Global diplomacy is now dominated by China & India's thirst for energy (which they need to import). Russia and Iran are the suppliers of this energy and have aligned with them.
Putin's desire to control the Donbas is going to become a reality and while his methods for obtaining control of that area are brutal, it's understandable since NATO and the US poked the bear. Ergo, we'll negotiate a deal and the war will end. Putin is a nasty SOB, but he's not nuts and isn't looking for a prolonged fight with the West.
Iran is entirely different. They are looking for a prolonged fight with the West and are using oil revenue which has increased 10X in the last 48 months to fund terrorism. Terrorism is their ticket to driving a wedge between Israel and its neighbors. Without their money terrorists can't operate effectively (have no weaponry).
Want to defeat terrorism in the Middle East (in particular Hezbollah) you need to cut of it's funding and Iran's ability to sell energy to China and India. You'll also need to bomb it's nuclear facilities. They get the bomb...game over.
Can we negotiate a deal to do the former with China if we supply them with energy instead? Is that in our long-term strategic interest? A few points to keep in mind:
China's economy has grown on its internal RE market (which has cratered) & on exporting to the EU and US. It needs the West to survive.
China's demographic crisis makes exporting even more critical.
So what's holding us back from working out something with China and cutting Iran off at the knees? China is run by a whack job who's not in touch with reality.
Appeasing Iran Has Failed
Obama and Biden’s effort at détente with Tehran destabilized the entire region and emboldened Hamas.
By Walter Russell Mead, WSJ
Oct. 16, 2023 6:05 pm ET
The horrors don’t stop. The latest, as casualties continue to mount across Gaza, is the accumulating evidence that the killers from Hamas lacked even the humanity to grant their victims the mercy of a quick death. In far too many cases, the victims were tortured before they were killed.
But the horror is not limited to the Middle East. Decent people everywhere, including pious Muslims and fervent supporters of the Palestinian cause, recoiled from acts of barbarity that recall the darkest moments in human history. Basic decency, however, is not universal. There are Jew haters among us. Moved by bloodlust and orgiastic fantasies of revenge, they thronged the streets and squares of Europe and marched across American campuses.
There were those in the U.S. who justified violence against people with dangerous opinions in recent years by asserting that it was right and good to punch a Nazi. Today some of those same people have embraced the central cause of the Nazi movement. Jew hatred for them is a passion so pure, so justified, that those who torture Jewish children and slaughter helpless babies are heroes. The rest of us should take note and take care.
Meanwhile, not since the Russian invasion of Ukraine has the Biden administration exploded into political, diplomatic and military action as dramatically as in the aftermath of the massacres. President Biden has addressed the nation to share the pain and anger felt by Israelis and Americans at this horrendous and historic crime. Two carrier strike groups and other American military assets will patrol the theater with the aim of both preventing more Iranian proxies and Iran itself from joining their ally Hamas. And Secretary of State Antony Blinken has conducted a whirlwind tour of the Middle East, meeting with leaders from Israel to Qatar in hopes of containing the violence.
A crucial element is missing from this response. Even now, Team Biden does not seem to have internalized the reality that the American policy of “conciliate to evacuate”—to develop a U.S.-Iranian détente that would allow the U.S. to reduce its role in the region—remains, as it has since President Obama first began to implement it, a destabilizing force in the Middle East. It has discomfited our friends, disrupted our alliances, emboldened terrorists, and provided Iran’s mullahs with the resources to turn both Hezbollah and Hamas into formidably destructive forces.
The cynicism of Iran’s mullahs and their enablers is, in the end, the most shocking. Set aside the Israeli casualties and the blood of innocent Jewish children. Those who claim to rule Iran in God’s name do not care how many Palestinians die in the service of their ambitions. They despise the Sunni faith of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas belongs, and if they could, they would persecute tomorrow the terrorists they arm today.
READ MORE GLOBAL VIEW
Hamas’s Atrocities Are a Middle East Wake-Up CallOctober 12, 2023
Hamas Attacks on Israel Are a Global Test for BidenOctober 9, 2023
A ‘Trumpier’ Second-Term Foreign PolicyOctober 2, 2023
Iran is unappeasable, but this truth is too inconvenient for the Biden administration to admit. Instead, administration spokesmen continue to minimize Tehran’s involvement with and responsibility for the murders. Iran, which at this point seems to have little fear from an administration it believes it has cowed, is more open. It makes no bones about its support for the murders in Gaza. After the attack, when it was already clear how indiscriminate the killing had been, Iran’s foreign minister embraced the head of Hamas, a man who lives in luxury in Qatar, a country that Mr. Biden last year designated a major non-NATO ally of the U.S.
Hamas must be dealt with, and the direct perpetrators of these unspeakable acts must give themselves up for trial or be killed. But justice demands and prudence requires more. While the perpetrators of these horrors came from Gaza, those ultimately responsible do not live there. It is the leaders of Hamas living in luxury in Qatar and other havens far from the poverty of Gaza who provided the organizational leadership and gave the orders. And it is the mullahs and the agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran who provided the resources, training and encouragement without which the Hamas leadership would neither have dared nor been able to unleash this evil on the world.
The truth is simple. Iran is at war with Israel and with the U.S. It does not seek compromise or accommodation. It does not want its interests respected or its grievances redressed. It wants what it says it wants: a holocaust in Israel and the destruction of the U.S.
This does not mean that we need to send an expeditionary force or a fleet of bombers. There are many ways to skin a cat. We can and should learn from our errors after 9/11. But we must be honest with ourselves. We have a war on our hands with the worst kind of enemy. Wishful thinking won’t make it go away.
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