US President Donald J. Trump recently said that he has never heard of a Lebanese law banning contact with Israel. “I never heard of that, but… I’m pretty sure that’ll be ended very quickly,” Trump told reporters. “I know Lebanon doesn’t want that… That’s crazy.”
Trump is right. These laws are “crazy.” They are also poisonous.
As US President Donald J. Trump was being hosted in Saudi Arabia by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen fired another ballistic missile at Israel.
The missile, which flew over Saudi Arabia on its way to Israel, was fortunately intercepted by the Israel Defense Forces before reaching its intended target.
The Houthis, in fact, fired three ballistic missiles at Israel, right over the Crown Prince’s head.
A New World Order Dominated by China, Russia and the Iranian Regime, with North Korea Heading Up the Rear
“The greatest of all evils is a weak government,” said Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the UK (1868, 1874-80).” This comment sadly brings us to the weak and possibly compromised administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which appears to have enabled and empowered the autocrats of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, all of whom seem to be working overtime to create a new authoritarian world order with themselves at the helm.
With Pride Month nearing its end and Middle Easterners marking one of the most important dates on the Islamic calendar, Eid al Adha, followers of an Iraqi Shiite sect have decided to burn the rainbow flag in front of the Swedish embassy at Baghdad.
The leader of the Sadr group, Muqtada al Sadr, called on his followers to burn the LGBTQ banner in retaliation to a Koran burning in front of a Stockholm mosque on Wednesday. His supporters chanted, “No to Israel, no to America, yes to Islam,” as they set ablaze a makeshift rainbow flag.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states apparently still do not trust the Biden Administration, largely because of its perceived abandonment of its traditional Arab allies in the Middle East and President Joe Biden’s hostility to Saudi Arabia. This view began with then-presidential candidate Biden declaring the kingdom a “pariah” state — and is continuing with US attempts, still ongoing, to revive a “nuclear deal” that will enable an expansionist Iran to have nuclear weapons potentially to topple other countries in the region.
The Iraq war in particular has been devastating to the region’s religious minorities
Religious persecution is a global constant, and no one is exempt. The most conspicuous threats to religious liberty arise in authoritarian and Muslim-majority states; however, Middle Eastern Christians point to an even greater threat: the United States.
At an international conference a couple weeks ago, a beleaguered Christian activist admitted to me what he was reluctant to state publicly: the US poses the most serious danger to his community. American political and military intervention fueled the destructive persecution that was driving Christianity from its geographic birthplace.
The Biden administration may have lost interest in the Middle East, but it is not a sentiment that is shared by rival powers such as China and Russia.
While U.S. President Joe Biden has shown nothing but contempt for long-standing allies in the region, both China and Moscow have been quick to exploit Washington’s wilful neglect to their own advantage.
By far the most startling change to the political landscape of the Middle East has been Beijing’s role in negotiating the restoration of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two countries that, until recently, were sworn enemies.
The State Department is running this, Joe has his hands full with the Tapioca file.
American deterrence is rapidly eroding in the Middle East .
Last week, the Pentagon announced that a squadron of A-10 attack aircraft would be deploying to the Middle East ahead of their scheduled deployment. The Pentagon has also ordered a carrier strike group to remain in the region. This bolstering of America’s military presence in the Middle East comes amid heightened tensions. The previous week, Iranian-backed proxies launched several attacks on U.S. bases in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five U.S. service members and another contractor.
The US is exiting the ME so no surprise.
While the United States has been hypnotized by our domestic battle of Biden versus Trump, China has made a major move in the Middle East.
It has negotiated an alliance of convenience between those thousand-year enemies, the Saudis and Iranians, whose theological feud goes back to the generation after Mohammed.
China has thereby effectively countered the Abraham Accords negotiated by the US, the Arab states (with Saudis in the background) and Israel.
Many Arabs and Muslims are celebrating the Saudi-Iranian agreement to restore diplomatic relations as a devastating blow to the Biden Administration, a victory for Iran and China, and a sign of Washington’s failed policies in the Middle East.
According to these Arabs and Muslims, the Saudi-Iranian pact is the direct result of the Biden Administration’s antagonism towards America’s traditional Arab allies, especially Saudi Arabia, and the American policy of appeasement towards the mullahs in Iran.
Many Arabs believe that US President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the Middle East was a failure, mainly because the Arab countries still do not have confidence in his administration’s policies. The Arabs point out that one of Biden’s biggest mistakes was that he took America’s Arab allies for granted while embarking on a policy of appeasement towards Iran’s mullahs.
The Arabs are saying that Biden failed to promote normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, convince the Saudis to increase oil production, and establish a security alliance to confront the threats from Iran and its proxies. He also failed to achieve a breakthrough in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, they note.
Many Americans as well as allies of the United States were hoping that US President Joe Biden and his administration, on his recent trip to the Middle East, would announce a firmer policy towards the regime of Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran did not murder just one American journalist: it celebrated its birth in 1979 by kidnapping more than 50 Americans from the staff of the US Embassy in Tehran and holding them hostage for 444 days. Then, in 1983, Iran murdered 241 American servicemen in the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
To top it off, then in 2018, Iran was ordered by a US federal court to pay billions of dollars in compensation to relatives of victims in the 9/11 attacks that murdered 3,000 people on US soil.
Rumors of a new Middle Eastern military alliance are flying. They’re significant because an “Arab NATO” may include Israel, signaling next steps in better ties between Israel and Arab neighbors. But are the rumors real?
Late last week, the king of Jordan made headlines when he told journalists that he would support a military alliance in the Middle East that was similar to NATO.
“I would be one of the first people that would endorse a Middle East NATO,” King Abdullah II told US media outlet CNBC. “All of us are coming together and saying, ‘How can we help each other?’ … which is, I think, very unusual for the region.”
Similar rumors about the creation of an “Arab NATO” also came from other quarters.
We can thank Trump for this;)
The enemies of peace in the Middle East are continuing their efforts to destroy any effort to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab and Muslim countries.
The enemies of peace want Arabs and Muslims to remain in a continual state of war with Israel. They want more violence and bloodshed, not Arabs and Muslims and Jews working together in various fields, including technology or anything that might bring economic prosperity.
Does the Biden administration really want as its legacy that it was the first in American history to be for oppressors and against human rights, freedom and prosperity for the downtrodden?
For the first time in history, a delegation of journalists, academics and influencers from across the Arab and Muslim world — including citizens from states that have not yet signed peace agreements with Israel, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon – came to see first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust and to promote education and awareness of them in their societies.
The delegation was organized by Sharaka, a grassroots organization based in Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, and made up of young social activists from Israel, the Arab Gulf States and others in the region who are dedicated to promoting warm ties and citizen-diplomacy. The group learned about the pre-WWII Jewish community, about the Holocaust, including touring the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, and then took part in the International March of the Living, also there, an annual event in which thousands march in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
