the regime; and Ahmad Jannati, a particularly brutal cleric eager to execute demonstrators against the regime.

Even more unbelievably, Malley successfully pushed for the removal of the IRGC from the list of foreign terrorist organizations, to the shock of career officials across the US government. (Three Iran desk officials in the State Department resigned in protest.) And the Houthis were removed from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. (They have been recently reinstated, in the wake of their attacks on Red Sea shipping.)

Writing in Tablet, Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department official on the Iran desk, estimated that Iran would gain access to $90 billion in foreign exchange reserves and up to another $55 billion annually in oil revenues — monies it can spend without restriction to roil the region and world — from the sanctions relief. Iran, by contrast, made no concessions with respect to its ballistic missile program or support for proxy terrorist groups, or any commitments with respect to hostage taking (though it received $6 billion for four American hostages held in Iranian jails).

Remarkably, these tens of billions of dollars into the coffers of the regime in Tehran were not even given as rewards for Iranian agreement to reenter the JCPOA, but rather as "good will" gestures offered in the hope of winning Iranian favor. During the entire process, Iran refused to even negotiate directly the United States, but relied on Russian and Chinese intermediaries. Russian's top nuclear negotiator in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, has bragged about how "Iran got much more than it could [have] expect[ed] — much more," and of how Russia and China teamed up to secure dozens of wins over the United States for Iran, their fellow non-status-quo power.

Of course, the Iranians undoubtedly did keep close contact with Robert Malley, who was eventually suspended from his post for sharing classified information with the Iranians. But not before he had succeeded in planting others known to have sought and taken instruction from the Iranian foreign ministry into the upper echelons of the departments of Defense and State.

Ariane Tabatabai, a second-generation American-Iranian, is, for instance, the chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Christopher Maier. She has on several occasions sought guidance from the Iranian foreign ministry as to which conferences she should attend and which not, as reported by John Solomon in Semafor. She was also approved by the Defense Department for a top-secret security clearance, giving her direct access to the most sensitive real-time details of US special forces operations. (Not surprisingly, Malley was recently hired by Yale to teach a course in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)

Most astonishingly, the United States has continued to shower the mullahs with billions of dollars, even as the regime has allied itself ever more closely with Russia and China. Iran recently signed a 25-year oil-for-technology-and-arms deal with China. And it has supplied Russia with thousands of lethal drones, and is thought by US intelligence to be on the verge of providing Russia with ballistic missiles to be used against Ukraine, according to Richard Goldberg, former head of the anti-weapons of mass destruction desk at the National Security Council.

And even after Hamas's murderous rampage on October 7 and Hezbollah's attacks across Israel's northern border since then, the United States provided a waiver to Hamas and Hezbollah's chief sponsors in Tehran, allowing them to access $10 billion from Iraq. In addition, the Biden administration permitted a UN missile embargo on Iran to expire.

The bowing and scraping to Iran has become reflexive and automatic, while only emboldening Iran and its proxies to strike more deeply at the US and its allies.

IT IS LONG PAST TIME, writes William Russell Mead, one of America's leading foreign policy experts, to pronounce the Biden administration's Middle East policy as having "catastrophically failed" and set the region on fire. That means, first and foremost, recognizing that "Iran cannot be conciliated," as Elliot Cohen, the former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, titled an article in the Atlantic last week.

Nicey-nice will not work with Iran. But if Iran has proven indifferent to American carrots, there is evidence that it does respond to American sticks. After the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine in international waters in April 1988 while escorting a Kuwaiti oil tanker and almost sank, President Ronald Reagan launched Operation Praying Mantis. That operation involved aircraft and ships, and resulted in the sinking of half the Iranian fleet and the destruction of two sets of naval and intelligence facilities, and the end of Iran's attempts at the time to control the Straits of Hormuz.

In January 2020, President Trump channeled Reagan by sending an American drone to eliminate Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC's Quds Force. Soleimani was then directing all Iran's proxy wars throughout the Middle East and was widely considered the second-most-powerful man in Iran. His death was a major blow to the regime's imperial designs, though clearly not the end of them.

During the Trump years, facing a much more confrontational American president, Iran did not increase its uranium enrichment to 20 percent, as it did in the early months of the Biden presidency. Nor did it strike at American targets with anything close to the frequency of the Biden years.

The US need not even carry out a direct strike at Iran; the IRGC offers plentiful high-value targets in the region — over 500 military sites in Syria alone. And as Arthur Herman pointed out in the aforementioned Commentary article, the elimination of Iranian oil refineries on the Persian Gulf would bring most transportation in Iran to a halt within weeks, and the capture of its largest oil wells near the Gulf by an amphibious American force would deal a heavy blow to the Iranian economy. No large-scale American ground force would be required, as was the case in Iraq. The key point is that Iran has certain vulnerabilities that do not require an invading army to expose.

The proper response going forward with respect to Iran and its proxies is not carefully calibrated, "proportionate responses" to the attacks on the US or its allies. That approach only leaves Iran and its proxies in control of the game. It beggars belief, for instance, that the United States, either alone, or in conjunction with other major maritime powers, has not yet removed a force of Yemeni tribesmen who have succeeded in largely closing shipping through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal.

Swatting away Houthi launched drones and cruise missiles is not enough. The objective, writes former federal anti-terrorism prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, is "not to even the score. It's to end the contest." And that requires not an equivalent response to the aggression of Iran or its proxies. What is required, argues McCarthy, is a response to "Iran's deadly aggression that is devastatingly disproportionate to the scope of that aggression."

Not likely under President Biden or whoever is calling the shots in D.C.

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What has been happening behind the closed doors of the Oval Office?
Click to Play Video
Reports suggest a pattern that could lead to the most significant political scandal of the decade.

President Biden's recent actions have sparked a controversy that refuses to die down, as this former CIA operative lays bare a series of potentially catastrophic missteps.

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CNN Quietly Admits Mental Decline Has Forced Biden Into Hiding After Denying Super Bowl Interview

By Sarah Arnold

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