Iran

The policy that dare not speak its name

Featured image Submitted for your analysis, the tweet of Secretary of State Antony Blinken (below). In it he discloses the upshot of his conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Turkey is of course a supporter of Hamas. Blinken relates that he encouraged Turkey’s advocacy of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel now that Israel is undertaking its right to defend itself from Hamas. For some reason Blinken has since deleted the »

Unblinken

Featured image The Biden administration promotes the line that the $6 billion ransom it has posted for the benefit of Iran has nothing to do with Iran’s support for terrorism and this line is faithfully parroted in the mainstream media, including Jennifer Griffin on Fox News. Gabriel Noronha has comprehensively refuted this assertion in an informative thread on Twitter/X. Readers can access Noronha’s thread via the Xeet below. 🧵I'm sorry Jen but »

J’Accuse

Featured image On Twitter, Victor Davis Hanson draws together several threads relating to the Gazans’ invasion of Israel. How does it fit into the broader currents of Middle Eastern Politics? Why now? What was Iran’s role? And how relevant is the Biden administration’s incompetence and anti-Israel bias? Victor’s tweet is embedded below, but I have taken the liberty of reproducing its text: A 50th Anniversary War? Why did Hamas stage a long-planned, »

WSJ: This is Iran’s war

Featured image Secretary of State Antony Blinken professes not to have seen any evidence that Iran planned and instigated Hamas’s war on Israel. Evidence is not hard to find. It is available on open sources and elsewhere. The trouble is obvious. Blinken is being briefed by President Biden. The two have no clue. The Wall Street Journal now reports ”Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks.” Subhead: “The Islamic Revolutionary »

Israel’s 9/11: The day after

Featured image As William Buckley used to say, herewith a few comments on Hamas’s 10/7 attack on Israel (with apologies for those that have already achieved the status of clichĂ©): • Hamas’s 10/7 attack is something like Israel’s 9/11, only worse. Israel’s death toll has hit more than 400 (and rising). Adjusting for population and measuring by the deaths inflicted so far, Israel has suffered (is suffering) an attack that is something »

Doing Iran’s Bidding

Featured image Who is behind the Palestinians’ attack on Israel? Iran, for one. The London Times minces no words: The British government believes that Iran is linked to the Hamas attack on Israel and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is likely to have played a role in training and the supply of weapons (Dipesh Gadher writes). A Whitehall source said: “The Revolutionary Guards have their fingerprints all over this multifaceted »

“What base ingratitude”

Featured image Winston Churchill was a magnanimous man of exemplary character, yet Stanley Baldwin tested his limits. As Richard Langworth recounts, Churchill held Baldwin responsible for Britain’s lack of preparedness to go to war with Germany when the crisis inevitably came. During the blitz, when informed that a German bomb had fallen on Baldwin’s house, Churchill quipped, “What base ingratitude.” (Martin Gilbert has a different version of the story in Finest Hour.) »

Reading the UNGA tea leaves

Featured image Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s most recent column is “Reading the UNGA tea leaves” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power »

Money for nothing

Featured image When it comes to the Iranian mullahcracy, the Biden administration has formulated a policy that it has deftly kept under wraps. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in it. Former National Security Council Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction Rich Goldberg spells it out in the column »

Biden’s Iran deal

Featured image The Biden administration’s $6 billion hostage deal with Iran is a big story, but the public version is for chumps. I fell for it, and perhaps that assessment is overly harsh on similarly situated citizens who follow the news. The real deal hasn’t been covered in the news and the administration has deftly lied about it. Rich Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. From »

The $6 billion misunderstanding: Kirby’s dodge

Featured image National Security Council spokesman John Kirby attended yesterday’s White House press briefing. The White House has posted the transcript here. Kirby was asked about the $6 billion payoff to Iran for the release of five American hostages, with additional American hostages to be taken later. I have written about this disgraceful and destructive deal several times. One reporter actually asked Kirby about the administration’s nonsensical dodge regarding the payoff: Question: »

The $6 billion misunderstanding, cont’d

Featured image Here I thought I was just amusing myself by invoking Robert Gover’s One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, but no. The Biden administration’s $6 billion deal with Iran appears to be subject to the kind of misunderstanding that vexed the protagonists in Gover’s cult classic. According to the Biden administration, the use of the $6 billion is subject to severe constraints. It can’t be used to support the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program. »

The $6 billion misunderstanding

Featured image Robert Gover wrote the cult classic One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding. It might have been cutting-edge in 1962, when it was published, but not for long. Insofar as my subject here is related to President Biden, I can note that Hunter Biden’s misadventures have taken reality far beyond Gover’s satire. However, I have found Gover’s title an irresistible source of headlines for comments on the news. Today comes word that the »

Deter this

Featured image The corruption of every major American institution by the left has picked up speed under the Biden administration. In its morning newsletter, the Washington Free Beacon notes: WHAT WE’RE WATCHING: Making plans for a symposium on deterrence, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) decided that a top Iranian official cum Princeton professor, Hussein Mousavian, would make a good keynote speaker. Mousavian last made headlines when he was captured on Iranian television smirking »

The $6 billion misunderstanding

Featured image Robert Gover wrote the cult classic One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding. It might have been cutting-edge in 1962, when it was published, but not for long. Insofar as my subject here is related to President Biden, I can note that Hunter Biden’s misadventures have taken reality far beyond Gover’s satire. However, I have found Gover’s title an irresistible source of headlines for comments on the news. Today comes word via the »

Iran’s shadow war

Featured image Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s most recent column is “Iran’s shadow war” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line. He »

XiYue Wang’s story

Featured image I touched on the enraging story of XiYue Wang in “The Princeton historian mugged by Princeton.” The Middle East Forum invited Wang to tell the story of his captivity in Iran to a Washington audience. I have posted the video below. MEF’s Clifford Smith converts Wang’s speech into an excellent narrative account in the post “Academic Perfidy and Diplomatic Appeasement Embolden the Islamic Republic.” Listening to Wang’s speech, I confess »