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Nothing invites trouble more than weakness. Is Biden apparently pushing Israel to decide to attack Iran?
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How America is helping Iran get a nuclear arsenal
And as the US advertises its terrible weakness, Russia and China are watching
By Melanie Phillips
As Iran reportedly reaches the brink of obtaining enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, the Biden administration is now astoundingly colluding with this lethal rogue state against the interests of Israel and America’s allies in the region.
The US State Department is waiving sanctions on Iran’s civilian nuclear program. The Biden administration hopes this will persuade Tehran to return to compliance with the 2015 deal that it has been violating since former President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions.
Lifting them releases Iran’s frozen funds held abroad, estimated at some $29 billion or about one-third of its foreign assets. Iran will once against be allowed to trade with the rest of the world using global banking systems. Sanctions against exports of Iranian oil will also be removed. Foreign firms will once again be allowed to invest in Iran’s commodities.
With these funds, the Iranian regime will be shored up in power, receive the resources to ratchet up its aggressive activities abroad and be confident that it can finish developing nuclear weapons with impunity.
Earlier this week, US officials estimated that Iran was on the verge of producing enough fuel for a nuclear bomb in just a matter of weeks and could have a device built in less than a year.
As Omri Ceren, the national security adviser for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted on Feb. 5: “The Biden administration is giving Iran a nuclear weapons arsenal”.
This is despite Iran’s constant aggression. Having armed, mobilised and advised militias in Iraq for many years, it is now using them to attack Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other states. Last month, Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen attacked the UAE on three occasions. And this week, Iran unveiled a new missile with a reported range that would allow it to reach US bases in the region as well as targets inside Israel.
While Iran is unceasing in its aggression, the Biden administration is unceasing in its attempts to offer it inducements. These include the previous lifting of some sanctions, and halting the release of a report by the International Atomic Energy Authority detailing Tehran’s non-compliance with an IAEA investigation into Iran’s undeclared nuclear activities.
The pattern is constant. Tehran refuses to budge and redoubles its aggression. In response, the United States grovellingly offers yet more sweeteners. Tehran treats these as a sign of weakness and imminent victory, and ratchets up its demands still more.
Thus in response to the latest lifting of sanctions, Iran’s foreign minister said this was “good but not enough”.
Even more tragically, there are signs that the previous policy of sanctions has been helping lay the ground for the one thing that can avert a terrible war with Iran — if the Iranian people themselves bring the regime down.
A “hacktivist” organisation has revealed a highly sensitive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps document that asserts Iranian society “is in a state of explosion” because of the crippling sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
The Jerusalem Post reports that the US government news organisation Radio Farda obtained the document from Edalat-e Ali (“Ali’s Justice”), the whistleblower entity that has also secured confidential documents and video footage about the torture of Iranian prisoners.
According to Radio Farda’s Golnaz Esfandiari, “the document covers a meeting with IRGC’s intelligence wing and quotes an official named ‘Mohammadi’ saying that Iran’s society ‘is in a state of explosion’” and that “social discontent has risen by 300 percent in the past year”.
Last month, Iran’s state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency reported the country’s deputy interior minister, Taghi Rostamvandi, warning that Iranians were seeking with greater frequency “fundamental changes in the country” and a secular government and way of life.
There have been regular massive protests by the Iranian people which have been brutally put down. These people are astonishingly courageous. But they will only rise up effectively if they believe America and the west are behind them. Appallingly, the Biden administration is signalling instead that it is on the side of the regime.
Twelve years ago, the former Pentagon analyst Harold Rhode wrote in his pamphlet The Sources of Iranian Negotiating Behaviour:
It is only when Iranians become convinced that either their rulers lack the resolve to do what is necessary to remain in power or that a stronger power will protect them against their current tyrannical rulers, that they will speak out and try to overthrow leaders.
Compromise (as we in the West understand this concept) is seen as a sign of submission and weakness. It is for this reason that good-will and confidence-building measures should be avoided at all costs. If the West is to succeed, Iranians must be convinced, in terms they understand, that America is prepared to establish itself as a powerful force and help the Iranian population liberate themselves from the tyranny under which they live.
So this is the moment that the United States should ratchet up the pressure on Tehran. Alas, it is doing the precise opposite.
It’s hard to imagine that the Biden administration can be so stupid. What’s more likely is that — astonishingly — it is either indifferent to Iran getting the bomb or even actually wants it to do so.
After all, the administration is stuffed with people who are the enemies of
Israel and the west. President Joe Biden’s envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, whitewashed Yasser Arafat’s duplicity at Camp David and has a long track record of sympathy for the Iranian regime and animus towards Israel.
And since it gained power, the administration has been pivoting away from its allies in the Gulf towards their Iranian foe. This near-incomprehensible position was explained last year in a devastating and authoritative piece in Tablet by Michael Doran and Tony Badran.
The appeasement of Iran, they wrote, could be described as the third and final stage of former President Barack Obama’s hitherto unfinished policy. This had sought to achieve a new Middle East order which relied on partnership with Iran.
The aim was for America to withdraw from engagement in the Middle East. To enable that to happen, there had to be a new equilibrium between states to achieve a balance of power. The authors called this policy the “Realignment”.
It’s not too fanciful to see this as Obama’s strategy, since Biden has remained close to him while key Biden staffers, such as Malley, are even closer.
With signs that the United States might be about to cave in completely to Iran and close a renewed nuclear deal, several US lawmakers have become increasingly alarmed and outspoken. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last week argued for an hour on the floor of the Senate against reviving the deal.
Yet in stark contrast to the ferocious public opposition to the 2015 deal voiced by Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there has been almost total silence from Israel’s current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Last weekend, in what’s been described as a friendly phone call between Bennett and Biden, Bennett reportedly expressed disagreement with America’s Iran policy.
It seems that he wants to keep Biden sweet by keeping such a disagreement private. But without public pressure from the world becoming aware of America’s treacherous perfidy over Iran, which is endangering not just Israel but America itself, it will be far easier for the Biden administration to flick away Israel’s profound and all-too-real concerns.
After all, how can sober realists like Menendez gain any traction if Israel itself remains silent?
And meanwhile, as the US advertises to the world its terrible weakness, Russia and China are watching, and making their plans.
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I seldom disagree with Kim Strassel but I believe she overlooked two simple solutions to the problem of Senators and House Representatives investing in securities. Upon entering government service if they have a portfolio they should be required to place it in a blind trust or have if independently managed. As for future security investments they should be given two options:
a) Have any investing or trading done by an independent investment manager or direct purchases be limited to the The S&P Index.
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A Fraudulent Ethics Debate on Congressional Stock Trading
Elaine Luria is right. Existing rules are enough.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
For a lesson in the perils of exposing Washington frauds, see the case of Rep. Elaine Luria. The Virginia Democrat this week punctured the Beltway’s moral preening over lawmakers’ stock trading and is taking it from all sides.
As heresies go, Ms. Luria’s was mild, and she spoke common sense. Asked by Punchbowl News about proposals to ban lawmakers from trading stocks, the Navy veteran replied that “the whole concept is bulls—.” She noted that Congress is already bound by disclosure rules (she could also have mentioned insider-trading laws) and that there is no evidence that members are “inherently bad or corrupt.” She is thus “very strongly opposed to any legislation like that.”
But there is no fury like that of a snake-oil salesman unmasked, and Ms. Luria’s analysis provoked bipartisan outrage. The media went to work on stories about her “millions of dollars” in stock. Progressive activists rained down anti-capitalist scorn on Twitter. A potential Republican competitor, state Sen. Jen Kiggans, slammed Ms. Luria for putting her “financial interests” first and threw in with the growing and non-thinking wing of the GOP that backs trading restrictions.
In a saner world, more members would be calling out the fraud that is Washington’s current talk of fraud. Midterm campaigns have a way of inspiring debates over ethics, as both parties know the public despises the Washington swamp, and both figure it’s easy to promise “reform.” Anti-trading bills are flying through Congress, each more complex than the last, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy vie for the fantasy high ground. Never mind that no prior “reform” has ever restored public trust.
Still, the current discussion is more inane than most ethics fights, since it carries the risk of long-term damage to Congress. For starters, the only reason Congress is in high dudgeon about Congress’s sneaky, hidden self-dealing is because there is nothing sneaky or hidden about it. Under a 2012 law, members must report stock trades within 30 days (or in some cases 45 days). This reporting requirement could use better enforcement, as the penalties for violation are small. Yet it has provided Joe Public the tool he needs to make judgments about a representative’s financial ethics—and to impose a remedy if needed via an election.
The only thing that has changed is that partisans are increasingly weaponizing that transparency for political gain, much as they’ve weaponized other disclosure—by hurling baseless accusations of insider trading at each other. The 2020 allegations against the likes of former Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Sen. Jim Inhofe were particularly absurd, given that their assets were managed by outside financial advisers, who sold them—along with all humanity—as a pandemic descended. Congress ginned up a furor, even as there’s no evidence members have suddenly, en masse, gone Ivan Boesky.
Nor is there any real evidence Congress is getting “insider information.” The notion that savvy members are acting on super-hot tips is at odds with a Congress that otherwise seems to be the last to know about anything. It’s worth noting that the one member in recent years convicted of securities fraud—New York’s Rep. Chris Collins—got his tip as a result of his board seat on a pharmaceutical company, not congressional work. Are there members of government who in the course of their official duties obtain highly privileged information about drug trials, corporate investigations, federal leasing announcements, land sales—all of which can shift markets? You bet. They are called federal bureaucrats, many of whom have no real disclosure obligations.
The real risk is that a ban on stock trading, or even its severe curtailment, would rob Congress of people who might make Congress better. The Founding Fathers had a vision of the “citizen legislator”—an average American who’d give the government some years of his wisdom and experience, and then go back to life. Think of former Sen. Tom Coburn, the obstetrician who spent time in the House and Senate educating his colleagues on health policy, then retired.
Today’s Congress is stuffed with trust-fund babies, wealthy lawyers and celebrities. Some conservatives are having fun trashing Nancy Pelosi as a multimillionaire, as they rah-rah trading and stock restrictions. But a new ban wouldn’t make the Pelosis of Congress any less rich. All it will do is make it harder for Americans of important experience but modest means—or a younger age—to contemplate a run. The prospect of political life is already daunting. Add the penalty of having to throw away prospects for a nest egg, a kid’s college education or a comfortable retirement. It would equally serve to banish quality congressional staffers, who are already fleeing Capitol Hill for more-lucrative jobs, creating a brain drain. Making Congress subject to rules more restrictive than in any other profession is no way to attract talent.
This is all beside the more basic point that conservatives are supposed to favor free markets and financial success. It’s possible to embrace both while also promising zero tolerance for any members who break existing rules and laws. It’s certainly more productive than taking cheap shots at Democrats who speak truth to power.
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Ret. US General Warns We Could See a ‘nuclear Breakout’ from Iran
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg joined Trey Gowdy’s “Sunday Night in America” to discuss the ongoing threats the United States faces from overseas.
Gowdy opened his latest show with an overview of foreign threats from Russia’s potential invasion of Ukraine, China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, and the removal of some sanctions against Iran opening the doors for nuclear weapons. Gowdy said our leaders are sending “mixed signals” to the world on where we stand on these issues.
“Despite the threats from these countries on the world stage, there are mixed signals being sent by politicians and pundits in this country. Some conservative politicians and media personalities have openly questioned why the U.S. would back Ukraine in a conflict with Russia while Nancy Pelosi’s advice to Olympic athletes in Beijing even thinking about speaking out against that country and its policies is to shut up and skate,” Gowdy said.
Kellogg was equally pessimistic, admitting that he thinks this could lead to a nuclear break-out in Iran. +++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have just begun reading the biography of America's most dangerous sociopath, George Soros. It is chilling.
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