Free Republic

Refers to an article by Hal Brands, Steven A. Cook, and Kenneth M. Pollack. Trump’s break with decades of U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf has been conducted in his typically cavalier manner. But it did not come out of nowhere. Americans have been debating their long-standing strategic commitment to the Gulf for several years now. Critics of that commitment have offered multiple arguments for why Washington ought to pull back from the region. Each is founded in realities that should refine U.S. strategy toward the Gulf, but not abandon it, as Trump appears to be doing.

The U.S. military is removing Patriot antimissile systems from Saudi Arabia as part of a shift of forces and equipment in the region following a buildup last year in response to Iranian threats, a U.S. official confirmed on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Washington is moving four Patriot missile batteries from the region. The U.S. official confirmed to The Hill that two Patriot systems will come from Saudi Arabia — along with the roughly 300 military personnel deployed to man them. The two systems had been sent to the country last year after a Sept. 14 strike...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in winning 60 seats for his bloc of right-wing and religious parties in Monday’s election, one less than he needed for a majority in the Knesset, according to exit polls on the three television networks. The first polls indicated that Netanyahu’s Likud won 36-37 seats. Its allies in Shas, UTJ and Yamina won 9, 7-8 and 6-7 respectively. The polls showed Blue and White with 33 seats, its ally Labor-Gesher-Meretz 6-7, the Joint List 14-15 and Yisrael Beytenu 6-8. When Channel 13 updated its numbers at around 1 a.m. Israel time, Gantz gained one seat...

Kuwait, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Oman, and Iraq reported their first coronavirus cases on Monday, all involving people who had been in Iran. Bahrain confirmed a single case, a citizen who arrived from Iran via Dubai, the health ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Bahrain News Agency. The patient was identified as a school bus driver and had worked Sunday, dropping off children at two schools. “All family members and individuals who have been in contact with the patient were contacted and tested to ensure they are free of the virus, as well as being placed under supervision for...

President Donald Trump's brilliant plan for Mideast peace has triggered a sandstorm of negativity and deflection from the regular naysayers who attack anything the president says and does. Critics of his recently unveiled peace aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should instead scrutinize the document and recognize its merits. This peace plan was carefully crafted over multiple years under the leadership of Jared Kushner, relying heavily on expert economic analysis, intelligence data and security assessments. Kushner deserves credit for preparing this thorough blueprint for peace between two peoples who have been at war for far too long. Actually, one of...

President Trump has just laid out a visionary plan for achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather than trying to reconcile the fundamentally conflicting priorities of the two sides, he came up with a practical solution that reflects realities on the ground in the fairest way possible. Every American president since Lyndon Johnson has tried — and failed — to resolve the conflict, usually by sitting down with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to negotiate toothless agreements that have done nothing to ease tensions or prevent bloodshed. These well-intentioned efforts all made the same fatal mistake: they treated the Israeli...

...When you read the Trump plan closely, you realize it is a mirror image of the Oslo Accords. Rather than Israel being required to prove its good will, the Palestinians are required to prove their commitment to peace. (...) Will Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party agree to abandon the Oslo blood libel most of its members embrace, and accept that Israel is capable of asserting its sovereign rights to these areas? Or will they hide behind the legal fraternity braying for Netanyahu’s head and preserve the anti-Semitic Oslo paradigm for their friends in the Democratic Party? And...

U.S President Donald Trump and Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a joint address at the White House Tuesday afternoon. The President revealed details of his long-awaited 'Deal of the Century' for Middle East peace. As part of his plan, President Trump declared that Jerusalem would remain the "undivided capital" of Israel. However, he later stated that the Palestinian Arabs would have a capital in eastern Jerusalem. Inside the plan itself, which was released Tuesday, President Trump calls for most of the city to remain unified under Israeli sovereignty, while turning Arab neighborhoods outside of the security barrier into "Al Quds",...

White House officials described the plan as realistic and said Israel is prepared to act. According to White House officials, the plan calls for a two-state solution including the state of Israel and the "future" state of Palestine. Under the plan, the Palestinians would have to reach certain benchmarks to achieve a state. Those benchmarks include rooting out terrorism, stopping what they call “pay to slay,” implementing steps toward free speech, and other political reforms.

Video at link. The Trump administration announced new sanctions on Iran Friday targeting the country’s metals sector and several of its government leaders following Tehran’s missile attacks on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops earlier this week. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held a press conference at the White House to detail the new measures, which President Trump promised were coming earlier in the week. The new sanctions target the Iranian aluminum, copper, iron and steel industries. The U.S. is also sanctioning eight senior Iranian officials who were allegedly involved in Tuesday’s missile attacks against U.S....

Former Rep. Ron Paul said he wished President Trump would "flip-flop" his policy on Iran and criticized Trump's loyalty to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia. "I think our country is not doing so well. Our foreign policy is in shambles," the Texas Republican said. "Unfortunately, the one place where I wish he would flip-flop every once in a while or change his policy completely is dealing with Iran. He is steady on it, he said it on the campaign. He's very loyal to Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia." Trump authorized airstrikes that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and...

The assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is an unusual, possibly aberrant, event. The killing of this individual leader of a sovereign state may lead to all-out war between Iran and the U.S. — or, on the other hand, the assassination may bring an end to the cycle of Iranian violence countered by U.S. and world diplomatic flatulence and appeasement. Assassinating the leaders of terrorist organizations — i.e., non-state actors, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — did not lead to a greater war footing against the USA because, as terrorist organization leaders, not heads of state,...

Israel headed on Wednesday towards a third national election in less than a year with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing the fight of his life for political survival after a criminal indictment. After giving its preliminary approval, and barring last-minute progress in deadlocked efforts to form a new government, parliament was set to vote for its dissolution later in the day and approve a March 2 election date already agreed by the two major parties.

President Trump on Friday said he spoke with King Salman of Saudi Arabia after U.S. officials said that a Saudi national was suspected of opening fire at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., killing three people and injuring several others. The Saudi leader expressed his condolences to the families of those killed in the shooting, Trump said. “It’s a horrible thing that took place and we’re getting to the bottom of it,” Trump said of the shooting during an event focused on deregulation. Officials said the gunman was a member of the Saudi Air Force, and they are investigating...

Iran and Rojhilat'ta 'gasoline rebellion' continues. The regime cut telephone and internet lines, while Spay Pastaran and Khamenei's representatives threatened the demonstrators. The popular uprising that started last Friday after the increase in oil prices in Iran and spread to all of Iran's 31 provinces and Rojhilat in a short time has not stopped. The Iranian regime has cut internet lines but since yesterday morning has also cut landlines to avoid news of what is going on to be spread abroad and also to avoid communication among the demonstrators in different cities and regions. New cities joined the protests Despite the...

In Iraq, demonstrators are being shot dead in the streets. In Lebanon, protesters have paralysed the country and seem set to bring down the government of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. In recent weeks the Egyptian security forces crushed attempts to protest against the police state of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi... A rough approximation is that 60% of the region's population is under the age of 30. A young population can be a great asset to a country. But only if the economy, the educational system and the institutions of the state are functioning well enough to accommodate their needs, and...

... There will never be peace between the Arabs and Israel. Why not? Because, as noted, the Arabs don't want peace with Israel; they don't want Israel, and will look for any excuse to avoid any kind of peace agreement. As Netanyahu once observed regarding the prospects for peace in the area: "If the Arabs put down their weapons today there would be no more violence; if the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel." Or, as Golda Meir before him observed: "Peace will come when Arabs will love their children more than they hate...

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner will lead a US delegation to Israel at the end of the month to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz, a senior administration official said on Thursday. Kushner has been leading President Donald Trump's effort to develop a peace plan for Israelis and Palestinians. After proposing a $60 billion aid package for the region last summer, he has yet to unveil a proposed political plan that gets at the thorniest issues in the decades-old conflict, with Netanyahu struggling to form a governing coalition. The official, speaking on condition...

Remember those Republicans who supported Nancy Pelosi and betrayed the American voters with this vote. – I have very often been thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of spineless, disloyal Republicans in the U.S. Congress, but seldom as disgusted as I felt on Wednesday afternoon. That was when we got news that 129 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives joined with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat caucus in a vote to condemn President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. military personnel out of harm’s way as the Turkish military invaded Northern Syria on Sunday. That decision involved about 50 U.S....

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey’s offensive into northeast Syria will end if Kurdish fighters in the region drop their weapons and withdraw from a planned “safe zone”, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, but warned that no power could stop it until then. Erdogan said the quickest solution was for militants to drop their weapons and pull back from the area by Wednesday evening. The operation will end when the “safe zone” is established, he said, and Turkey was not open to negotiating this.