Hezbollah vows 'response' to IAF airstrikes
Lebanese terror group vows to retaliate to Israel's retaliation of its killing of 1, wounding of 8 in barrage on Tzfat yesterday
Biden’s Shadow Iran Nuclear Deal It can be summarized as follows: bribe and baby the mullahs, and bludgeon Israel for ‘peace’ Benjamin Weingarten
Posted By Ruth King
Commentary
The Biden administration is allegedly executing a shadow “nuclear deal” with Iran.The administration never bothered to tell us about the deal.
It clinched the deal without Congress’s approval.
And it may well have purposefully never committed the deal to paper.
But make no mistake, every indicator suggests we are party to an arguably illegally consummated pact that’s getting Americans killed.
The proof is in the pudding not only of the jihadist violence raging across the Middle East—leaving nearly 40 Americans dead and dozens more injured—but the Biden administration’s unwillingness to strike the leading state sponsor of that violence, Iran, with anything remotely resembling sufficient force to deter it, and the White House’s fixation on forcing Israel to end the war on Hamas and abide by the establishment of what would almost certainly amount to a Palestinian terror state to boot.
The shadow Iran nuclear deal can be summarized as follows: bribe and baby the mullahs, and bludgeon Israel for “peace.”
Upon entering office, President Joe Biden eased his predecessor’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran and its proxies, such as the Houthis, in the run-up to an effort to reprise the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the so-called Obama–Biden Iran nuclear deal.
President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement was to bail out the mullocracy financially, legitimize its nuclear program, and oblige the United States to defend that program—while purporting to curtail it. Like the future shadow deal the Biden administration would pursue, it was also crafted surreptitiously and foisted on the country without Congress’s consent, as a non-treaty.
President Biden tabbed the top JCPOA negotiator, Rob Malley, as U.S. Special Envoy to Iran to resurrect the deal. Mr. Malley would spend months offering ever-sweeter deal terms—unprecedented sanctions relief and major concessions on its nuclear program—aimed at enticing Tehran to re-enter the deal from which President Donald Trump had withdrawn. Mr. Malley would lose his security clearance, end up suspended, and under FBI investigation for his alleged mishandling of classified information—with additional evidence reportedly emerging suggesting he had led an Iranian spy ring allegedly centered on the International Crisis Group non-profit he once led.
Iran responded by not only rebuffing the Biden administration’s entreaties, but inflicting dozens of attacks on our troops; selling drones to Russia used to target the Ukrainian forces the United States was backing; deepening its strategic partnership with China; and accelerating its nuclear activities through deploying advanced centrifuges, building a new significantly more hardened nuclear facility near its existing Natanz site, and enriching uranium to near weapons grade.
When one effort to pay the regime for protection failed, the Biden administration took the lesson that it ought to try, try again.
Reports surfaced early last summer suggesting that fearful of U.S.–Iran relations spinning out of control, the Biden administration would pursue a new “informal” arrangement.
It would flow billions of dollars into the mullahs’ coffers. In exchange, the mullahs would freeze their nuclear efforts and get their proxies to stop striking U.S. troops.
The Biden administration refused to enforce sanctions on illicit oil sales, enriching Tehran to the tune of billions of dollars.
It provided waivers and paid a ransom as part of a hostage deal, collectively unfreezing nearly $20 billion additional dollars for the regime.
Then Oct. 7 happened—a mini-holocaust carried out by Iran’s proxy Hamas against Iran’s arch-nemesis Israel, underwritten with money the Biden administration freed for Iran and its proxies.
Undeterred, the Biden administration allowed the oil revenues to keep flowing.
It let a United Nations embargo on Iranian missiles lapse.
Having already strengthened Hezbollah via support for Lebanon’s government and military, and effectively foisted Hezbollah-friendly maritime and additional deals on Israel, the Biden administration then insisted that Israel not liquidate the jihadist army as it was provoked and menaced with 200,000 rockets and missiles from its north.
Iran’s other proxies would dramatically intensify their attacks on the United States and our regional allies and partners in claimed solidarity with the Palestinians as Israel fought a uniquely challenging defensive war against Hamas.
The Houthis would repeatedly target American assets, shutting down the Red Sea. In response, the Biden administration could only muster pinprick strikes and a faux terror re-designation. The Houthi aggression continues.
Despite a mushrooming number of Iran-backed attacks on Americans and our allies and partners, in early January the Biden administration tipped off Tehran to a coming attack centering around a ceremony for assassinated terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani.
That is, the Biden administration passed valuable intelligence to the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad—a nation at war with America since the Islamic revolution of 1979 that’s behind the deaths of hundreds of our people from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel.
Only after an Iraqi Iranian proxy killed three American soldiers in Jordan, following more than 150 attacks from Iran’s proxies after Oct. 7, did the Biden administration take any action. To date, it has telegraphed strikes on largely non-critical targets in Iraq and Syria, after giving Iran and its proxies more than ample notice to flee. U.S. forces have taken out a grand total of zero high-value targets to date. These are non-deterrent attacks by design—strategic moves only insofar as they aim to maintain the Iran First status quo.
And then there’s the Biden administration’s Israel policy. After repeatedly seeking to stymie and micro-manage Israel’s war effort, minimize its intensity, and force it to re-supply Hamas—all of which had the effect of prolonging the war and putting more Israelis in harm’s way—now the White House is fixing to end it once and for all.
It’s doing so under the guise of an extended ceasefire likely to end in an armistice, whereby Israel would pause its efforts, potentially withdraw from Gaza, free hundreds or thousands of terrorists in exchange for hostages, and provide further resupply to Hamas. Israel would effectively be made to lose. Hamas would survive. The released terrorists would rampage again.
On top of all that, the Biden administration is threatening not only to impose a “two-state” process on Israel after the war, but to skip ahead and recognize a Palestinian state that would no doubt threaten Israel’s existence.
Adding insult to injury, it imposed unprecedented and baseless sanctions on Israelis in Judea and Samaria that could extend to non-governmental organizations and even government ministers who support policies that, in the Biden administration’s opinion, would threaten whatever “peace” plan it intends to foist on Israel.
The president’s maximum pressure campaign on Israel should be understood to be part and parcel of the shadow Iran nuclear deal. By forcing Israel to concede to Iran’s proxy and threatening it with a terror state on its borders, chilling and freezing those who would resist these policies, and protecting Hezbollah, it undermines Israel’s stability, security, and morale.
Israel of course provides the most serious threat to a nuclear Iran, and the Iranian regime itself. So the Biden administration is endeavoring to neutralize that threat—as it had for months prior in delegitimizing the Netanyahu-led government as it pursued judicial and other reforms, destabilizing our closest ally in the region and making it ripe for attack.
The Biden administration’s shadow Iran nuclear deal is chiefly about protecting the mullocracy, as it did in de-linking it from Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, and in its messaging that Iran’s proxies armed, funded, trained, and directed by Iran have somehow gone rogue in attacking American forces.
The Biden administration is acting according to the asinine logic of Iran and its proxies: Iran-backed Hamas initiated war against Israel. That Israel fought back is the key irritant to the region. Israel must be made to lose the war, and only then will Iran’s proxies stop warring on Israel and the United States.
This is the same asinine logic governing the nuclear deal: Despite the fact bribing Iran has underwritten its malign activities, including the advance of its nuclear program, still more bribes are the only way to stop the aggression.
Whether borne of progressive naivete, political calculus, or perfidy, President Biden’s shadow Iran nuclear deal is calamitous for the American people and our interests.
We must awaken to the treachery at hand and demand that Congress put an end to it.
And:
Mark R. Levin on X: "ISRAEL'S TWO FRONT
WAR -- AGAINST THE PALESTINIAN
TERRORISTS AND THE BIDEN REGIME
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Trump 2.0 Is Exactly What Conservatives Should Want
By
Editor in chief, JNS.org
There's not much left to say about the last remaining members of the Never Trump movement. The overwhelming majority of conservatives embraced Donald Trump either during the 2016 election or once they realized that his administration better represented their views than the D.C. uniparty establishment. Some members of Congress might still long for the old pre-Trump GOP, but even they know that it's extinct and that a populist party that cares about the working class makes for better policy and better politics.
Some may wish Trump could be more disciplined and avoid saying or doing outrageous things. But Salena Zito's famous rule about Trump remains true: his critics take him literally but not seriously while his supporters take him seriously but not literally.
That's why the reaction to Trump's latest gaffe about Russia and NATO hasn't moved the needle for or against him. Like a thousand stories before it since 2015, Democrats may hope that it's the beginning of the end for the former president. But Republicans know he's trolling both liberals and America's European allies. His conduct in office—which was tougher on Russia and did more to impel NATO members to contribute to their defense than prior administrations—reassures them that he isn't about to hand the continent over to Vladimir Putin.
But some Never Trumpers still argue that a putative second Trump term would be more unhinged than his first and therefore be bad for conservatives, democracy, and everything they hold sacred.
They're clearly wrong about that.
If Trump gets back into the White House—and with him currently winning in battleground state polls, it's a real possibility—he will provide the only and perhaps last chance for conservatives to roll back the woke tide that is damaging America in ways that overshadow any minor differences some on the Right may have with him on other issues.
The most important issue facing the nation in 2024 isn't that most Americans would probably prefer new choices for president. Nor is it Trump's bad manners or the question of whether he or Biden are too old to govern effectively, though that appears certainly true for the incumbent. It's whether the next administration will continue Biden's work in implementing the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) throughout both government and society and further exacerbate racial tensions. The Left's infatuation with critical race theory, intersectionality, and toxic ideas like "white privilege" is part of a war on Western civilization that aims at tearing down not just American history but the foundational values that conservatives revere. That it has also provided a permission slip for a new surge in antisemitism since the October 7 Hamas massacres in Israel—the Jews are always the canaries in the coal mine—makes this all the more imperative.
Though he's no intellectual, that's something Trump instinctively understood about the "1619 Project" and the way it helped pave the way for the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. Though liberals mocked his "1776 Project," it was exactly the response conservatives should have applauded.
With a stroke of a pen, he could undo the executive orders by which Biden compelled every federal agency and department to implement DEI plans and installed woke commissars to enforce them. A Republican-run Department of Justice could also help speed along the lawsuits that could also unravel the DEI orthodoxy that has overtaken the corporate world and conquered academia.
Conservatives should also look forward to a Trump administration that is determined to undo the damage of Biden's border policies, which have created a humanitarian crisis in border states as well as deep-blue urban enclaves where many illegal immigrants have gone.
Defending borders and the rule of law against corporate interests is exactly what Republicans failed to do in past GOP administrations. That won't be the same for Trump. Conservatives should be cheered by the realization that the next GOP administration will be one that defends the values as well as the economic interests of working class Americans who now belong in the Republican Party, not with the Democrats.
Nor would Trump be an isolationist. He proved to be a realist in foreign policy who understood that Iran was an enemy and that Israel and the Saudis were friends. It's not unreasonable to wonder about his unpredictability and his transactional approach to everything. But the fact that the world was a lot safer and more peaceful on his watch should convince skeptics that the country is in better hands with him than with the pack of Obama alumni whose blunders created the catastrophe in Afghanistan and bear a great deal of the responsibility for the Ukraine war and the Iranian adventurism that led to the current fighting in the Middle East.
It is true that another Trump administration will have an air of chaos that is missing under Biden despite the incumbent's manifest failures. But that will be due to the open hostility and partisanship of the media figures that pumped life into the Russian collusion hoax that undermined Trump's efforts to govern for his first three years in the White House. We can expect similar sabotage from the D.C. establishment and the media the next time around. But the next Trump administration would not be handicapped the way the first was.
In 2017, the Republican governing class largely refused to serve under Trump. Even when some of them did, they tried hard not to implement the conservative and populist policies GOP voters thought they had voted for. That won't be the case in 2025. Conservatives have been preparing for their time in government and won't be caught short handed again. Efforts like Project 2025—which is backed by a number of conservative think tanks—are preparing the Right to govern effectively.
Moreover, conservatives are finally ready to reform the vast federal bureaucracy which is dominated by liberals and remove its ability to stop Republicans from governing. Though he was no match for Trump in the 2024 race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has provided the blueprint for how to combat a liberal deep state.
Another Trump presidency won't be perfect. But politics isn't about perfection, something that conservatives are supposed to understand. If Trump wins in November, liberals will have good reason to worry about an administration that will roll back the wins Biden and his predecessors gave the hard Left—and conservatives will have every reason to celebrate.
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Honest Reporting Remains Straight When It Comes To Factual Reporting.
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