Free Republic

But even the Israelis have yet to absorb the full scope and magnitude of Biden’s accommodation of Iran. The problem is not that Sullivan and Blinken are failing to restrain Malley, but that they are marching in lockstep with him. A consensus reigns inside the administration, not just on the JCPOA but on every big question of Middle East strategy: Everyone from the president on down agrees about the need to complete what Obama started—which means that the worst is yet to come. If the control that Obama’s project exercises over every mind in the Biden administration is not already...

The Iran deal was never meant to stop Iran from building a bomb—it was supposed to delay it until disaster happened on someone else’s watchIn the wake of the targeted killing of Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani, an interesting fight has broken out—after Donald Trump failed to brief them in advance of the strike, Democrats began fulsomely criticizing the president. This led Republican lawmakers to accuse their counterparts across the aisle of pro-terrorist sympathies. Maybe Republicans are still sore that Barack Obama compared them to Iranian hardliners like Soleimani for denouncing his signature foreign policy initiative, the Iran nuclear deal,...

‘Whistleblower’ calls out John Kerry, says he ‘knows for fact’ Obama admin sent multiple letters directly to Soleimani Middle East expert Michael Doran slammed former Secretary of State John Kerry in a series of tweets exposing the Obama administration’s dealings with Iran. “I must become a whistleblower,” Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute specializing in Middle East security issues, tweeted Friday in response to a self-serving opinion piece by Kerry published by The New York Times. Doran called out Kerry for his op-ed and the “ludicrous and reckless contention” that “diplomacy” with Iran and the nuclear deal negotiated...

Mr. Trump’s sidestepping of reports that the C.I.A. believes that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing as “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” was jarring. But every president since Harry Truman has aligned with unsavory Middle Eastern rulers in the service of national interests. The difference here is that Mr. Trump seemed unapologetic about this state of affairs with only a passing nod to the affront to our values that Mr. Khashoggi’s murder represents. That’s nothing to cheer. But it is vitally important to evaluate the policy on its merits more than its mode of expression. And...

A top official of the National Security Council was fired last month after arguing in a memo that President Trump is under sustained attack from subversive forces both within and outside the government who are deploying Maoist tactics to defeat President Trump’s nationalist agenda. His dismissal marks the latest victory by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in the ongoing war within Trump’s White House between those who believe that the president is under threat from dark forces plotting to undermine him, and those like McMaster who dismiss this as conspiratorial thinking. Rich Higgins, a former Pentagon official who served in...

The Saturday Warner Bros. panel at Comic-Con debuted the first trailer from Justice League, Part 1 minutes ago, and here it is... Justice League, Part 1 opens November 17, 2017.

SCENE LAST NIGHT: Less than a mile or so from Chabad Lubavitch's HQ at 770 Eastern Parkway, around 80 Hillary for America supporters gathered at the home of former White House Jewish Liaison Jarrod Bernstein and Hildy Kuryk, currently communications director at Vogue, to hear from the Clinton campaign's senior advisors including manager Robby Mook, vice chairwoman Huma Abedin and finance director Dennis Chang. SPOTTED: Recent Chairman of the Conference of Presidents Bob Sugarman, Obama mega-bundler Sarah Kovner, Tusk Ventures' Seth London, Anya Hoerburger of Intermedia Partners, Samantha Maltzman, Jill Strauss, Samantha Vinograd of Goldman Sachs and formerly at office...

A smoldering policy dispute over the Iran deal between two frontrunners for the Republican nomination caught fire over the weekend, as the campaigns of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and former Florida governor Jeb Bush traded accusations of bad faith and the candidates themselves engaged in a pointed back-and-forth about how a newly elected president should handle the deal. -snip- The following day, Michael Doran, a former National Security Council official and a well-regarded scholar at the Hudson Institute who has been briefing Walker and is close to his team, tweeted a link to a Politico article about Bush’s comments and...

"Cui bono?" Who benefits? It was the question ancient Romans asked when hoping to cut through a fog of possible causes for a problem. As of this morning, U.S. Marines were evacuating Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. We've seen this movie before: the bonfires of documents, the hammer blows to equipment, the disabling of weapons, the rush to the helicopters. Think Saigon 1973 or Tehran 1979. Only five months ago, President Obama touted his policy toward Yemen as a success: "This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we...

Iran’s rulers brutalize their own citizens, sponsor terrorism on several continents, and openly vow “Death to America!” They are determined to acquire the ability to develop nuclear weapons and deliver them to targets anywhere in the world. Can President Obama stop them? That’s not the question. Or rather, that’s not the question now being asked by the keenest observers of the diplomatic dance underway between Iran and the U.S. What they are asking instead: Is Obama serious about trying to stop Tehran’s revolutionary theocrats from becoming nuclear-armed – or is that not really his goal at this point? “The fear,”...

WASHINGTON — A great deal of diplomatic attention over the next few months will be focused on whether the temporary nuclear deal with Iran can be transformed into a full-blown accord. President Obama has staked the success of his foreign policy on this bold gamble. But discussion about the nuclear deal has diverted attention from an even riskier bet that Obama has placed: the idea that Iran can become a cooperative partner in regional security. Although they won’t say so publicly, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry surely dream of a “Nixon to China” masterstroke. They are quietly...