By Derek Hunter
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'Have We Learned Nothing?' Netanyahu Urges American Opposition to New Iran Deal
And:
Iran Sends Its Missile Regards
The U.S. pursuit of a new nuclear deal looks increasingly bizarre.
The Editorial Board
An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps military personnel stands under the Iranian solid-propelled road-mobile single-stage missile, Zolfaghar Basir (top) and Dezful medium-range ballistic missile in a military exhibition, Tehran, Jan. 7.
Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/Zuma Press
The Biden Administration’s hell-bent pursuit of a new nuclear deal with Iran grows harder to understand with each provocation from Tehran. The latest came Sunday in a missile attack near a U.S. consulate under construction in northern Iraq.
Iran typically commits mayhem through proxy militias, but this time Tehran took credit. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s paramilitary group, said it carried out a missile attack on what it claimed were Israeli targets inside Iraq. The group said it was in response to an Israeli airstrike in Syria last week that killed two IRGC commanders.
Notably, however, the missiles landed in Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. The Kurds are America’s best allies in that country. No one was killed but at least two individuals were injured. It’s likely the IRGC wants to send a message about the vulnerability of U.S. interests and allies in the region as the two sides close in on a renewed nuclear deal.
The deal would hand Iran tens of billions of dollars in money and investment. Iran also wants the U.S. to remove the IRGC from its list of terrorist groups as part of the deal. Iran knows the U.S. is preoccupied at the moment with Ukraine and Russian aggression.
Iran’s missile attack shows the incongruity of the looming nuclear deal. Like the 2015 original agreement, the new one would do nothing to restrict Iran’s support for regional terror groups. It includes no restrictions on Iran’s missile program that is growing more sophisticated and dangerous.
Iran also continues to support the Houthis in Yemen who use missiles and drones to target civilian and commercial targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And Iran is helping Hezbollah make its missiles targeted at Israel more accurate.
The U.S., France and others condemned the Sunday missile strike, yet they are eager to give Iran countless billions that it can use to fund more such attacks. It’s bizarre.
Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, seems undeterred despite the missile attack. “One thing I will say,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “is that the only thing more dangerous than Iran armed with ballistic missiles and advanced military capabilities is an Iran that has all of those things and a nuclear weapon, and President Biden is still determined to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”
But the deal won’t stop Iran from pursuing, or getting, a nuclear weapon. Iran could continue to make progress at secret sites that are excluded from international inspectors as it waits for the deal to expire. Meanwhile, it will be able to sell oil and cut deals with Russia and Europe to finance its imperialism.
The nuclear talks paused last week after Russia—which is among the countries brokering the talks—demanded that sanctions related to Ukraine not interfere with its deals with Iran. A U.S. official told the Journal that it won’t make that concession to Russia, but unless a new nuclear deal bars Iran-Russia transactions it will open up new sanctions-evading opportunities. The world will see it as one more sign of American weakness.
MORE:
Benghazi II? Biden White House oddly silent about Iran's missile attack in Irbil
While global focus has been on Russia's scorched earth campaign across Ukraine, Iran's malevolent mullahs haven't been napping.
According to the Washington Post:
BAGHDAD — Iran claimed responsibility Sunday for a barrage of ballistic missiles that hit northern Iraq just after midnight, striking several kilometers from a U.S. compound and drawing sharp condemnation from the Iraqi and U.S. capitals.
The semiofficial Fars news agency said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps had launched “powerful missiles” in response for what it described as “recent crimes of the fake Zionist regime,” an apparent reference to the killing of two of its members last week in Syria, which it has blamed on Israel.
The attack appeared to mark a significant escalation in proxy and political conflicts on Iraqi soil as talks between Iran and the United States over the future of a 2015 nuclear deal shattered by President Donald Trump falter.
Other reports say that it was a U.S. military base or U.S. military/intelligence complex inside Irbil airport, as the WaPo reports, that got hit. Whatever it was, it was close.
Which is some amazing timing given that Joe Biden is poised to give the mullahs the deal of a lifetime with his determination to revive the Obama-era Iran deal, known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), even if he's got Vladimir Putin brokering it. President Trump scrapped it and took out Iran's terrorist leadership instead. It's not know why Biden is still sticking to this bad idea, especially with Putin involved. Perhaps the mullahs think Biden will give them their pallets of cash without the deal. But most likely, they smell weakness from the White House and are comfortable giving handsy Joe a beating. One is certain, though: The attack shows that they have absolutely no fear of Biden or losing the deal he wants to hand them.
But Biden is indeed planning to get that deal through, attack or no attack, and despite his current disputes with Putin, who wants sanctions exemptions for Iran trade that Biden doesn't want to give. According to the Wall Street Journal, the show must go on:
European officials say Russia had promised to respond with its precise demands for guarantees in the next few days. The U.S. official said if Russia presses its guarantee demands or doesn’t reply “in the coming week,” Washington would need to “very quickly consider an alternative path.”
Which is to say carrying on without Russia's tender and even-handed mediation services.
Biden State Dept rationalizes Iran terror attack on US consulate — as Team Biden plans to give Iran nuclear bomb https://t.co/DBUgTu4fGz
— Lee Smith (@LeeSmithDC) March 13, 2022
Nobody wanted their name on that statement.
There's a lot of downplaying of the idea that the U.S. was the target, with various characters saying it was some kind of tit-for-tat activity with Israel.
But a lot of evidence suggests the target was us:
UPDATE: The State Department says there was "no sign the attack was directed at the United States."
In reality, the missiles struck the only city in Iraq outside of Baghdad where the U.S. has a diplomatic mission. https://t.co/BAAh5uHtUz
— Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 13, 2022
The attack happened on or nearly on the birthday of Qasem Soleimani, the Iran Revolutionary Guards terrorist chieftain who was rubbed out by President Trump in 2020, and the Guards have long said that they are planning revenge. Coincidence? Well, we know they like anniversaries.
The Guards were open about their violence, apparently suspecting that doddering Biden was incapable of recognizing anything subtle. Iran denied the matter at first, but rapidly changed their minds and brazenly declared that they did it after the mealy-mouthed U.S. response.
But White House spokesweasel Jen Psaki has kept radio silence. The White House has said nothing. The State department has put out some mealy-mouthed palaver. The whole thing is being narrated as a non-story while the Biden deal with Iran goes on.
Which all suggests that maybe they want that deal a lot more than the trigger-happy mullahs do.
If Joe Biden had a scintilla of self-respect or advocacy for America, he'd cut off those Iran deal talks right then and there. You don't negotiate with thugs still trying to kill you on the side.
But what we see is a downplaying of the fiery missile attack that was at least close to the U.S.'s very few presences now in the Middle East, which is sure to invite more missile attacks. Yet they don't want to say anything. It's redolent of Benghazi 2012, where another U.S. installation was attacked by terrorists and Obama-era officials such as Susan Rice, made the television rounds to insist it was nothing more than an overexcited mob and an insulting-to-Islam video, not a planned attack. Of course, it was planned, and Obama was running for re-election. That coverup was appalling as it was based solely on domestic political considerations and too bad about the dead diplomats. Rice, of course, is now a top Biden advisor.
Now we have this, and a Biden administration determined to get its wretched deal with the mullahs through. Suddenly, they are looking the other way on that attack in Irbil. What's wrong with this picture?
Finally:
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Hanson, the historian, recaps Zelensky's options:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Classical Choices
Is it to be Salamis, Thebes, Thermopylae—or Melos?
A number of pincers are poised to envelop increasingly damaged Ukrainian cities. The initial euphoria that Vladimir Putin’s surprise shock-and-awe assault failed may be waning, even as Ukraine inflicts historic damage on the Russian army. Even after three weeks, Russia has failed to grab key infrastructure and decapitate the Ukrainian leadership, as it did in the comparatively quick and relatively bloodless Georgia and Crimean campaigns in 2008 and 2014, respectively.
That supposed easy conquest didn’t happen because of dogged Ukrainian resistance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “Finest Hour” Churchillian leadership has captivated the West. For a while, Europe, and the United States seem awakened from wokeness, as they rush thousands of sophisticated anti-armor and anti-aircraft shoulder-fired weapons to Kiev, along with leveling global financial sanctions on all things Russian.
But in response, Vladimir Putin has now pivoted to a traditional Russian medieval tactic of annihilation. In the fashion of the World War II-era Red Army, he is razing with bombs, shells, and missiles stubborn enemy strongholds as a prequel to surrounding the ruins, starving out the population and then absorbing what is left. Apparently, Putin feels he must destroy much of Ukraine to save it for Russia, or at least show former Soviet territories—and the world—the wages of resisting reunification.
Putin ostensibly is not bothered by the global outrage over his savagery—especially given that he is on the road of no return, and defeat could mean his own end. But for now, he would probably channel Hitler’s remark about “Who remembers the Armenians?”—both now and in the context of earlier Western silence during 1999-2000, when Putin flattened Grozny (the U.N. labeled its ruins as the most destroyed city on earth). Then he killed up to 80,000 Chechens and nixed the idea that a former Soviet republic inside the Russian Federation could secede.
In other words, if Putin cannot easily reabsorb Ukraine and immediately benefit from its manpower, natural resources, and industrial base, then he is perfectly willing to destroy it on his theory that what is lost in the short-term is more than gained in long-term deterrence.
Putin appears to believe that by leveling cities he can at last squeeze half of Ukraine back into Russia, declare victory, digest the rubble, and be ready for a second helping of western Ukraine in three or four years. In the meantime, he conjectures that current grandiose European talk of defiance, sanctions, and rearmament will fade in accustomed Western ennui in a year or so—but not the fear of nuclear Russia, an unpredictable and supposedly nutty Putin on the prowl, and the European green need for Russian gas and oil.
What are the options left for Zelenskyy, as perhaps 4 to 5 million of his Ukrainian brethren will have fled the country by early April? He will probably still not have air parity with Russia and will find no way to disrupt Russian supply depots and air and missile bases inside the borders of Belarus and Russia.
So far Zelenskyy has been brilliant as he expresses his appreciation for Western sanctions and arms. His insight seems to balance his otherwise unhinged demand for far more dangerous escalations—specifically to establish a no-fly zone and thus in World War III style confront, in the air above Ukraine, a bellicose Russia with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
Still, Zelenskyy must be careful not to push Westerners into such a nuclear confrontation, given there is some residual anger at Ukraine for its own interference into U.S. affairs during the 2016 and 2020 elections and the first impeachment of Donald Trump—partisanship which extended to the ambassadorial level. The ubiquitous Alexander Vindman was offered the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense by the incoming Zelenskyy government—odd considering he later was mostly responsible for prompting the impeachment of a U.S. president. In turn, the shadowy involvement of State Department official Victoria Nuland and the Biden family syndicate in Ukraine were not recommendations for Americans interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine.
Nonetheless, what now are Zelenskyy’s choices?
Salamis, 480 B.C.
If it were not for the brilliant and wily Athenian admiral Themistocles, Athens might have either been defeated, refounded the city elsewhere, or “Medized” by joining Xerxes’s massive Persian invasion of Greece in 480 B.C. The asymmetry in numbers was about as disadvantageous to what was left of the Greek resistance in the Bay of Salamis as Ukraine’s effort is against Russia, which possesses the largest army in Europe.
In desperate but brilliant fashion, Themistocles evacuated Athens, sent the population to safer enclaves, tapped Athenian familiarity with the waters and currents of Salamis, employed ruse and deception, and eventually destroyed a fleet that may have been at least three times the size of his own.
In general, anytime a big power seeks to defeat a stubborn and determined smaller force, it must first shut off all the invaded nation’s borders and sources of supply. What ultimately deadlocked Americans in Korea was the always-open Chinese border. In Vietnam, defeat came from the resupplies through the Ho Chi Minh trail and the Haiphong harbor. Iraq was never secure given the porous Syrian and Iran borderlands. And in Afghanistan, the Taliban was nourished through the unfettered mountain routes into nuclear Pakistan.
Putin, for now, has no ability to stop daily supplies into Ukraine from four NATO bordering states, all of which presumably are under the NATO nuclear umbrella.
In addition, Russian armies historically are as deadly to invaders—whether the Swedes, French, or Germans—as they are lackluster when invading others, given their failures and difficulties against Afghanistan (1979-1989) or the Poles (1920).
Zelenskyy might not give an inch. He would continue to fight in the streets of Kyiv as the Russians themselves did in Stalingrad. He can be rearmed at will. His forces are demoralizing Russian conscript armies. And if he is willing to take Themistoclean risks, Zelenskyy might yet defeat Putin militarily, at least in the sense of denying the Russians all that they did not have before the invasion.
Add in the eventual toll of Western sanctions and the cultural ostracism of Russia, and Zelenskyy could calibrate that time is actually on his side, not Putin’s. The longer he simply survives, the greater the odds he will always survive. So, Zelenskyy in Leonidan defiance says to Putin who demands he lays down his arms: μολὼν λαβΗ“Come and take them!”
Thebes, 480 B.C.
Then there is the choice of concessions and de facto negotiated capitulation.
As King Xerxes’ quarter-million combined naval and land forces absorbed Greece and pulled up before Thebes, the outnumbered city-state of no more than 40,000 residents saw no hope of salvation—other than joining the apparent winners. The result was that the ancient city (to its eternal shame) “Medized” and joined Xerxes rather than face annihilation.
A year later, Thebans fought side-by-side with their new Persian masters, as both were routed by free Greeks at the battle of Plataea. If the Russians pour in even more tanks, planes, and men, Zelenskyy might negotiate a surrender, either de facto rejoining the Russian Federation or being relegated to neutered status analogous to Austria and Finland during the Cold War.
Zelenskyy could say the odds were now hopeless. He had to worry not about heroic resistance but whether women and children lived. And he figured life within the old confines of Russia was preferable to sure death in the ongoing asymmetrical battles outside it. He could rationalize his battle dead by reasoning that three weeks or a month of hard fighting won him better terms from the victor.
Thermopylae, 480 B.C.
On the other hand, Zelenskyy at some point could privately conclude that his cause of stopping Putin is doomed, but still worth continuing. He then would consider a glorious Thermopylaean last stand. If the Russian encirclements continue, if the Ukrainians cannot stop the aerial bombardment and shelling, if the country runs out of food and supplies, if the world shifts its attention, if the media relegates Ukrainian heroism to weekly slog news, then its army may well go down to defeat.
But Ukrainian diehard resistance may have been worth it, by exposing to all the weakness of the Russian military, by reminding the world of Putin’s cruelty, by insulating western Ukraine from the worst of the Russian devastation, by buying weeks if not months for rearmament and resupply in free areas of Ukraine, and by allowing critical time and space for growing urban resistance to Russian occupations.
Zelenskyy knows that he is now the darling of the West. But such infatuation is predicated on his continued resistance, his refusal to take up Joe Biden’s stupid offer of “a ride” out of the country, and to be honest, possible eventual martyrdom. Let us hope he does not end up like King Leonidas with his head on a Russian stake.
Melos, 416 B.C.
There is a fourth, still darker fate—that of the doomed Melians, made famous in Thucydides’ famous “Melian Dialogue” in book five of his history of the Peloponnesian War. There the Melian envoys explain to the Athenian attackers why they simply cannot surrender their ancient freedoms, despite the lopsided Athenian odds and because of the clear moral right on their side.
Instead, the poor Melians vow to fight against seemingly hopeless odds, with some slim expectations of succor from the Spartans, with hopes of dissension growing among the ranks of the Athenian allies, and of trust that everything is unpredictable in war.
The Athenians replied that such unrealistic hope was “danger’s comforter” and cannot be indulged by the weaker. The issue is not then in extremis whether Putin had some actual grievances in invading Ukraine, or even whether the noble Ukrainians were not only undeserving of such a savage invasion but are the clear moral superiors of the hypocritical Russians, whose Ukrainian adventures reveal just how cynical and bankrupt they have become.
Putin, like the Athenian diplomats, has no interest in rehashing past biased histories and counterallegations. He will deal only with present realities, namely that Ukraine is weak, and Russia is strong. Thus, idealistic but doomed Ukrainian resistance is a selfish and immoral act on the part of Zelenskyy because his own sense of heroism and gallantry will end up getting thousands of innocent women and children needlessly killed who otherwise might have at least lived under Russian domination.
In other words, Zelenskyy’s rockstar defiance, like the noble but utterly unrealistic resistance of the Melians, could earn his Ukrainians a Melian-like nonexistence.
These four choices depend not just on reason, morality, and emotion, but on the pulse of the battlefield in the next few days. Are Putin’s Russians tiring and simply want the mess just to go away? Or are they ashamed of their initial disorganization and now increasingly buoyed that their sheer numbers and savagery can still crush Ukraine?
Are the Ukrainians nearing exhaustion as their families live in rubble in wintertime and their dead pile up? Or are they just getting started, given the ferocious toll in men, planes, and tanks they are exacting on the supposedly invincible Russians?
The answers to those hypotheticals will determine whether dogged Ukrainian resistance leads to an incredible and unforeseen victory, or soon a negotiated surrender and a harsh emasculation by Russia, or a glorious last stand that leads to resistance and eventual success—or the end of everything the Ukrainians hold dear.
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Will Putin challenge Biden and will Biden crumble? I believe there is a good chance Biden will succumb.
Projecting weakness always ends badly because it encourages the bully.
Putin, sensing Biden’s weakness, is heading toward a nuclear showdown
By Harry J. Kazianis
Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be doing all he can to start a nuclear showdown with the NATO alliance over his genocidal war in Ukraine. But if he gets his wish, he could inadvertently set off a chain reaction of events we will be unable to control, an atomic Pandora’s box no one can close once it is unleashed.
His latest actions not only should create doubt that he is indeed rational — he might even be suicidal.
In striking a staging ground for foreign arms shipments a mere 15 miles from the Polish-Ukraine border, Putin is signaling that weapons like Javelin and NLAW anti-tank busters, Stinger missiles and other arms are creating chaos for the Russian army. And he wants that chaos to stop or he will create havoc himself, even if it means possible
But perhaps that’s what he wants us to believe? Countless world leaders have played crazy in times of crisis, with history showing it can indeed pay off. Richard Nixon played the madman with the Soviet Union during tough times in the Middle East, and Donald Trump threatened to destroy North Korea in a speech to the United Nations just a few years back, but neither dared match words with deeds. Putin seems intent on applying his own maximum-pressure strategy on the West, getting dangerously close to striking NATO territory — and starting World War III.
Or does Putin just think he can get away with it, that the West will simply back down? Sadly, his logic might not be as warped as we would believe.
We can’t exactly draw much confidence from President Joe Biden’s performance thus far. He can barely get through a press conference without stumbling through his talking points, often seeming dazed and confused, with many wondering if his cognitive abilities are in rapid decline.
Compare him at the 2012 vice-presidential debate against Paul Ryan with the man he is today. Clearly, Biden is lost in his own thoughts and should not be sitting behind the wheel of a car, let alone behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
And that could explain Moscow’s actions. Putin may think he can steamroll right over the president. If Biden can barely speak to the American people in a coherent manner, how can he go toe to toe with a nuclear superpower like Russia and prevail?
Indeed, Putin may believe he can get Biden to back off, to try to force Ukraine to take a negotiated settlement that would turn Kyiv into a rump state that can never join NATO or the European Union, with huge chunks of what was Ukrainian territory locked behind what will become a new iron curtain of authoritarianism.
Biden wouldn’t send Polish MiG-29s to Ukraine and won’t back a no-fly zone. Maybe Putin thinks he can get Biden to give a little more ground, to take away the weapons Ukraine needs to survive, if he escalates just enough.
Here is where things get ugly. Putin knows his armored forces will within weeks be unable to gain much ground thanks to Ukraine turning into a giant mud pit. He needs to press forward as hard and as fast as he can now to advance as much as possible before spring comes.
To do that, he must slow or stop the foreign arms coming into Ukraine. And that means Putin will likely attack any arms convoys, ammo dumps, supply centers and shipping facilities that will support such efforts.
This all leads to an inescapable conclusion: Things are destined to get worse. Facts on the ground and Putin’s calculations about American leadership may push him to cross the very edges of what many consider red lines, as Russia is close to running out of room to push. We are now at a point where a NATO-Russia clash is looking more like annihilation than negotiation. And that should terrify us all.
Harry J. Kazianis is the senior director at the Center for the National Interest. Twitter: @Grecianformula
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