JOE BIDEN AND HIS MUSLIMS - Surrounded by Raging Protesters at a Jihad Jamboree

 

Surrounded by Raging Protesters at a Jihad Jamboree

By Hugh Iwanicki

On January 13, I attended the March for Gaza in Washington, D.C.  I wondered, who are these protesters marching in solidarity with Hamas?  Hamas is the terrorist group responsible for the October 7 massacre of more than 1,200 innocent Israelis, including children, and the capture of 240 hostages, including Americans.  Surely some of these protesters would also demand through their megaphones that “Hamas, free the hostages now!” or that “Hamas surrender now!”  As Israel stated many times, there would be a ceasefire if Hamas released the hostages.

It was my first event after ankle surgery.  I went alone, so I needed to keep a low profile.  Several blocks away from Freedom Square, where the protest began, I heard the chant “ceasefire now!” in the background.

I came across about 50 people parading in the street, led by a well nourished American black woman with long dreadlocks.  From her megaphone she belted out, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”  Here in the nation’s capital, I heard a call for the genocide of the Jewish people.

What intrigued me at the march were two distinctive LGBT flags flapping in the breeze among the screaming protesters.  I thought, “Don’t these marchers understand that homosexuality is a capital crime under sharia law, and Palestinians who openly express their gayness are often killed?”  Yet, in Israel, the very country they accuse of genocide, homosexuality is not only legal, but openly embraced.  In fact, many LGBT Palestinians have sought asylum in Israel.  As I pondered the irony, I noticed that the marchers, with their professionally made signs, changed their loud mantra to “intifada revolution,” a call for violent revolution and overthrow of Jewish Israel.

Closer to Freedom Square, the crowds thickened to an estimated total of around 10,000.  There were throngs of Muslim immigrants from all over the world.  Many brought their families, and I tried to avoid bumping into their baby strollers.  Food trucks lined the streets, with the protesters using a nearby park as a giant picnic ground.  The number of young women at the march surprised me.  I talked with one Afghani girl, about 20 years old, who had no qualms calling for a Jewish genocide.  Later, I met “Aisha,” a university student from Morocco, holding a sign that said, “Abandon Biden.”  She apparently had no problem criticizing President Biden, yet if she was in Morocco with a sign that said, “Abandon King Muhammad VI,” she would be arrested and sentenced to many years in prison.  Another woman from Russia held a sign that said “Sugardaddy Bundy AKA Biden.  Stop giving Israel my money.”  When I asked her how she found out about the march, she said, “No English.”  Impressive for a Russian Immigrant, who doesn’t speak English, to be so knowledgeable about the 1970s American serial killer Ted Bundy.

Protests are like the weather; they can change quickly.  One minute, I was in a group of families and felt safe.  Another minute, the crowds pressed into me, and I couldn’t move.  I became concerned about my ankle, but then realized that this was the least of my problems.  I heard a large group of young men shouting, “Allahu akbar!”  Several keffiyeh scarf–wearing men had climbed atop a bus stop platform, also shouting, “Allahu akbar!”

My goal was to get out of there as quickly as possible. I gently pushed through the crowd down the street, ultimately standing next to a young clean-shaven Palestinian man named Khaled.  Khaled told me that he was from the Jenin Refugee Camp.  I said, “Oh, wow, you guys are tough.”  He looked surprised and said, “You know about Jenin?”  Followers of Israeli news will know that the crowded Jenin refugee camp is a hotbed of terrorist activity, frequently subject to Israel raids.  What he said next amazed me: “I was born in the U.S., but my parents moved us back to Jenin.”  I thought: “Isn’t Jenin a refugee camp?  Why on Earth would a Palestinian family living a life of freedom in America willingly move their children back to a terrorist-filled refugee camp?”  The media programmed me to believe that refugee camps were places people wanted to leave and not go back.

As we continued talking, I asked if there were gays living in Jenin.  “Oh, no, that’s not allowed,” he quickly responded, shaking his head.  “You definitely wouldn’t want to advertise that you’re gay in Palestine.”  The young man may have said this because he remembered what happened to Ahmed Abu Marhia, whose severed head was found on the side of the road in the West Bank after Islamists murdered him for being gay in 2022.

As I walked to a less crowded corner of the protest area, I met “Tom,” a Caucasian man from Seattle with long curly hair.  Tom stood next to a table with signs and brochures representing the International Socialist Alternative, a radical socialist organization, calling for the end of capitalism.  Tom rambled on about how capitalism is bad and how the U.S. and Europe should embrace Marxism and enforce a complete embargo on all ships coming or going from Israel.  I asked Tom, “Then how will the Israelis get their food to eat?  Tom coldly replied, “Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it?”  Tom also told me that he moved to D.C. to be an environmental consultant with the EPA, focused on environmental justice issues.  As I began to walk away, Tom assured me that he would never work directly for a colonial government like the U.S.

The protest was a display of the failures of the Obama/Biden administration’s immigration policies — policies that have opened our doors to virulently antisemitic immigrants from the Islamic world who have no intention of embracing our freedoms, but instead insist that Americans embrace Islam.

On the March for Gaza website was a list of endorsing organizations, including the Israel/Palestine Network of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), along with a litany of radical Marxist and Islamic Organizations.  In less than an hour, I saw protesters screaming for the annihilation of Israel, other protesters calling for revolution to overthrow the Israeli government for defending their people.  Yet in the midst of all that hatred, not once did I hear anyone say “free the hostages, or “overthrow Hamas.”  The question that lingered in my mind was, “Why would a mainline Christian denomination actively support Marxist and antisemitic organizations that call for genocide and the destruction of our capitalist society?”  The red-green alliance between Western Leftists and Middle Eastern Islamists is alive and well.  

The next morning, I read that, the night before, White House staff had to be moved after pro-Palestinian rioters damaged anti-scale fencing and hurled objects at the police.  This comes just two months after rioters vandalized the White House fence and spraypainted graffiti reading, “Death to Israel” and “Glory to our martyrs” on buildings near the Israeli Embassy.  Yet never once has anyone in the administration said a word about “insurrection.”

Hugh Iwanicki is a former Foreign Service officer and expert on Middle Eastern affairs.  He is the author of Shock & Alarm: What It Was Really Like at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.  Hugh brings attention to the plight of persecuted Christians throughout the world and can be reached at iwanickih@yahoo.com.

Image: scottgunn via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.

MUSLIMS WILL DESTROY FRANCE AS THEY HAVE SWEDEN AND SOON WILL ENGLAND!

Demographic Decline: France Sees Lowest Number of Births Since WWII

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AFP via Getty Images

KURT ZINDULKA

18 Jan 2024

4:20

The number of births in France has fallen to its lowest level since the Second World War in a grim indicator of Western demographic collapse.

Figures released this week from the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) reported that 678,000 babies were born in France last year, a decline of 48,000 over 2022 and the lowest of any year since 1946.

As with other countries in the West, France has long faced a declining birth rate, falling nearly every year since 2010 when 832,799 babies were born in the country, approximately 20 per cent higher than in 2023. However, according to Insee, the speed of decline has been increasing, with the birth rate standing at 1.68 children per woman in 2023, compared to 1.79 in 2022 and 1.99 in 2013.

A rate of 2.1 babies per woman is typically considered the baseline requirement for a modern nation to maintain its population rate. While France was well below this rate, the population did not in fact decline, given a 6.5 per cent decline in deaths, which stood at 631,000.

This was driven by an increase in life expectancy to 85.7 for women and 80 for men, representing a 0.6-year increase for women and a 0.7 per cent rise for men over 2022. While welcome news, the ageing population will likely put further strain on the pension and healthcare systems, with one in five people in France now being 65 years of age or older and one in ten being 75 or older.

The population, which grew by 0.3 per cent to 68.4 million, also increased due to mass migration, with 183,000 foreigners becoming residents last year. Neo-liberal governments, including in France, have often touted immigration as the solution to demographic decline and as a means to prop up their generous welfare states.

However, there has been growing resistance towards mass migration in France and throughout Europe, given the negative social and economic impacts of importing large populations of foreigners, such as devaluing the cost of labour and increased strains on government as well as the risk of terrorism, with France experiencing two Islamist terror attacks since October.

Amid growing public discontent, President Emmanuel Macron made concessions to Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally (RN) to pass immigration reform, which increases the government’s ability to deport illegals and other criminal migrants as well as reducing migration by cutting access to social welfare benefits to foreigners.

This week in a rare press conference held at the Élysée Palace, President Macron addressed the issue of demographics, which he described as the “taboo of the century”. Macron said that his government would seek to introduce a six-month “birth leave” for new parents and announced that “a major plan to combat this scourge” of declining birth rates will be forthcoming.

Rather than seeking to import foreigners to solve their demographic issues, culturally conservative European countries such as Hungary and Poland have introduced pro-family policies to help parents economically.

For example, under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) conservative government, Poland implemented a “maternal pension” to show “gratitude and respect” for women who have raised four or more children. Meanwhile, Hungary has seen success in boosting marriage and birth rates by enacting economic incentives for mothers such as granting lifetime tax exemptions for women who have four or more children.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has argued that governments throughout the West have been engaging in national “suicide” by adopting “Great Replacement” policies, a theory coined by French writer Renaud Camus, who argued that globalist politicians view their people as cogs rather than individual humans and therefore can merely be replaced with mass migration.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on X:  or e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com

EU Illegal Immigration Hits Highest Level Since 2016 Migrant Crisis

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Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images

KURT ZINDULKA

18 Jan 2024

4:08

Illegal migration into the European Union has hit its highest level since 2016 after surging by 17 per cent over last year, according to calculations from the Frontex European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

Preliminary figures released from Frontex on Tuesday showed that recorded border crossings by illegals rose to an estimated 380,000 in 2023, the highest figure recorded since 2016 amid the European Migrant Crisis following former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s unilateral decision to open the gates to mass migration.

The border agency noted that the increase witnessed last year follows a “consistent upward trend over the past three years” and was a 17 per cent jump over 2022.

According to Frontex, approximately eight in ten illegal migrants recorded entering the EU in 2023 were adult males, while just ten per cent were women and another ten per cent were minors under the age of 18. However, the number of unaccompanied minors rose by 28 per cent over the previous year, totalling more than 20,000 in 2023.

Syrians accounted for over a quarter of all illegal crossings, with 100,000 illegals from the country being recorded as entering the EU last year, the highest number among all nationalities. They were followed by illegals from Guinea and Afghanistan. Combined, the top three nationalities comprised 37 per cent of all illegal migrants who entered the bloc.

The data also found a “noticeable increase in African migrants, particularly from West Africa,” who now account for nearly half (47 per cent) of all illegals detected breaking into the European Union last year.

Frontex reported that the most active route for illegals remained the Central Mediterranean, which accounted for 41 per cent of all crossings in 2023. This was followed by the Western Balkans route at 26 per cent and the Eastern Mediterranean at 16 per cent.

Commenting on the figures, Frontex Executive Director Hans Leijtens said: “The numbers presented today show the evolving challenges we face in managing the EU’s external borders.

“We remain committed to ensuring the security and integrity of the EU’s borders. It’s equally crucial to address the humanitarian aspects of migration. These figures represent not just statistics but real people.”

The continued surge in illegal immigration into Europe is having significant political consequences, with populist parties surging across the continent and neo-liberal globalist governments scrambling to appear to be confronting the issue.

The combination of years of economic stagnation following the coronavirus lockdowns and the war in Ukraine in conjunction with growing discontent with over the billions spent across Europe on illegal migrants, has spurred victories for populist figures such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and surging polling for anti-mass migration parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Migration will likely be a major issue as over 450 million Europeans head to the polls to select the next EU Parliament in June. While globalist figures such as French President Emmanuel Macron have recently made concessions to the right and vowed to step up deportations, it is unlikely that his centrist government will be able to win back voters who have defected to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally after years of open borders policies from the establishment in Paris.

In apparent expectation of heavy losses, globalist forces throughout Europe are threatening to step up their anti-democratic efforts to “protect” democracy, with leading politicians in Berlin calling for the outright ban of the populist AfD party and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen using her speech at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos to call for increased censorship ahead of the elections.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on X:  or e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com

Uncomfortable Truths about 10/7

By Richard C. Crandall

Good grief — it’s been over three months, and writers are still expressing shock, surprise, and outrage that Muslims murdered, mutilated, raped, and tortured Jews on 10/7.  They even preface the acts with words such as “brutal,” “degenerate,” “horrific,” “monstrous,” and “savage.”  Because it will happen again, I suggest the following to prevent future shock, surprise, and outrage.

First, recognize the cause of 10/7.  Although it is comforting to believe that Hamas, a specific group in a relatively small area, was the cause of 10/7, this is incorrect.  The snarky among you will quickly respond that Hezb’allah and Iran were also responsible.  This is also incorrect.  The correct answer is that Islam was the cause of 10/7.

Second, to understand why Islam was the cause of 10/7, study its history.  Briefly, Muhammad spent the first part of his career as a prophet in Mecca, where he attracted few followers.  Even revealing the verses in the Koran on the virgins in paradise failed as a recruiting scheme.  As a failed prophet, Muhammad moved to Medina, where the verses in the Koran changed from patience and tolerance to legalization of the murder, rape, and robbery of non-Muslims.  With the new revised Islamic moral code, the number of Muhammad’s followers rapidly increased, and they started attacking caravans and raiding villages.

One of Muhammad’s first “successes” was the capture of a caravan going to Mecca, after which he ordered some of the captives beheaded.  Later, he set siege to the three Jewish tribes in Medina.  Two tribes were forced out of Medina, leaving their homes, land, and most of their possessions.  With the third tribe, Muhammad had 600–900 Jewish boys and men beheaded; the Jewish children and women became slaves, from which Muhammad selected a beautiful young recent Jewish widow for his harem.  A few years later, he attacked and set siege to a Jewish farming community.  After it surrendered, Muhammad had a man tortured by having a fire built on his chest.  Before the man died, Muhammad ordered him beheaded.  Muhammad then took the man’s beautiful young Jewish widow as a wife.

After he conquered another tribe, Muhammad’s followers became worried that the female captives they raped might become pregnant, thus lowering their ransom value.  Therefore, they asked Muhammad if, during the rape, they should practice coitus interruptus.  Muhammad told them it didn’t matter, since who would be born was predetermined.  Note that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was addressing his followers not on the immorality of rape, but on the sexual techniques they were allowed to use during the rape.

During his ten years in Medina, Muhammad ordered more than 100 attacks, expeditions, raids, and sieges.  In addition to beheadings and rapes, there are also examples reminiscent of 10/7.  In one, a woman had ropes tied to each leg.  The ropes were then attached to camels driven in opposite directions.  Similar atrocities continued after Muhammad’s death.  Sir William Muir, in his 1891 book The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall from Original Sources, summarized them in polite Victorian English by writing that as Islam spread, those opposing it suffered “cruelty and with bloodshed that went far beyond the bounds of need.”  The 10/7 attack in Israel was simply Muslims acting how Muslims have acted for 1,400 years, essentially engaging in acts of pre-civilized butchery, depravity, and savagery.

Third, to further understand why Islam was the cause of 10/7, read the Koran and the hadith reports.  According to the Noble Quran, Muslims believe that non-Muslims are cursed, diseased, dumb, evil, enemies, fools, ignorant, liars, losers, wicked, and the worst of all creatures.  They are also impure physically and spiritually.  Therefore, they should be avoided, beheaded, crucified, destroyed, fought, humiliated, killed, made war on, mocked, punished, plotted against, slaughtered, and terrorized.  Additionally, a hand and foot, from opposite sides, should be cut off.

The hadith reports document the behavior and sayings of Muhammad.  Thus, they provide Muhammad’s biography.  It is essential to be familiar with Muhammad’s biography because Muslims are commanded to follow his behavior, since he is seen as the perfect role model to follow to be admitted to paradise.  Muhammad’s biography shows that he was an assassin, bandit, murderer, pedophile, rapist, robber, slave-owner, thief, thug, and warlord.  Muhammad called for and engaged in the mass slaughter of those who refused to convert or submit to Islam.  Muhammad was also incestuous, a wife-beater, and a liar.  He also engaged in animal sacrifice.  October 7 was Muslims acting like Muhammad.

Reading the Koran and hadith reports will also provide an understanding of the mentality of the Muslims who participated in 10/7.  They believed that their behavior was a requirement for them to enter paradise, where, for eternity, they would have daily sex with 70–100 virgins.  Frequent sex would be possible because they would have perpetual erections and no fatigue, and the virgins would have the sex drive of camels in heat.  When they were not having sex, they would be seated on jeweled chairs arranged in rows or circles, where boys with perpetual youth would serve them wine from gold cups.  While seated and drinking, they would brag about what they did on 10/7.  After all, it never gets old, even for eternity, to retell the story about being ninth in line in the gang rape of a helpless young Jewish woman.  It is especially entertaining to retell the part where, after the rape, her breasts were cut off, and she was beheaded with a shovel.  The storyteller usually leaves out the rest of the story, where an Israel tank with an all-female Jewish crew ran over him.

Fourth, it is comforting to believe that the issue is about a small area of land where a solution can be achieved.  Even the status quo, with occasional periods of violence, is acceptable.  However, the truth is that it is about Islam.  Shortly before he died in 632, Muhammad told his followers, “Allah has ordered me to fight against the people till they testify that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”  Muhammad started to fulfill this command with the expulsion and annihilation of the Jewish tribes in Medina.  Muhammad’s successors quickly turned much of the Judeo-Christian world into an Islamic colony.

Fifth, the last truth of 10/7 is that what happened in Israel is not going to stay in Israel.  It can be seen in Muslim uprisings around the world.  It can be seen in the U.S., with Muslim protestors blocking traffic, terrorizing students and teachers, and threatening and forcing the cancelation of public events such as Christmas celebrations.  Muslims even caused the cancelation of a session of a state Legislature and created the need for extra security at the White House.  And they are coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

Image: Robert Couse-Baker via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Houthis, Hamas, and Humanitarian Restraint

By William Hawkins

The United States has claimed that the air strikes against Houthi military sites in Yemen are not related to the war in Gaza, and are not meant to escalate the regional confrontation with Iran. This should be seen as mere diplo-speak, because not every member of the 22-nation coalition put together by Washington to protect shipping in the Red Sea is on board with shifting from defensive to offensive operations (though most are). The Houthis are explicit in their declarations that they have been attacking both shipping and Israel in support of Hamas, who stated this round of war with its horrific and sadistic October 7 assault on Israeli civilians.

Immediately after the Hamas aggression, the Houthis mobilized their forces in Yemen to support Hamas against the Israeli counterattack into Gaza, Other Iran-backed militia groups across the region also went into action, hitting American bases over 130 times. But the Houthis are the best armed and most fanatical fighters in the Iran network outside of Hezb’allah in Lebanon. They are the Shiite minority in Sunni Yemen, which opened a civil war for control of the country in 2014 when they captured the capital, Sana’a City. This is vital to remember when Iran asserts that the U.S.-UK strikes were "a clear violation of Yemen's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a breach of international laws” or when protesters outside the White House claim we attacked Yemen. The Houthis are not Yemen (the legitimate government has moved its flag to Aden), they are a rebel group that controls about a third of the country, which unfortunately includes the Red Sea coast.

China made the connection: “The skewed stance of the US in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has led to the conflict becoming protracted and caused spillovers.” Russia warned "A large-scale military escalation in the Red Sea region could strike out the positive trends that have emerged recently in the Yemeni settlement process.” This reference is to a UN-brokered truce that has been in effect for nearly two years, renewed in August 2022. A truce which has allowed the port of Hudaydah and the Sana’a airport to operate under Houthi control to supposedly bring in humanitarian aid, but which has obviously been used to supply the Houthis with advanced weapons beyond what is used in the civil war including drones, air-defense systems, and a variety of offensive missiles from Iran. When the truce was first declared in April 2022, the U.S. State Department proclaimed, “Yemenis are demanding peace… the parties should turn their efforts to securing a lasting ceasefire and participating in an inclusive political process.” Yet, the truce has not led to any negotiated settlement. It has only allowed the Houthis to consolidate their position, rebuild, and expand their capabilities, and devise new and expanded strategies for aggression.

In the months before the truce, the Saudi-led coalition had stepped up its operations against the Houthi. As the UN reported “Recent attacks on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia indicate how the conflict in Yemen risks spiraling out of control. UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg “described the sharp increase in airstrikes, including on residential areas and civilian infrastructure in Sana’a and the crucial port city of Hudaydah… The past month has seen particularly severe shortages in fuel and oil derivatives, notably in areas controlled by Ansar Allah [the Houthi].” So, the truce was meant to save the Houthi, just as demands for a ceasefire in Gaza are meant to save Hamas.

Starting with President Barack Obama, the U.S. gave the Saudi-led coalition logistical support, a supply of weapons, intelligence reports, and aerial refueling for air strikes. In Congress, a coalition of progressive Democrats and a handful of isolationist Republicans charged that the naval blockade had caused “starvation” which in polite circles is now considered unacceptable in modern war. The premier modern strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan discussed commercial blockades as a standard use of sea power. Historians like Andrew F. Smith’s Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War have studied this strategy, which was also used effectively by the Allies in both world wars. But strategic logic has been pushed off the stage. After the Democrats captured Congress in the 2018 elections, a resolution calling for the U.S. to end all support for the Saudi-led war effort was passed but vetoed by President Donald Trump who had continued support for the Arabs fighting the Iranian proxy in Yemen.

Even before collapsing Afghanistan and opening the door to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden cut off all aid to the Saudi coalition within days of taking office. This was fully in line with progressive opinion and broke with President Trump’s hardline policy towards Iran. At a February 5, 2021 press briefing, State Department spokesperson Ned Price concluded his review of recent administration statements on Yemen by conceding that “Saudi Arabia faces genuine security threats from Yemen and from others in the region… we’ll look for ways to improve support for Saudi Arabia’s stability, to defend its territory against threats.” This reference seemed like an afterthought given that the focus of Price’s remarks was “ending all American support for offensive operations in Yemen, including relevant arms sales” and ending “our intelligence sharing arrangement with Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-led coalition.” No mention was made about the security of the Red Sea. The Houthis were also taken off the list of terrorist organizations, the reason being given that such a designation would interfere with providing humanitarian aid to Yemen, implying that at least some of that aid would go to the Houthis.

A year later, after the Houthis launched a series of attacks against Saudi Arabia, President Biden had to call King Salman to assure him that the U.S. is “firmly committed to supporting the defense of Saudi Arabia.” The State Department acknowledged “The Houthis have pursued a dangerous pattern of increasingly obstructive and aggressive actions against Yemenis, Yemen’s neighbors, and the international community.’ Yet, the U.S. remained on the defensive until this week, content to shoot down wave after wave of Houthi drones, cruise missiles and for the first time anywhere, ballistic anti-ship missiles. These latter weapons are undoubtedly Iranian weapons based on Chinese designs. Beijing has taken the lead in developing ASBMs for use against U.S. aircraft carriers. China has been supplying Iran with anti-ship missiles for decades.

The State Department has noted the violent connection of Iran, Israel, Palestine, Hamas, and the Houthis. A December 7 press release read “The Iranian regime’s support to the Houthis has enabled unprovoked attacks on civilian infrastructure in Israel and on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Attacks launched from Houthi-controlled areas have also threatened U.S. warships operating in international waters. Such attacks disrupt maritime security and impede freedom of navigation for commercial vessels, increase regional instability, and risk broadening the conflict between Israel and Hamas.” In its 2022 report on state-sponsors of terrorism, it was noted “Iran continued providing weapons systems and other support to Hamas and other U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist groups… In Bahrain [headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet], Iran has continued to provide weapons, support, and training to local Shia militant groups… In Yemen, Iran has provided a wide range of weapons, training, advanced equipment such as UAS [unmanned aerial systems], and other support to Houthi militants, who engaged in attacks against regional targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.  On at least five occasions in 2022, the U.S. Navy and partner forces interdicted vessels suspected of traveling from Iran to Yemen, with cargoes that included more than 300 tons of missile fuel components.” Yet, President Biden continued to follow a policy of “restraint” which was not reciprocated. Restraint is the current term used by progressives seeking a “less military-oriented policy” on our part, but not on the part of enemies who see restraint as a form of weakness inviting attack -- and attack they have. Yemen is thus a test case for policy failure based on unrealistic hopes that irresponsibly breed wider conflicts. Lessons of history are thus confirmed.

William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who served on the professional staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications. 

Image: USAF