The “Caroline Glick Show,” with Caroline Glick and guest Banafsheh Zand | Watch
And.
Why Iran’s Protests Could Topple the Regime
By Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh
But that view—colored by the disappointing results of the Arab Spring and of Western military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq—is too pessimistic. The Islamic Republic’s rulers are uncertain, fearful and increasingly incoherent in their public statements. They surely know that these demonstrations aim to foment revolution, not reform. And they have reason to worry that the demonstrators will be successful.
Iranians, unlike anyone else in the Middle East, have lived under two very different dictatorships—the Westernizing Pahlavi shahs from 1925-79 and an Islamic theocracy since 1979—and they’ve rejected both. Iran is the only Middle Eastern state to have had two revolutions in the 20th century. Belief in the value of a constitution and representative government is more than an imported, debased Western idea to Iranians. Iran embraced a written code of laws as a means of checking foreign influence in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11. Iranians have a 120-year history of using street demonstrations to check abusive power. Unlike past protests in other Middle Eastern countries, today’s popular rebellion in Iran could usher in a lasting pluralistic order.
In no Arab state—not even Egypt, where the intellectual and political classes were profoundly Westernized under British occupation—have we seen the kind of political ferment and critiques of authoritarianism, both secular and religious, that we have seen in Iran since the Constitutional Revolution. The rule of relentlessly Westernizing monarchs turned religion into a means of political protest and a vehicle for establishing representative government. Forty years of clerical rule has weakened Iranians’ religiosity but not their yearning for self-rule. Iran has become a country of empty mosques and a distinctly secular national pride.
As Americans often argue, separation of church and state can be a key to democratic success. Thanks to the totalitarian ambitions of Iran’s theocracy, no Middle Eastern society is less tempted by faith as a political creed than Iran. And while the theocrats have thwarted Iranians’ yearning for representative government, they have made concessions to popular sovereignty that have kept a culture of political self-expression alive and well.
The Islamic Republic has been bedeviled by this compromise. Elections, though never free, were once safety valves for popular dissatisfaction. A diverse collection of politicians have become president, ranging from the clerical reformer Mohammad Khatami to the populist firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Majles, Iran’s parliament, could be feisty. A dynamic press could criticize the government. Magazines and books served up serious discussions about man, God and the U.S.
This culture of political expression was fed by the clerical regime’s massive expansion of the country’s educational infrastructure—an aspect of the mullahs’ ardent desire to modernize after the fall of the shahs. They wanted a nation that was self-sufficient and self-reliant, and that required an educated public. Today, Iran has nearly six million university students, almost 60% of whom are women. In a reversal of the 1970s, higher education has become an engine of dissent against the Islamic revolution. Mismanagement and corruption in state-owned enterprises have done far more than U.S. sanctions to limit job creation. Iran is a land of highly educated poor people whose thirst for democracy has been whetted but never quenched. And Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s decision last year to asphyxiate this managed democracy by stage-managing the election of his ruthless protégé Ebrahim Raisi to the presidency triggered the existential crisis that has demolished the regime’s legitimacy.
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After more than a century of societal involvement in politics, Iranians are more than aware of the serious nature of self-government. They are unlikely to fall victim again to the allure of a secular strongman or militant mullah, having seen the damage such leaders cause. The Arabs who revolted against tyranny a decade ago didn’t have the advantage of decades of trial and error. Self-criticism isn’t a Middle Eastern forte, but Iranians have come far in placing the blame for their own predicament on themselves. Democracy can’t ignite, or last, if the citizenry doesn’t assume responsibility for its own destiny. Iran seems ready.
Most telling, Iranian women, who have tenaciously pressed for reform since Mr. Khatami’s election to the presidency in 1997, are no longer fazed by accusations of being gharbzadeh—Western-struck. They appear eager to make Western ideas about natural rights, especially individual liberty, their own. This is an essential step toward making democracy work in non-Western lands.
Iran is a diverse country. Its Arabs, Kurds and Baluch have a history of insurrection against Persian authority. Ethnic diversity has caused strife in the past. But the nationwide demonstrations that started after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, have been remarkably unifying. Iranians today want the extinction of the Islamist regime.
Many Americans and Europeans were deeply uncomfortable with the empowerment of religious parties in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. A post-Islamic Iran is likely to have a far bigger Western fan club than did the elected Islamists of North Africa. Good thing: As Samuel Huntington noted, foreign—usually American—support to nascent democracies increases the chance of their survival.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Iran ships, IAF destroys. +++
Israel bombed weapons convoy on Syrian-Iraqi border Israeli military chief confirms IDF bombed Iranian arms convoy on Iraq-Syrian border. By Aviv Kochavi
Israel carried out airstrikes on an Iranian arms shipment as it crossed the Iraqi-Syrian border last month, IDF chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said Wednesday morning.
Speaking at a conference hosted by the Reichman University in Herzliya, Kochavi said IDF intelligence had pinpointed which vehicle out of a convoy of 25 trucks was carrying Iranian weapons to allied forces in Lebanon.
“We couldn’t have not been aware of the Syrian convoy a few weeks ago,” Kochavi said.
“We couldn’t have not known that it was heading from Iraq to Syria, we couldn’t have not known what’s in it and we couldn’t have not known that out of the 25 trucks, truck number eight was the one carrying weapons.”
“We needed to send pilots to the right place and they had to evade surface-to-air missiles fired at them. They needed to attack, they needed to hit their targets and come back safely and not kill people who shouldn’t be killed. These are very advanced capabilities.”
While Kochavi did not specify the timing of the attack, he appeared to be referencing airstrikes conducted on November 8th, which targeted vehicles just inside the Syrian side of the border, after they had crossed the frontier from Iraq.
Iraq claimed drone aircraft carried out the strikes, destroying two jeeps
At the time, Iran reported two Syrian nationals killed in the strikes, while observer groups claimed a total of ten people were killed in the strikes.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Greenblatt is an Obama disciple and a worm in my inestimable opinion. +++ Is talk of globalism an anti-semitic dog whistle? The ADL and other liberals mistakenly believe critiques of efforts to undermine national sovereignty and pushing woke leftist policies are always about Jew-hatred.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt loves the spotlight. He got the attention he craves with an appearance last week on “The Breakfast Show,” a syndicated radio program hosted by Lenard Larry McKelvey, who goes professionally by the name of “Charlamagne tha God.”
Greenblatt’s ostensible purpose in doing the segment was to rebuild a black-Jewish coalition by fawning on “tha God.” What got the country’s attention, however, was his invocation of the claim that right-wingers who worry about “globalism” are the real threats to the Jews.
The ADL, the American Jewish Committee and other liberal legacy groups are in agreement on this. They assert that the term is a dog whistle for Jews.
More to the point, it is axiomatic on the left that any critique of those who prioritize support for international organizations and downgrade national sovereignty in pursuit of woke policies on a host of issues is, by definition, antisemitic.
If one confines one’s gaze to the fever swamps of the far-right, this might seem justified.
The ADL, the American Jewish Committee and other liberal legacy groups are in agreement on this. They assert that the term is a dog whistle for Jews.
Crackpot extremists—such as those who commit heinous, violent crimes or fantasize about doing so—routinely invoke conspiracy theories modeled on the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The goal of these imagined Jewish plots is to destroy white Christian America.
Looked at from this perspective, any mention of a “New World Order” or “Great (global) Reset” is indicative of Jew-hatred; and anyone uttering them is a tinfoil-hatted nutcase.
This is why the left frequently accuses politicians and pundits who point to the influence of Jewish mega-donor George Soros of antisemitism, or at least of being fellow travelers of hate groups.
The problem with the promiscuous hurling of such allegations—especially when wielded by people, like Greenblatt, posing as fair-minded experts on antisemitism—is that it ignores two basic facts.
One is that there are such things as globalists. They are powerful people with real impact who gather at conferences held by respected institutions like the World Economic Forum (WEF), which convenes in a fancy resort in Davos, Switzerland. And they are not shy about using terms like “New World Order” and “Great Reset” when advocating for far-reaching economic and environmental policy shifts that would undermine the national sovereignty of the United States and other countries, while drastically affecting people’s lifestyles (not, of course, those of the wealthy elites who fly in to Davos and other conference venues on private jets) for the worse.
The second is that the people who actually promote globalist policies are far more likely than American conservatives to support of the kind of woke ideology that acts as a permission slip for antisemitism.
Downplaying black antisemitism
The host of “The Breakfast Show” has often defended those accused of antisemitism, such as hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, whom he’s had as a guest.
Greenblatt can’t be entirely faulted for choosing to go on the New York-based program with a large nationwide audience, the majority of whom are African-Americans. Since the ADL’s job is both to confront antisemites and to educate those influenced by them, it’s arguable that it’s his duty to call out the dangerous growth of antisemitism in the black community, fueled by such prominent figures as Farrakhan and rap singer/fashion mogul Kanye West.
Though Greenblatt did this to some extent in his hour-long interview, most of his focus was on the idea that Jews and blacks face common enemies on the far-right, which is true. And though he can’t be blamed for taking a shot at West’s dinner partner, former President Donald Trump, doing so enabled him to engage in deflection.
This entailed tilting the conversation away from an epidemic taking place a short subway ride from the studio: black attacks on Orthodox Jews. He was thus able to ignore the role that woke intersectional ideology (which the ADL shockingly included in anti-hate educational programs) and the Black Lives Matter movement (which the ADL endorsed) play in legitimizing antisemitism.
Greenblatt predicts doom for American Jews
As befitting a former Obama White House staffer—who’s done his best to transform the ADL from a nonpartisan group to an operation dedicated to aiding Democrats—Greenblatt truly warmed to his subject when conveying his belief that support for right-wingers will lead to a nightmare for American Jews that will send them fleeing for their lives.
After saying he was shocked by the growth of antisemitism in recent years, he added: “Six years from now, if someone said to me antisemitic incidents will have tripled again; synagogues will be shut down; Jewish day schools will be closed because of threats; Jews will have left in large numbers; Tucker Carlson will be the nominee for the GOP and will say … ‘there will be no globalists in my administration;’ that shouldn’t sound so crazy.”
That the incendiary quote made headlines around the country and was the fodder for a lot of online and cable-news, talking-head discussions was predictable.
It contained a lot to unpack, not least of which is the utter irresponsibility of someone tasked with defending Jews to disseminate such a dystopian and utterly unlikely scenario.
Decent people of all political stripes, Jews and non-Jews alike, should be vigilant against hate, lest antisemites and those who incite violence against Jews gain more influence than they already have.
Yet those who make such wild claims—or foolishly use any antisemitic incident, or wrong stands or behavior of politicians they don’t like to justify inappropriate comparisons to Nazi Germany (something that Jewish Democrats like Greenblatt have repeatedly done)—forget that America is not Europe in the 1930s.
Unlike just about every other country, the U.S. has never officially sanctioned antisemitism. And every poll shows that the overwhelming majority of non-Jews in America are not antisemitic and support the State of Israel.
The United States isn’t perfect, and antisemitism is a growing problem. But American exceptionalism still holds. Indeed, the main threat to Jewish life in the U.S. is not from those who would foment a wave of pogroms, but from massive rates of assimilation and intermarriage that testify to the affection and acceptance that Jews continue to experience.
Greenblatt’s casual claim that opposition to globalism and globalists will signal the end of Jewish life in America is the kind of intellectually dishonest assertion that is itself a threat to Jewish interests. It’s very good for ADL fundraising, however.
“The Great Reset” is no conspiracy theory
Far from being solely the product of extremists, belief in “The Great Reset” is not a conspiracy theory. It was the actual title of a conference held by the WEF in 2021 with A-listers like Britain’s King Charles III and the heads of Microsoft and Mastercard.
The point of the exercise was to exploit the economic and social chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic to promote radical environmental policies and other economic changes that would erode national sovereignty and capitalism.
WEF chairman Klaus Schwab has been talking about the need for a “New World Order” to enable changes that conservatives and others have long resisted. You don’t have to engage in wild speculation to understand the objective of this effort. Schwab, who is the living incarnation of a Bond movie villain down to the German accent, is explicit about it in his writings and on the website of the group he leads.
The “Green New Deal” proposed by congressional Squad ringleader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with its calls for phasing out not just carbon-based energy but meat consumption and routine air travel, is very much in the spirit of this “reset.”
As a cogent collection of essays on all this, Against The Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra The New World Order, edited by critic, novelist and historian Michael Walsh, makes clear, this warmed-over Marxism is designed to ensure that in the above reimagined modern world, “we will own nothing and be happy about it.”
As the comings and goings of the Davos set and mimics show, the face of actual globalist thinking—as opposed to mad fantasies about Jewish plots that Greenblatt speaks of—is that of the elite liberal establishment. It’s made up of the same people who advocate for censorship of conservative views on social-media platforms like Twitter—something the ADL chief boasts of doing.
Just as important, the globalist mindset is linked to woke ideas about race and privilege. These notions not only create greater societal division, but are directly hostile to Jews, who, in the bizarro realm of critical race theory, are viewed as white oppressors. And it is those who prioritize multilateral bodies, such as the U.N. and its various agencies idealized by the Davos set, who are enabling institutions that are themselves engines of international antisemitism devoted to delegitimizing the one Jewish state on the planet.
Indeed, the claim that attacks on Soros, a main backer of “Great Reset”-inspired schemes (i.e. the election of American prosecutors who don’t believe in jailing criminals), is inherently antisemitic, is just as bogus as the insistence that opposition to globalism is about hatred for Jews.
That’s why those who worry about real-life globalism are not the ones Jews should be anxious about. To the contrary, liberal institutions that promote the ideas of “The Great Reset” are the most potent force driving Jew-hatred in our time.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org, a senior contributor for The Federalist and a columnist for the New York Post and Newsweek. He is also the host of the Top Story podcast that can be viewed on YouTube and listened to on Spotify and other platforms. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@jns.org. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Joe Biden’s Nuclear Weapons Misfire By William McGurn
Liberals and the arms-control establishment have always loved the NPT for its vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, with the nuclear-armed lions lying down with the nonnuclear lambs. Conservatives have embraced the eminently sensible idea of trying to limit the number of nations with access to the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Unfortunately, reality is undermining whatever attraction the NPT once held. Going into 2023, the overriding incentive for those that don’t have a nuke—particularly the most undemocratic countries—is to get one. The incentive for those who have the bomb is never to give it up under any circumstances.
If Ukraine hadn’t given up its nukes after the collapse of the Soviet Union, would Vladimir Putin have dared invade? Likewise there’s Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, who gave up his nuclear ambitions and ended up overthrown, brutalized and killed in a drainage ditch—while Kim Jong Un, who continues with his nuclear program, has kept the North Korean dictatorship his grandfather founded intact. Cold-eyed dictators aren’t likely to find much evidence that going the nonproliferation route is the better option.
This may be even more true for America’s friends. How long before leaders in Taipei, listening to an increasingly bellicose Xi Jinping issuing reminders that China reserves the right to take Taiwan by force, conclude that their only hope for protecting their free society is to restart their secret nuclear program? And could anyone blame them if they did?
Right now eight states are known to have nukes—the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel is assumed to have one but has not acknowledged so officially. India, Pakistan and Israel never signed on to the NPT, while North Korea signed in 1985, cheated, then withdrew in 1993.
There are rewards for going nuclear. North Korea is a nation of about 26 million, slightly smaller than the population of Texas. Yet its nuclear capabilities give it an outsize importance in world affairs. High-profile summits with then-President Donald Trump in Singapore, Hanoi and the demilitarized zone along the border between the two Koreas provide ample evidence of the special attention a nuclear arsenal commands.
Or look at Iran. The Biden administration is desperately trying to get Tehran to revive the Obama-era nuclear deal that Mr. Trump took the U.S. out of. This summer the Iranians announced they had come closer than ever to enriching uranium at a grade suitable for weapons. How long before we wake up one morning to a nuclear-armed Iran, which would destabilize the Middle East and send every Arab nation looking for its own bomb?
The NPT may appear to be a pact that favors the nuclear haves or rogue regimes that refuse to abide by its rule—while leaving rule-following have-nots at the mercy of the world’s worst actors.
Most proliferation concerns focus on the rogue regimes because of the obvious threat they pose. But there’s an equal if not greater proliferation problem from generally law-abiding countries that will want the security of a nuke if one of their hostile neighbors has one.
This is exactly the dynamic now with Taiwan. Were Taiwan to develop a nuke to ensure it doesn’t end up like Ukraine, it would have huge ripple effects throughout Asia. Japan would probably develop one soon after, and we could quickly see a nuclear arms race in the Pacific. If Mr. Xi got wind of a Taiwanese bomb, it could easily lead him to give the order to invade.
Mr. Biden’s answer to all these developments was a statement in August re-emphasizing America’s commitment to the NPT and vowing that the “U.S. is determined to lead by the power of our example.” This is classic liberal virtue signaling of the sort the NPT often inspires.
But neither friend nor foe will forgo nuclear weapons because of America’s moral example. To the degree that the NPT has worked, it is only because of America’s power, including its nuclear arsenal, which gives credibility both to its threats to enemies and its security guarantees to allies. As a Journal editorial once put it, “A credible U.S. nuclear deterrent is the world’s greatest antiproliferation weapon.”
But what does the world see today? A humiliating American retreat from Afghanistan, an assertive China determined to overtake U.S. military superiority in the Pacific, and a general sense that the Americans are bugging out. The hard reality is that if Joe Biden really wants the NPT to have a future, he needs to lead a massive buildup of U.S. military capabilities. ++++++++++++++++++++++
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