The worthlessness of ceasefires

 LITD posts have lately mostly been of a world-affairs nature, haven't they? That's because, for all post-America's other vexations - the utter silliness of both political parties, rampant loneliness, the resistance of the woke apparatus to being dismantled, the debt that is on track to crowd out all other government expenditures in a few short years, not replenishing the country's population, an utter disregard for the transcendent - foreign policy incoherence is the one most likely to take the first bite out of our safety and comfort and the reliability off our institutions.

Because each has been going on for a few years now, we have become inured to the severity of Russia's attack on a sovereign nation, and the savagery Iran, through its proxies, has inflicted on Israel. We assume that, with regard to the over-arching association of rogue players, each with its own ideology and internal agendas, that is bound together by a common intention to end the US-dominated international order that's been in place since 1945, sharp minds are on the case and will see that nothing gets too out of hand. 

Thus, we have clowns in the current administration, and the one coming in in January, coming up with "solutions" to the above-mentioned conflagrations based on an "end wars" mindset.

That's a really stupid way to approach the current situation. There are risks attendant to a goal of the attacked nation-states in each case winning their wars, but they're small compared to the consequences of appeasing the aggressors.

Tell you what. I'm going to quote Seth Mandel's latest column at Commentary in its entirety, because there'd be no point in trying to improve upon its incisiveness:

Buried in a New York Times explainer on the ICC’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu is this helpful nugget: “Gaza has been controlled by Hamas since 2007 and the militant group does not recognize its subjugation to a Palestine state.”

And why? Because Hamas is essentially a hostile occupying force on behalf of Iran. And who else falls into that category? Hezbollah in Lebanon. And for good measure, let’s add one more: Arguably the most troublesome pocket in the West Bank centers on Jenin, and the troublemakers in Jenin are proxies of Iran as well. For all intents and purposes, the city is foreign territory.

Here’s the point: Israel is not in conflict with any of the “host countries,” however generously we use that term, with whom it is supposedly negotiating.

It’s fun to pretend, but it’s not productive. Foolish faith in ceasefire agreements with entities that do not recognize the sovereignty of their own territory is how we got here. Oct. 6, 2023 was the last time a ceasefire’s false sense of security governed Israel’s understanding of the status quo. Oct. 7, 2023 was the result.

Let’s look at the ceasefire deal with Hezbollah announced yesterday.

The deal halts the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah for 60 days. Both the IDF and Hezbollah are to clear their forces from Lebanese territory south of the Litani River tout de suite. Filling the vacuum will be the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers—both of which are compromised by their deference to, and fear of, Hezbollah. A complaint board that will determine compliance with the agreement and adjudicate claims of violations will be under the supervision of the United States.

Yesterday, President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron crowed that, “after many weeks of tireless diplomacy, Israel and Lebanon have accepted a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.”

Between Israel and Lebanon? Have there been hostilities between Israel and Lebanon? Because it would be very silly to have Lebanese troops patrol the buffer zone if the buffer zone is meant to separate the IDF from Lebanese troops.

It’s wonderful that “Israel and Lebanon have accepted a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.” Whoever this “Lebanon” guy is, he sounds nice. But I have no idea what he’s doing here.

Last week, men almost surely hired by Iran murdered in cold blood a Jerusalem-born Chabad rabbi in Dubai. Are Biden and Macron working on a “ceasefire” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates? Of course not, and no one is even suggesting such a thing, because it would be patently ridiculous on its face and arguably a mockery of the victim.

So that’s the conceptual absurdity of this ceasefire. What about its practicality?

“Eight vehicles and a motorcycle carrying Hezbollah personnel arrived at the ruins of Kfar Kila near Matula,” Israel’s Kann News reported this morning. “The IDF force that was on the spot drove them away with warning shots.”

Metula is an Israeli town on the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah had begun the ceasefire by advancing on Israel. Wrong direction, guys! Like legendary Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall recovering that fumble against the 49ers in 1964 and then running 65 yards into the wrong end zone—except on purpose.

And Israel’s response was to fire warning shots, because anything more aggressive—anything actually appropriate to the threat, in other words—would have triggered condemnation from the very allies that negotiated this ceasefire.

The Lebanese Armed Forces cannot enforce this ceasefire. If they could, they would have already cleared the area of Hezbollah, which has been operating with impunity for four decades. And the UN peacekeepers are Hezbollah’s trusted allies—that may sound harsh but it is just plain fact.

Yes, Israel is hoping to run out the clock on the Biden administration and have freer range of action once Donald Trump takes office. But Hezbollah knows Biden is on his way out, too, and that Trump is on his way in. And the enemy always gets a vote. Sometimes that vote is expressed by a nine-vehicle Hezbollah convoy encroaching on Israel’s sovereign border, in contemptuous contravention of a ceasefire signed by “Lebanon.”

And now, let us look at Keith Kellogg, the Very Stable Genius's choice for a guy to impose defeat on Ukraine: 

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, President elect-Trump's pick for special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has pushed a proposal to end the war between the two countries through Ukraine ceding land to Russia.

Why it matters: Trump named Kellogg as his choice for special envoy on Wednesday, months after Reuters reported on Kellogg's policy plan in June. The plan for a ceasefire signals U.S. support for the war effort would be scaled back.

• It also would mark a shift from the Biden administration's stance on the war and could be met with pushback from European allies.

Zoom in: Kellogg, who served as national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, co-authored a research report detailing his Ukraine policy proposal with former NSA chief of staff Fred Fleitz.

• "The United States would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement," Kellogg and Fleitz state in the plan.
• But future U.S. military aid will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia, according to the report.
• To convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to join peace talks, "President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees," the pair wrote.

The big picture: Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine using his personal relationship with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to get a peace deal.

Here's how the VSG thinks about such things:

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to end Russia's war with Ukraine if elected, saying in September that he would negotiate a deal "that's good for both sides." He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and questioned further U.S. assistance to Ukraine.

"Good for both sides." What the hell kind of formulation is that? Russia is the aggressor in this situation. The West has no business dangling a nice outcome before Putin. The only way to speak of Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine is in terms of defeat.

All the F-16s, ATACMs, mines and Storm Shadows should have been provided no later that March 2022. Yes, it's great that they're arriving now, but their ability to be game-changers is badly diminished.

Trump, of course, views the whole thing transactionally. He wants to wind this up with minimal bad effect on what he perceives to be Putin's high regard of him. 

Ceasefires are nothing but a tamping-down of wrongs that will come back in another manifestation at some point. Fifteen years after the 1953 armistice that stopped fighting between North and South Korea, the crew of the USS Pueblo spent a year in captivity in the Kim dynasty's worker's paradise. Nixon's "peace with honor" in Vietnam led to the April 1975 crashing through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon by tanks from the North, and the still-repugnant scene of desperate Vietnamese trying to hang on to the runners of the last helicopter to take off from the US embassy roof. 

If Ukraine and Israel don't achieve total victory over Russia and Iran respectively, we will have abandoned the world stage to Dodge City status. 

Post-America has decided it  has no use for moral clarity. Bad things will result. 

There's a palpable Cuban-missile-crisis-y feel to the present moment

 I think the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 is still considered the moment at which the world came closest to nuclear war. Maybe that's just because I live through it and remember grownups discussing it. I was alive for the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, which, in retrospect, was another moment when the danger level was pretty heightened, but I was an infant. We're finding out that we weren't all that far away from such a point of peril in Vietnam in 1968.

But in recent years, that hair-trigger tension level has abated:

For more than three decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States and its allies faced no serious nuclear threats.

But no sooner do Madelyn Creedon and Franklin Miller, writing at Foreign Affairs, assert as much, than they follow it with this splash of cold water:

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been rattling his nuclear saber in a manner reminiscent of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed a dramatic buildup of China’s nuclear arsenal, a project whose size and scope the recently retired commander of U.S. Strategic Command has described as “breathtaking.” The Russian and Chinese leaders have also signed a treaty of “friendship without limits.” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is supplying weapons and troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, and North Korea is improving its ability to strike both its neighbors and the U.S. homeland with nuclear weapons, as it demonstrated with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test launch on October 31.

Europe is particularly on edge.

The Nordic countries tell their citizens "prepare and we ain't foolin'":

On Monday, millions of pamphlets landed in Swedish homes eerily titled: "If Crisis or War Comes," while other nations issue their own chilling advice to fearful citizens.

Stockholm has warned of what they call the worsening security situation - otherwise known as Russia's bloody invasion of Ukraine - and urged Swedes to prepare for conflict.

Meanwhile neighbouring Finland have published its own chilling advice online to prepare "for incidents and crises".

In a scarily detailed section on military conflict, the digital brochure describes how the government and president would respond in the event of an armed attack.

The Finnish brochure stressed that its authorities are "well prepared for self defence".

Norwegians also received a pamphlet urging residents to know how to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather - or war.

In summer, Denmark's emergency management agency put out a warning to Danish adults detailing the water, food and medicine necessary to get through three days of crisis.

Sweden and Finland recently gave up neutrality to join Nato after witnessing the atrocities Putin has unleashed in Ukraine since 2022.

Norway was a founding member of the Western defensive alliance on the other hand.

Germans, too:

Germans have been put on high alert for a potential World War 3 scenario with Russia following renewed threats of a nuclear strike from Vladimir Putin. The situation has escalated after US President Joe Biden authorised Ukraine to use long-range missiles against Russia, which Moscow claims has already targeted a weapons warehouse in the Bryansk region.

Putin warned in September that if Western countries allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russiawith their longer-range weapons, "it will mean that NATO countries, the US, and European countries are at war with Russia."

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has since stated that Russia poses not just a military but also a hybrid threat and that Europe needs to adopt a comprehensive approach to defence.Germany's Foreign Minister has also pledged that the country will not be "intimidated" by Putin, following revelations that Germany would serve as a NATO staging ground should the conflict escalate further.

According to a 1,000-page document titled 'Operationsplan Deutschland', Germany would host hundreds of thousands of troops from NATO countries and act as a logistics hub for dispatching military equipment, food, and medicine to the front lines. The German army is also advising civilians and businesses on how to safeguard infrastructure and prepare to defend the country against potential sabotage, drone attacks, and spying operations.

Germany is setting crisis plans into motion, assigning responsibilities for emergency actions and creating diesel stockpiles, following the lead of Scandinavian nations. Defence Minister Mr Pistorius announced on Tuesday that officials suspect sabotage caused damage to two undersea data cables in the Baltic Sea, one terminating in Germany, although evidence is yet to be found, reports the Mirror US.

Italy, Spain, Greece and the US have closed their Kyiv embassies for at least a day as Ukraine anticipates yet another brazen missile assault from Russia. 

Some bracing words from Sergey Markov:

The US has been given a chilling 'WW3 by Christmas' warning by pro-Putin spokesperson Sergey Markov.

Western allies, also including Britain and France, have taken a “big jump” towards a nuclear conflict by giving Ukraine permission to fire Western long-range missiles into Kremlin territory, Markov claims.

A regular Putin “mouthpiece”, Markov warned that the shock move by President Joe Biden could mean that Britons could be facing a Christmas in shelters.

But Putin lackeys routinely indulge in nuclear bluster, don't they?

Those in favour of the move have noted that the Kremlin and its mouthpieces in the state-controlled media and academia had threatened nuclear war every time the West had stepped up its support for Ukraine, including when it provided tanks, fighter jets and other sophisticated weapon systems.

However, Markov, currently the Director General of Russia's Institute for Political Studies, was convinced the move was different as it would mean that Western militaries would be directly involved in the conflict for the first time - Ukraine would require their assistance to use the precision guided missile systems.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he said: “My reaction [to the White House’s decision] was awful, I couldn't sleep well because I am just afraid nuclear war is coming.

“This decision of United States, Great Britain and France is not a step towards nuclear war it is a big jump to nuclear war, nuclear catastrophe."

What's the latest with Iran's nuclear ambitions? 

 Iran has defied international demands to rein in its nuclear program and has increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, according to a confidential report by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog seen Tuesday by The Associated Press.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said that as of Oct. 26, Iran has 182.3 kilograms (401.9 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60%, an increase of 17.6 kilograms (38.8 pounds) since the last report in August.

Uranium enriched at 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

The IAEA also estimated in its quarterly report that as of Oct. 26, Iran’s overall stockpile of enriched uranium stands at 6,604.4 kilograms (14,560 pounds), an increase of 852.6 kilograms (1,879.6 pounds) since August. Under the IAEA’s definition, around 42 kilograms (92.5 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60% purity is the amount at which creating one atomic weapon is theoretically possible — if the material is enriched further, to 90%.

The reports come at a critical time as Israel and Iran have traded missile attacks in recent months after more than a year of war in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas, a group supported by Iran.

It may be time to reassess the above-mentioned instances' status in the history of nuclear danger. Our present moment seems to offer enough to go around. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That shameful Austin-Blinken letter to Israel

 I saw this coming a year ago. 

As soon as Israel commenced its response to the horrors of October 7, 2023, I could see the trajectory. In the initial phase, the Biden administration was forthrightly supportive. But I knew that as soon as Israel had to zap some schools and hospitals in Gaza - because the staffs, students and patients in those building were being used as human shields by Hamas, and that's where the weapons caches and operations centers were - the tone from Washington would change. And it followed the same pattern as the US response to previous Israeli responses to Hamas attacks. "Hey, guys, you've sent a proportional message. That's about enough." "Take the win" and such.

The letter that the US Secretaries of State and defense sent to the Israeli government takes this clueless hubris a step further:

On the one hand, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the U.S. would be sending an advanced anti-missile system to Israel, along with troops to operate it, to bolster the defense against Iran. On the other hand, Biden has been pressuring Israel into a more limited response to Iran’s second ballistic-missile attack in five months, including publicly opposing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In the midst of this, Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent a joint letter to Israeli officials — promptly released publicly — chastising Israel for not ensuring enough humanitarian aid in Gaza and warning that if Israel does not meet the administration’s demands within 30 days, the U.S. could suspend aid to Israel. Conveniently, this would place the potential aid-suspension date a week after the November 5 election.

In other words, Harris can spend the closing weeks of the presidential election arguing to the pro-Hamas caucus that the administration has put Israel on notice while still claiming to supporters of Israel that no decision has been made to suspend aid.

The substance of the letter places the blame for insufficient aid getting into the hands of Gazans on Israel, claiming that Israelis are creating too many barriers to aid entering the strip. Yet Israel must vet aid going in because Hamas has historically used aid deliveries to smuggle in weapons. Also, Hamas inhibits the flow of aid within Gaza, looting delivery trucks and hoarding food and supplies for their own fighters.

The Austin-Blinken letter also criticizes various steps Israel has taken against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, even though evidence points to employees of UNRWA having participated in the October 7 attacks.

I strive to prevent cynicism from affecting my objectivity, but I think we're on safe ground assuming a connection between the neck-and-neck state of the presidential race in Michigan and the equivocation eroding its support for Israel. 

I spent two nights in Dearborn recently. My wife and I took a road trip to visit the Motown Museum in Detroit. Staff in our hotel, in restaurants, in convenience stores, were nearly to a person of Arab ethnicity. In a hookah lounge where we had an excellent dinner, our server was a young Iraqi woman and the young man tending our hookah was Egyptian. They were personable and on top of their jobs. Indeed, most Dearborn Middle Easterners we dealt with were pretty worldly. Young men and young women interacted on an equal footing and were completely comfortable around each other. 

But if any of them vote next month, I think we can be reasonably sure regarding the party they will push the button for.

And maybe even more than the hip young Arabs of Dearborn, the Democrats are concerned about the votes of the snot-nosed white post-American students at campuses such as UCLA and Columbia. 

It's all so sick. To reiterate some basics, Israel is the only Western nation in the Middle East. It provides the Jerusalem component of the Jerusalem-Athens formulation of the West's development. It is a tech hub. Arabs serve in the Knesset. It has dealt with frequent wars with neighbors since the day of the founding of its iteration as a modern nation-state in 1948. 

The Biden administration's moral preening regarding Gaza aid led to an empty gesture that cost you and me tax dollars when that stupid pier didn't pan out. And stories abound about Hamas highjacking of food-aid trucks.

Let us hope Netanyahu, Gallant et al keep their eyes on victory - in Gaza, up north in Lebanon, and in the overarching menace from Iran - and keep the Biden administration at a healthy distance. 

 

The world's two hottest spots require nerves of steel

 I've written before about how there are parallel phenomena - or perhaps mirror-opposite phenomena works better - on the post-American Right and Left regarding the two currently raging conflicts on the world stage.

The one with Israel at its epicenter, but which involves a considerably wider array of actors, including a malevolent and nearly-nuclear Iran, which is orchestrating a lot of what is happening, has US progressives calling for Israel to stop defending itself. The acceptance of - or at least lack of courage to confront - blatant Jew-hatred among progressives is a major factor.

The Trumpist Right is thumbs-down on supporting a country, Ukraine, that was invaded without provocation by its much bigger neighbor. Devoid of pushback, this move would set a precedent of the erosion of the post-1945 international order. It's about as insular  stance as one could take. Its main champions, such as JD Vance and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, couch their argument in zero-sum terms, saying that sending missile-defense systems and fighter jets siphons off resources needed to protect the southern US border. The movement's Dear Leader, the Very Stable Genius, says that his charm and vision could convince Putin and Zelensky to reach a reasonable settlement within a day.

Actually, the current administration in Washington is calibrating its actual support in each case, rhetoric about resolute victory notwithstanding.

With regard to the Mideast, Antony Blinken continues to search for a workable ceasefire deal, even though Hamas has not sent a representative to the latest round of talks in Doha and Cairo. He even still speaks of a two-state objective. He and the administration he works for are trying to lean on Israel to keep the northern front of the multi-pronged jihadist threat from spiraling out of control.

It seems that ship has sailed:

The Biden administration may be encountering the limits of its ability to keep a lid on the looming hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah. The U.S. has had a number of naval assets parked off the coast of the Levant for months in an effort to deter Iran and its proxies — an exercise that has succeeded only in limiting exchanges of fire between the terrorist cadre and the IDF. But the outright confrontation the White House hoped to forestall may not be preventable for much longer.

“The only way left to return the residents of the north to their homes is via military action,” Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Monday. Gallant added that he had relayed the same message to his American counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Indeed, military action may be the only way for Israel to reclaim the territory in the country’s north that tens of thousands of its citizens evacuated shortly after the October 7 massacre and to which they have not yet been able to return. Joe Biden’s efforts to craft a cease-fire deal that would restore temporary calm to the region have all been rejected by Hamas, and as the New York Times wrote, summarizing remarks attributable to one of Gallant’s aides, Hezbollah “has decided to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas.” The time for half measures is coming to an end.

The risks of such an operation will be significant, and no president would want to court them in the absence of a viable alternative. Hezbollah has an arsenal of about 150,000 rockets and missiles, according to Israeli estimates, and it can field between 40,000 and 50,000 fighters. The Justice Department has previously identified alleged Hezbollah agentsoperating inside the U.S., and it was only last week that the DOJ charged a Pakistani national in connection with Iran’s reported interest in assassinating “a politician or U.S. government official on U.S. soil.”

To call what seems likely to happen Gaza redux doesn't quite convey the military power Hezbollah can unleash. 

Then there is the Iran factor. Hezbollah has a stronger ideological tie to Iran than that of Hamas. Not to mention that Iran is where those 150,000 rockets and missiles came from.

Iran is also a break-out state regarding you-know-what:

Its stock of enriched uranium, which was capped at 202.8 kg under the deal, stood at 5.5 tonnes in February, according to the latest quarterly report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that inspects Iran's enrichment plants.

Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% purity and has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for two nuclear weapons, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency's theoretical definition.

And now there's a development involving the country that figures into both of the hot-spot situations: Russia:

The US and UK are concerned that Russia has been helping Iran develop its nuclear weapons program in exchange for the recent delivery of ballistic missiles it was provided by Tehran for use in its war against Ukraine, according to a report Saturday that cited sources familiar with the matter.

The issue of deepening ties between Russia and Iran was a matter of concern during meetings between US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, DC, on Friday, as well as during talks between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy earlier in the week.

According to the Guardian newspaper, however, the two countries aren’t just focused on the ballistic missiles supplied to Russia by Iran, but are also concerned about what Russia may provide in return.

Citing British sources familiar with the high-level talks last week, the news outlet reported that the two countries believe Iran may be working with experienced Russian specialists to streamline its manufacturing process as it grows its stockpile of enriched uranium and prepares to make its own nuclear weapons.

In Ukraine, President Zelensky is cajoling, pleading and shouting at the West to allow Ukraine to fire Western-supplied long-range missiles at targets deep inside Russia. He seems to be getting Western leaders to take him seriously, but not enough to seal the deal:

Ukraine's hopes of being allowed to use Western-supplied long range missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory were put on hold once again on Sept. 13, after the leaders of the U.S. and U.K. stopped short of making the announcement Kyiv wanted.

Anticipation had been high ahead of meetings between President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, but the White House dampened expectations even before the pair had finished talks.

"There is no change to our view on the provision of long-range strike capabilities for Ukraine to use inside of Russia," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Ukraine was hoping for permission to use two Western-supplied long range missiles that it already possesses to strike military targets such as airfields located deep inside Russian territory.

With the bans in place, Kyiv says it cannot effectively defend Ukrainian cities from intensifying aerial attacks.

The two missiles are the U.S.-supplied ATACMS, a short-range supersonic tactical ballistic missile, and the U.K.-France-supplied Storm Shadow.

Both Storm Shadows and ATACMS were initially given to Kyiv on the provision that they only be used to strike Russian targets within Ukraine or in Russian-occupied parts of the country.

Western fears of escalating the war with Russia have been behind the restrictions.

Germany is saying outright that it won't even send the requisite missiles:

While Washington and London are facing pressure to allow Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia using the Western-made missiles already in the country, Berlin declines to even provide such missiles.

“Germany has made a clear decision about what we will do and what we will not do. This decision will not change,” Scholz said on Sept. 13, remaining adamant in his refusal to provide the country’s Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine.

His remarks came after U.S. President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmerstopped short of lifting restrictions on using Western-supplied long-range weapons on Russian soil during their meeting in Washington.

In the spring, Washington confirmed that it had begun providing Ukraine with long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). Kyiv had previously received missiles that could travel up to 160 kilometers, and the new batch consisted of advanced ones with a range of up to 300 kilometers.

But Berlin's transfer of Taurus missiles did not follow.

Prior, Germany followed the U.S. lead in handing over the first Patriot air defense system in early 2023 and the long-anticipated battle tanks.

When Kyiv launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, the operation received endorsement from Berlin. Germany’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine is “free to choose” the weapons to use inside Russia for self-defense in compliance with international law.

Yet, Berlin continues to hold off Ukrainian requests to provide the last piece of the puzzle, the missiles that can target the Russian military in the rear.

"A nightmare scenario for Scholz is that Ukraine would use Taurus to strike politically sensitive targets inside Russia. Scholz fears that this could escalate the war and throw Germany into direct hostilities with Russia," Fabian Hoffmann, doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, who specializes in missile technology, told the Kyiv Independent earlier this spring.

“Fundamentally, this means that Scholz is restrained by a lack of political will, which stems from a lack of trust in Ukrainian leadership to not break any promises.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that Germany’s refusal to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles is linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin's nuclear saber-rattling.

“As I understand it, the chancellor says that Germany is not a nuclear state and that this (Taurus missiles) is the most powerful weapon system in Germany,” Ukraine’s president said in an interview with Bild.

The hesitancy to allow these Western allies to achieve total victory as quickly as possible is not without reasonableness. We've all seen the photos and videos of nuclear weapon tests, and even their use in a war situation, in August 1945. Humankind has imposed on itself an apocalyptic set of considerations from which there is no going back.

But this raises a basic question which humankind has always had to deal: Is the cost of doing what's right ever too high?

It's obviously the right thing to do to give both Israel and Ukraine what they need to defeat their enemies resolutely and in a minimum amount of time. The West could provide them what they need to do it. Right away. 

But how sure can we be that either the Putin-Medvedev regime or the theocracy in Tehran would find, not even a moral compass, but the degree of reason needed to see that an uninhabitable world is only hours away from the use of the unthinkable?

So what is to be done? Do we tolerate absolute evil, let precedents for unprovoked aggression be set, and accept a certain level of moral murkiness, just to keep the whole thing from being reduced to ashes?

Is not the correct answer of the same cloth as the firefighter who goes back into the house one more time before its burning frame collapses, in order to rescue a baby or pet?

Is not the eternal record book going to show that justice, love, and defense of life prevailed even as darkness covered the fallen world?

A lot of layers to this beyond military capability specs or political considerations. This gets to the thorniest dilemma those of our species ever face.

How will we proceed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a Mideast already brimming with malevolent players, ISIS returns to the mix

 Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute says the recent bombings at the memorial service for General Suleiman in Iran should be a bracing heads up for the West:

The Islamic State claimed the Kerman bombings as part of a new campaign dubbed, “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them,” launched in support of Palestinian Muslims. Within a 24-hour period, the Islamic State had claimed more than 30 different operations globally—from the Middle East to Africa to the Philippines—as part of this campaign, reanimating a seemingly dormant network. Few of the arguments made in the announcement itself are new. Pointing to the events in Gaza, the Islamic State called for supporters to target “Jews, Christians, and their allies” in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. 

One of the key distinctions between the Islamic State and other major jihadist groups is its focus on Iran. Unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State has actively targeted Iran and Shiites worldwide as perfidious enemies of Islam and ruthlessly condemned Sunni collaborators such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This announcement was no different, emphasizing again the danger of the Shiites and their threat to Sunni Muslims. No doubt, the Kerman bombings were aimed in part at driving a wedge of suspicion between Shiite Iran and the Sunni jihadists it backs. As it has previously, the Islamic State is seeking to exploit regional tensions and moments of instability to create opportunities to advance its own cause, still pursuing reestablishing the Caliphate.

These bombings are simply another notch in the belt of Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K). What senior U.S. officials warned of in the aftermath of the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan—IS-K’s development of external attack capabilities to match its intent—has sadly been realized. And while the Kerman bombings are shocking given the terrorist outfit’s penetration of the tightly controlled Iranian society, they are part of a concerning trend. The group now threatens states neighboring Afghanistan and has extended its reach to include Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Reports from Kyrgyzstan of a foiled terror attack in late December reveal the outward progression of the Islamic State’s threat from Afghanistan.

Western states, particularly European ones, have felt much-needed relief from the Islamic State terror threat in recent years, especially after the collapse of the founding group in Iraq and Syria. But that lull in activity seems to be ending. Most  concerning is how IS-K has transformed into its primary operational node using tradecraft developed to support terrorism attacks as far afield as Europe. Like al-Qaeda, which experienced significant counterterrorism pressure in Afghanistan and focused instead on developing a threat node based in Yemen, the Islamic State has adapted. The difference is that the Islamic State seems to be mastering a remote management of its cells, including online recruitment, guidance, and training. It’s not clear yet from Iranian statements regarding the detained individuals whether the network behind the Kerman bombings was built remotely or not.

And this is occurring as other Mideast players are weighing in - and not supportively - on US and British airstrikes on, per the US Air Force's Mideast command, "command and control nodes, munitions depots, production facilities and air defense radar systems" of the Houthis in Yemen:

Russia . . .  requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the strikes. France, the current council president, said it will take place Friday afternoon.

Rather rich in irony that Russia would be concerned about the use of force. 

Saudi Arabia is likewise voicing such a view:

Saudi Arabia is following US and British air strikes on neighbouring Yemen with "great concern", a foreign ministry statement said on Friday, urging against escalation.

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is following with great concern the military operations taking place in the Red Sea region and the air strikes on a number of sites in the Republic of Yemen," the statement said, calling for "self-restraint and avoiding escalation".

You may notice the I haven't done any posting of a follow-the-horse-race-in-granular-detail nature about stuff like how Haley and DeSantis are positioned going into Iowa. For one thing, the Very Stable Genius still looks poised to run the table on the entire primary season - a prospect with bad enough implications for Mideast policy - but also, the lay of the land in that region is likely to look even more volatile by November. The current US administration has its hands full right now, what with the mysterious way Lloyd Austin's prostate cancer has been handled, and the implications for the functionality of the chain of command. 

So the most immediate demand on US focus is not in Des Moines, but a bit further away. 

Some key architects of the softening of the US stance toward Iran

 Talk about a must-read.

This is one I'll be excerpting generously from, both for the facts and for Atlantic staff writer Graeme Wood's understanding of their significance.

It's a story, like so many modern investigative pieces are, of emails and meetings:

. . . a handful of Americans and Europeans . . . were, by the looks of their emails, groomed by the Iranian government to promote conciliatory policies toward Tehran. According to reports by Semafor and Iran International, Iranian foreign-policy bigwigs such as Mohammad Javad Zarif identified think-tank staffers of Iranian origin, sponsored meetings with them, and used the group to coordinate and spread messages helpful to Iran. The emails, which date from 2014, suggest that those in their group—the “Iran Experts Initiative”—reacted to Iranian outreach in a range of ways, including cautious engagement and active coordination. The Iranian government then paid expenses related to this group’s internal meetings; cultivated its members with “access to high-ranking officials and extended invitations to visit Tehran,” according to Iran International; and later gloated over how effectively it had used its experts to propagate the Islamic Republic’s positions.

It would be interesting to know why Mr. Malley lost his security clearance:

The government had reason to gloat. It picked excellent prospects, some of whom sucked up to Tehran over email and echoed its negotiating positions publicly. A few of them ended up in and near positions of prominence in the U.S. government through connections to Robert Malley, a veteran Middle East hand in Democratic administrations. Malley, who led Obama teams focusing on the Islamic State, Syria, and Iraq, is known to favor negotiation with unfriendly governments in the region and to scorn the “maximum pressure” approach that replaced nuclear negotiation when Donald Trump entered office. Earlier this year, Malley lost his security clearance for reasons still not explained, and he is on leave from government service. (He did not reply to a request for comment.)

Wood then introduces us to two key figures, Ariane Tabatabai and Ali Vaez:

One of Tehran’s targets, Ariane M. Tabatabai, joined the Biden administration’s Iran team with Malley and is now the chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Another, Ali Vaez, formerly worked as an aide to Malley on Iran issues. That is the disturbing upshot to the reports: Witting participants in an Iranian influence operation have been close colleagues with those setting the Biden administration’s Iran policy, or have even served in government and set it themselves.

Wood has a few choice words for the Biden administration's attempt to soft-pedal this:

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, dismissed the reports as “an account of things that happened almost a decade ago, most of which involved people that do not currently work for the government.” I assume he meant the U.S. government. Anyway, the accusations are serious and can’t be batted away by the suggestion that 2014 was a long time ago.

One sign of the gravity of these accusations is the unconvincing attempts to minimize them. The commentator Esfandyar Batmanghelidj said opponents of Tehran had smeared the analysts merely because they “maintained dialogue and exchanged views with Iranian officials.” He went on to note Semafor’s links to Qatar and Iran International’s to Iran’s archenemy, Saudi Arabia. The journalist Laura Rozen tweeted that the stories were “McCarthyistic” and targeted blameless analysts “because they try to talk to everybody and because of their Iranian heritage.”

Defending the emails as maintaining “dialogue” so ludicrously misrepresents the accusation that I am forced to conclude that these defenders find the actual accusation indefensible. No one is alarmed that Americans of Iranian descent are talking with Iranian-government officials. What’s alarming is the servile tone of the Iranian American side of that dialogue, and the apparent lack of concern that the Iranian government views them as tools for its political ends. Rozen and Batmanghelidj don’t dispute the emails’ authenticity. Comparing the Iranian influence operation to supposed Qatari and Saudi ones is, in turn, tacit admission that the emails are probably real.

Cultivating a source is fine. But any self-respecting analyst, journalist, or politician wants to be the one cultivating, not the one being cultivated. And mutual back-scratching can erode one’s integrity and independence. That is why the Iranians do it: to turn influential and otherwise smart people into their pets, and eventually condition them to salivate at the issuance of a visa, or an email from Javad Zarif. Responding to these overtures is fine, too. You can butter up an official (“Your Excellency”), maybe grovel a little for a visa. But the writing itself, and the analysis behind it, must be independent to the point that even the most cynical observer could not accuse you of altering your views to please a subject.

By this standard, some of the reported exchanges between the Iran Experts and their convenor are mortifying. After the report, Vaez, a deputy to Malley, admitted on X (formerly Twitter) that he’d sent a full draft of an op-ed to the Iranian government. “I look forward to your comments and feedback,” his email to the Iranians read. If I sent a source a draft of a story, I would be fired. (I asked The National Interest, where the article appeared, if its policy also forbids sharing drafts. The editor, Jacob Heilbrunn, did not reply.) Sending questions is laudable. Checking facts is standard practice. But a magazine article is not a Wiki whose contributors are also its subjects. Sharing a full draft of an article, whether for approval or just improvement, makes the recipient an unacknowledged co-author.

It keeps getting smellier:

Vaez later pledged to the Iranian foreign minister to “help you in any way,” by proposing “a public campaign” to promote Iran’s views on its nuclear program. He offered these services “as an Iranian, based on my national and patriotic duty.” Vaez, like his former boss Malley, has written widely about Iran and U.S.-Iran relations, for magazines including this one. (Attempts to reach Vaez through his employer to verify the authenticity of the emails and their context were not answered by the time of publication.)

According to the same reports, Adnan Tabatabai, CEO and founder of the German think tank CARPO, “offered to prepare articles for Iran’s foreign ministry.” “We as a group [could] work on an essay,” he suggested. “It could, for example, be published under a former official’s name.” Tabatabai, the report says, worked as a contractor for Malley’s International Crisis Group. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)

Ariane Tabatabai (who is not related to Adnan) wrote to her contact at the Iranian foreign ministry and asked his advice on whether to work with officials in Saudi Arabia and attend a meeting in Israel. “I would like to ask your opinion too and see if you think I should accept the invitation and go,” she asked Mostafa Zahrani of the foreign ministry. She made clear that she personally “had no inclination to go” to a workshop at Ben-Gurion University, but she thought it might be better if she went, rather than “some Israeli,” such as Emily Landau of Tel Aviv University. Zahrani told Tabatabai to look into Saudi Arabia and avoid Israel. She thanked him for the guidance, and she went to Tehran herself in 2014. In another email to the Iranians, she noted that she had recently published an article arguing that Tehran should be given more leeway to spin up centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

Better me than "some Israeli," she was thinking. And now she works at the Defense Department. 

As Wood notes, we must bet careful not to wax hyperbolic about just how close Tabatabai and Malley are to the Iranian government. But as Lee Smith notes at Tablet, she should at least have to answer some questions under oath:

Congress needs to demand the Biden White House make Malley and Tabatabai available to testify immediately. It must also press to interview the security officials who buried evidence of Tabatabai’s covert activities, putting her in a position to endanger the lives of American civilians and special forces operators. It’s time to find out why the interests—and now the personnel—of the Iranian “death to America” regime intersect so frequently with those of America’s own ruling party.

Especially given the fact that Iran, at a meeting a week ago in Beirut, was the party that gave the go-ahead to Hamas to unleash hell on Israel.