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WHEN THE BLEEDING STARTS IT CAN BEGIN GUSHING:
Poll: Biden Hemorrhaging Support Even Among Base
BY Rebecca Downs
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THE MORE OUR ENEMIES LINK THE MORE DANGEROUS IT IS FOR US.
Why Russia and China Build Up Iran
Though vulnerable, Tehran is the ideal Middle East partner in an alliance to destroy the U.S.-led order.
By Bryan Clark and Michael Doran
Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi at the Kremlin, Jan. 19.
Photo: Pavel Bednyakov/Shutterstock; Iranian Presidency/Zuma Press
The Ukraine crisis exposes a flaw in President Biden’s Iran strategy. Washington engages with Beijing and Moscow as if they share core U.S. interests with respect to Iran, when instead they are working with Tehran to undermine the American-led global order.
That’s certainly what officials in Tehran are saying. Last Wednesday, Mahmoud Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said: “In the new world order, a triangle consisting of three powers—Iran, Russia, and China—has formed.” He was clear about the goal: “This new arrangement heralds the end of the inequitable hegemony of the United States and the West.”
The Biden team isn’t listening. Last Friday Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Geneva with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who proposed an interim deal to break the deadlock in the Iranian nuclear negotiations. “Russia shares our sense of urgency,” Mr. Blinken said, “and we hope that Russia will use the influence . . . it has with Iran to impress upon Iran that sense of urgency.”
As Mr. Blinken spoke, Russia was holding joint naval drills with China and Iran in the Indian Ocean. The day before, President Vladimir Putin hosted Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow. In a speech before the Duma, Mr. Raisi discussed “Resistance”—the movement Iran leads to destroy the U.S.-led order in the Middle East. Resistance, he said, drove the Americans from Afghanistan and Iraq, and it also generated “the successful model of cooperation between Iran and Russia in Syria.” In that spirit, Mr. Raisi parroted Mr. Putin’s main grievance with respect to Ukraine. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Mr. Raisi said, “seeks to infiltrate various geographical areas with new alibis that threaten the common interests of independent states.”
Mr. Putin’s campaign to bring Ukraine under Moscow’s control has a direct connection to the joint Russian-Iranian project of propping up the Assad regime in Syria. Russia’s naval bases in Sevastopol, Crimea (which Mr. Putin annexed from Ukraine in 2014), and in Tartus, Syria, serve as operational hubs for Russia’s Mediterranean presence. A strong, independent Ukraine threatens Moscow’s ability to project power into the Middle East.
Mr. Putin may agree that Iran should never possess nuclear weapons. Cooperating closely with the U.S. to achieve that goal, however, interferes with his more urgent priority, which is to undermine the American-led order.
For his part, Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a similar set of calculations. Thanks to one of history’s most rapid military buildups, China now has Asia’s largest air force, the world’s largest army by number of active-duty troops, and largest navy by number of vessels. According to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leaders, the Chinese military will be poised to invade Taiwan successfully by 2027. The Pentagon is playing catch-up. It is acquiring new weapons and technologies capable of deterring China, but these won’t be fully integrated into the force until late this decade. China’s optimal window to conquer Taiwan, therefore, will be between 2025 and 2030, when its military modernization peaks while U.S. forces are still adapting.
Which brings us back to Iran. In the event of war in Taiwan, China will look to Tehran and its proxies to mount threats to shipping—to pin down one or more American carrier groups in the Persian Gulf. But the value of Iran’s “Resistance” doesn’t end there. Beijing is heavily dependent on Middle East oil imports. It aims to protect its long and vulnerable supply lines by toppling the U.S. as the region’s pre-eminent power. It isn’t strong enough to mount a direct challenge, so it uses Iran as its stalking horse.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian recently announced that the 25-year strategic accord between Iran and China, forged last year, has entered into force. At the heart of the accord is oil for security assistance. Is China actively encouraging Iran to unleash its proxies against America’s Gulf allies? Not that we know of. But it is building up Iran and doing nothing to counter its most malign behavior. Beijing cannot but have noticed that when U.S. allies turn to Washington for help, they encounter a weary and distracted America, one ever less eager to deter Iran. Increasingly exposed, the allies hedge, tentatively tilting toward Beijing.
China’s influence in Middle Eastern military affairs has therefore increased substantially. It sells military equipment to most of the Middle Eastern allies of the U.S. and manufactures weapons in partnership with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It is helping the Saudis master nuclear technology. In the spring of 2021, U.S. intelligence observed China secretly building a military site at Khalifa Port near Abu Dhabi. The construction stopped only after arm-twisting by Washington.
The interim deal on the Iranian nuclear program that Mr. Lavrov discussed with Mr. Blinken reportedly calls on Iran to reduce its stockpiles of enriched uranium in return for lifting sanctions. But this would only fuel Iran’s economy while allowing it to retain the capability of generating enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon at short notice. The proxy wars will expand, and the nuclear blackmail will continue.
In sum, China and Russia are building up Iran. Both need a partner in the Middle East devoted to “Resistance”—to undermining U.S. power. Why is the Biden team going along for the ride? Washington’s approach should be more strategic. Among the members of the global alliance dedicated to destroying the American-led order, Iran is the most vulnerable. The job of the U.S. is to defang it.
Messrs. Clark and Doran are senior fellows at the Hudson Institute.
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RADICAL SOROS CONTINUES TO SWAY OUR POLITICS WITH HIS MONEY: George Soros Donates $125 Million to Democrats Before November Midterms
https://www.breitbart.com/midterm-election/2022/01/28/george-soros-donates-125-million-democrats-before-november-midterms/
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BIDEN THINKS HE HAS A MANDATE BUT HE DOES NOT. CONSEQUENTLY, HE HAS MESSED UP EVERYHING HE HAS TOUCHED.
Biden’s Supreme Court Risk
If he chooses a radical to replace Breyer, it will stimulate GOP turnout in November.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Potomac Watch: Affirmative action comes to the Supreme Court, as Joe Biden reduces Justice Stephen Breyer’s replacement criteria to "the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court." Images: Pool/AP/Reuters Composite: Mark Kelly
Given the alacrity with which the White House seized on Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement, the administration is clearly banking on a confirmation fight giving the Democratic Party a midterm lift. That calculation may prove as misguided as any other so far in Joe Biden’s presidency. Especially if the president again dances to progressive demands.
Justices often give the White House an early heads-up about retirement plans with the expectation the news will remain confidential until later in the court’s term. So eager was the Biden administration to change the headlines from inflation, Covid and the president’s crummy ratings, it didn’t grant Justice Breyer that courtesy. The Wednesday news leaks force-marched Justice Breyer into penning an official retirement letter the next day.
Democrats are reveling in the distraction while assuring the media that the coming confirmation fight will galvanize its base for the midterms—especially given Mr. Biden’s vow to name the court’s first black woman. The party is also busily encouraging its pliable press to make this story—a story of a Democratic president’s nominee facing a Democratic Senate majority—all about Republicans. The narrative is that the GOP has been outwitted by a savvy White House, divided over the risks of staging an all-out assault on a minority nominee, and bitter over its powerlessness to stop a vote.
That’s one way of looking at it—one uninformed by facts, history or political reality. No doubt the Biden base is eager for a political win after the demoralizing defeats of their multitrillion-dollar spending bill and voting takeover. And no doubt Mr. Biden will get credit among progressives for fulfilling his campaign pledge and making his “historic” mark on the court.
Yet this nomination lacks the drama that animated other Supreme Court fights of recent years. Mr. Biden’s pick will make no difference to the ideological makeup of the court. He’s replacing one liberal with one liberal, while six conservative justices rule on. The nominee is also unlikely to be a surprise—or to produce surprises. Mr. Biden’s short list is necessarily very short, and one of the candidates (Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia) weathered Senate confirmation only last year.
Mr. Biden promises a name before the end of February, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer aims to wrap up confirmation in about a month. Barring delays or flashpoints, Democrats could therefore be in April right where they are now politically—with an appointee in the rearview mirror and voters focused again on inflation, Covid and the rest. It’s difficult to see how a relatively straightforward court debate in the spring will spur the liberal base to the polls in November. Especially as, historically, the Supreme Court is an issue that drives Republican more than Democratic turnout.
The immediate risk is to Democrats—namely, that the president saddles them with another midterm liability. Mr. Biden again faces a choice. He can pick a qualified liberal in the mold of Justice Breyer or Justice Elena Kagan and take credit for putting a substantive, thoughtful jurist on the bench. Or he can bow to progressive demands that he infuse the court with a new radicalism and put forward an amped-up version of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, all anger, bluster and fiery opinions.
If it’s the latter, watch for Republicans to hang that nominee around vulnerable Senate Democrats’ necks in upcoming elections. Contrary to press reports, conservatives aren’t feeling much angst over this nomination. Republicans expected Justice Breyer to retire and knew Democrats would have the votes to confirm a replacement. Not only won’t the pick change the ideological makeup of the court; some Republicans think a more radical new justice could aid their cause by making it harder for Justice Kagan to forge compromises with the two conservative justices necessary for a majority.
Expect the vast majority of Republicans to focus more on Mr. Biden and Democrats (and what this pick says about their governance) than on the nominee herself. They are betting that even a radical Biden nominee would get unanimous Democratic support, and they are gearing up to make the likes of Arizona’s Mark Kelly and New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan own that vote. Combined with Senate Democrats’ new promise to kill the legislative filibuster, a firebrand Supreme Court pick could further alienate independents even as it electrifies Republicans.
A Supreme Court pick is always a political risk to a president heading into an election—something the press was quick to point out when Donald Trump was mulling whom to pick to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat in the fall of 2020. Mr. Trump largely neutralized that risk by choosing the qualified and respected Amy Coney Barrett.
But Mr. Biden already has a history of caving to left-wing demands, and all the pressure now will coming from the Demand Justice crowd to go radical. The White House was given an opening here. Will it use it wisely or double down?
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