(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Delcy y Zapatero, más allá del amor)

Many of you will not know that last Tuesday a Bolivian woman, the former constitutional president Jeanine Áñez, completed her third year in a Bolivian prison.

In lamentable conditions she is serving an unjust and unjustifiable sentence. All the charges against her are falsehoods, fabrications of a narco-communist regime. Many other patriotic Bolivians met the same fate.

What you will also not know is that one day later the former prime minister of Spain, José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, arrived in Bolivia.

Anyone who thinks he came to demand the freedom of Áñez and of the hundreds of political prisoners that the regime of Luis Arce already holds in its dictatorial and criminal drift is mistaken.

No, Zapatero came to Bolivia with Delcy Rodríguez, the one of the suitcases that we do not know how many times, in what number, and through how many airports and ports have arrived in Spain in recent years.

Delcy is a criminal drug trafficker banned in Europe, vice-president of the murderer Nicolás Maduro and a very great friend of the Spanish government. What Sánchez, Zapatero, Borrell and the rest of the socialists have with Delcy seems much more important than love.

Also with them was the symbol of narco corruption, the former Colombian president Ernesto Samper, and some other luminaries of the Puebla Group and the São Paulo Forum, the multinational of the symbiosis between the communist movement and organized crime that exploits drug trafficking.

Zapatero and his illustrious company had arrived on a goodwill mission — if that is possible with people of this ilk — a mission of reconciliation or peace among their own. For in Bolivia a war has broken out between the former president Evo Morales and President Luis Arce.

They were friends and Arce was Morales’s minister, but power has these things. Both want to command the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) and both want to control the businesses still held by a country sinking into bankruptcy, into the incompetence of its rulers, and into crime. The businesses are the mines and cocaine. And precious little else.

What matters, of course, is the main weapon for the expansion of the entire totalitarian communist movement in the subcontinent, which is cocaine. That the whole Bolivian people suffer ever more, and that its prisoners live wretchedly and die, is not what worries this gang gathered there.

What worries the Puebla Group is that wars among their own greatly harm business. Bolivia is a key country in the massive expansion of the coca business and drug trafficking.

We do not know whether the two Rodríguezes, Zapatero and Delcy, have succeeded in their mediation work. We also know that Delcy, vice-president of the most murderous and torturing regime in America today, is not moved by political prisoners.

They say Zapatero is not moved either, even though he knows about them, because he has spent a decade now in the service of his friend the murderer Maduro in all kinds of matters that are always profitable but never honorable.

Jeanine Áñez, as interim constitutional president, had handed over power to Luis Arce in an impeccable transition at a ceremony in the presence of King Felipe VI on November 8, 2020.

It took the new president only a few months to arrest his predecessor and many others who had done their duty in the violent crisis of November 2018, after the attempted electoral fraud by the communist and drug trafficker Evo Morales and his subsequent flight in the face of the popular uprising.

If Zapatero’s role is repugnant — not only in his visit to Bolivia this week but throughout his entire existence since 11-M, and of course in his very murky role as a fixer for the worst Spanish-American criminals — one must also describe as contemptible the silence on this anniversary of those responsible at the Organization of American States and the European Union, Luís Almagro and Josep Borrell.

Because it was the OAS and the EU that vouched for Áñez assuming the presidency when those ahead of her in rank refused it. In the past three years we have not once heard Borrell demand the freedom of Áñez and of the Bolivian political prisoners. Lately he seems dedicated only to insulting and defaming Israel, once again taking on that role of defender of the Iranian regime and its puppets in Gaza and Lebanon.

Josep Borrell is another who, like Zapatero, has succumbed to the charms of the São Paulo Forum and has campaigned in favor of all its candidates throughout the shameful years in which he has held the supposed representation of the EU’s foreign policy.

All of them are enemies of freedom, all of them linked to the great cartels of the FARC, the ELN, the Venezuelan government and army, the Mexican cartels that are partners of López Obrador and today the owners of half of Ecuador.

All of them have had the official support of the European Union thanks to Borrell, the Spanish government and the PSOE, utterly devoted to the Puebla Group in all its interests.

With special obscenity in the protection and subsidizing of the Cuban dictatorship with European money.

All these sad and lamentable facts would have at least one positive effect if they led Spaniards to understand the true character of the forces that govern under Sánchez.

And to reflect on the colossal danger of this invasion of Europe, through Spain, by Ibero-American organized crime with its ideological banners — a plan forged in its day by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, which began twenty years ago and is today a reality.

Because if the Spanish socialists have so very much affinity with the murderers and torturers with whom they sit down, travel and share suitcases, it should not surprise us that one day they will treat Spaniards as they are treating Cubans, Bolivians, Venezuelans or Nicaraguans.

And if someone now comes and says that in Europe that is not possible, I would answer that in the Europe of the 21st century everything is already as possible as in the 20th.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. Financial challenges will hamper Trump's election campaign)

Former US President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, faces a significant dilemma following civil judgments requiring him to pay more than $440 million. As Trump’s legal bills continue to swell — he is also the defendant in four separate criminal cases — his team is examining the options for paying the fines imposed on him amid questions about whether he will be forced to use other sources of financing, sell assets and real estate or even declare bankruptcy, an option six of his businesses have resorted to in the past.

One of Trump’s criminal cases is taking place in New York, where he is accused of making hush-money payments ahead of the 2016 election. The judge supervising the case has set March 25 as the trial’s start date, despite the objections of Trump’s lawyer, who sought to postpone it due to the former president’s competing legal and political obligations.

In Florida, Trump has been charged over his handling of classified documents upon leaving office, while in Washington and Georgia he is accused over his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

Of course, the fines Trump has been hit with threaten the financial liquidity of the former president and billionaire businessman and raise questions about his political future, as well as the fate of his real estate empire.

There are a set of possible options that Trump may resort to when paying the fines, including resorting to the Republican National Committee. His efforts to change its leadership — with the appointment of a new chair to replace Ronna McDaniel and the move of Lara Trump, his son Eric’s wife, to co-chair — are considered by some to be an indication of the possibility of Trump asking the committee to help him pay the fines. However, this would pose a threat to his and the Republican Party’s chances in November’s elections.

If the funds requested in the New York civil fraud case are not paid, the ruling becomes effective immediately and the city can begin seizing Trump’s assets. The judge could order Trump to produce his bank account records or directly seize his proceeds. Even if an appeal is filed against the rulings, it is not common for judges to reduce the fines imposed. Trump also cannot delay paying the fines until after an appeal is heard, as he must place the money in the court’s account. If Trump truly cannot afford these provisions, he should declare bankruptcy.

Forbes magazine estimates the value of Trump’s New York real estate at $690 million. His total wealth is estimated at $2.6 billion, including $870 million-worth of golf clubs and resorts, $190 million in real estate outside of New York City and $640 million in “liquidity and personal assets.” So, there might be a possibility of him paying the fines from cash and personal assets.

One recent report suggested that Trump may resort to selling something, but it does not necessarily have to be real estate, as he could sell some investments or other assets.

He has denied any fraud and denounced the exploitation of the judiciary against a presidential candidate who is ahead in the opinion polls.

It is noteworthy that Trump was given a 30-day implementation period following the ruling on Feb. 16, during which he has to either deposit the fine into the court’s account or obtain a bond. Even if he had $440 million in cash, which is unclear, paying the penalties could wipe out his accounts. Another solution is a GoFundMe campaign that seeks to raise the sum that Trump owes. The campaign has already raised more than $1.3 million. It is being organized by Elena Cardone, a woman from Florida who describes herself as “a mother and an ardent supporter of American values.”

Finally, in comparison to what the Republican Party’s front-runner faces, the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee have the advantage of being able to raise money together, which their Republican competitors cannot do at this moment. President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party and their allies started the 2024 election year with a whopping $140 million in cash, including $46 million available to Biden’s presidential campaign and $21 million to the Democratic National Committee, in addition to $24 million from the Biden-aligned political action committee Future Forward.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

India is coming of age – already the world’s most populous nation and democracy, by 2030 at the latest it will become the world’s third largest economy. Prime Minister Modi has set the pace and has become the personal embodiment of India’s success. He leads a self-confident nation, albeit one facing many challenges, and has established his position on the world stage. Modi has shifted India from its old “non-alignment” of the Nehru era to “multi-alignment”. The decades-long links with Russia now include access to oil at discount prices while continuing as a major recipient of Russian defence equipment. But now France has become India’s second largest external defence supplier after Russia, while relations with the United States have steadily improved in the face of the rising challenge of China.

There has now been a complete turnaround in India’s relations with the USA. Previously “due to India’s ideological proclivities as much as strategic calculations” the US was long regarded with suspicion by India. In 2005 Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, was misguidedly refused a visa to the USA. Eighteen years on he was being welcomed to the White House on a state visit, his eighth visit as Prime Minister. US-Indian bilateral trade has increased tenfold since 2000 – from $20 billion to over $200 billion today, making the US India’s biggest individual trading partner.

Four years ago, President Trump and Prime Minister Modi vowed to strengthen a United States-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership, reaffirming the pledge to support the transfer to India of advanced U.S. military and civil technology and India’s permanent membership on a reformed UN Security Council. Last October, President Biden reemphasised this commitment, with cooperative ventures in defence manufacturing and a whole range of advanced civil high technologies.

Foreign Minister Jaishankar, who had been India’s ambassador to Washington 2013-15 following his time in Beijing, readily admits that the hard realities of today’s world mean that the US is now seen as a key partner. While India’s multi-alignment and quest for strategic autonomy mean that it will not bind itself as closely as the US may wish there will be ever-closer mutual commitment in the years ahead. The growing political investment in the Quad, the Indo-Pacific quadrilateral security dialogue embracing India, the US, Japan and Australia, is evidence of this new alignment of geo-political outlook.

In this increasingly transactional world, India will want to see what its friends bring to the table, what capabilities they have, and how reliable they will be. Instead of just talking about China, it is time that the West paid far greater attention to India and its growing capabilities. India is potentially the most vital ally of the West as the world becomes more clearly divided between old-fashioned, aggressive autocracies and the liberal democracies that seek peace with freedom and a better world.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Von der Leyen, notre amour)

The People’s Party in the European Parliament now has its candidate to preside over the European Commission, and it is the current president, Ursula von der Leyen. A Rhineland German, who was a minister under Angela Merkel — first highly controversial in the Ministry of Family, then an uncontroversial catastrophe in the Ministry of Defense — she was a last-minute compromise that Macron and Merkel pulled out of the hat in 2019 after many other failed options.

The People’s Party seems very pleased with the record, because it is putting her forward again. Even though in 2019 she was elected by only 9 votes out of 706, and all thanks to the naive Polish conservatives who believed her promise that at last, with her, the European Commission would respect a right-wing government in Poland. They voted in her favor and against the vote of all their colleagues in the ECR group, among them VOX, and very soon they understood the terrible mistake of having believed this German woman who called herself non-sectarian and open to all ideas and contributions.

The truth is that, in payment for that candid vote in favor, Von der Leyen has been the instigator of a policy of harassment, defamation, disinformation and economic blockade against the conservative government of Poland, until she managed, with Germany’s help, to bring it down. Today Poland is governed by the so-called Civic Platform (OP) of Donald Tusk in alliance with socialists and communists. Yes, Von der Leyen has achieved that historic feat of getting the communists to govern in Poland again. Mind you, in alliance with the partners of the PP and the PSOE.

The seizure of government by Donald Tusk — like Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a man from Von der Leyen’s ranks — has taken place with uproar, the storming of the media, the detention and intimidation of opponents, and the worst disinformation campaign there has been in Poland since General Wojciech Jaruselski left. But Von der Leyen has now gone to Poland and none of the brutal abuses of Tusk’s new government against the new opposition has troubled her. And she has announced to the head of government and his socialist and communist partners that she will shower them with goods, with billions of euros — all that money she had irregularly blocked from the previous government in order to mobilize the electorate against it.

Von der Leyen deceived the Poles, was elected by nine votes and suddenly became the replica of a Greta Thunberg advanced in years, with incendiary speeches against denialism and the far right. The far right being, for her, the conservatives, among them the Poles who had given her their vote in exchange for promises of pluralism and respect. Denialism includes all those who oppose the social engineering inspired by the radical environmentalism and climate hysteria of the Greens and by the interventionism and bureaucratic centralism of the socialists. Who triumph thanks to that unconditional adherence of the European People’s Party under the command of Mrs. Von der Leyen.

Von der Leyen has been the mother of the Green Deal, the implacable guardian of the drift toward a centralist state in which there is ever less subsidiarity and ever more mass controls from Brussels through a web of regulations, laws and directives that make life agonizingly difficult for some sectors of the population and absolutely impossible for others. The social-democratic, environmentalist and woke arrogance of this supposed German Christian Democrat has created the greatest disaffection ever felt toward the European Union. And today even her own party, which has spent all five years of the legislature without protesting the terrible direction policy had taken against agriculture, livestock farming, the agri-food industry, industry in general, research, energy and transport, and all the sectors affected by this regulatory frenzy.

Von der Leyen is not to blame for the fact that the People’s Party and the Socialists vote practically the same, always, in the European Parliament. In as much as 89% of the votes in this legislature, even if now, before the elections, the People’s Party is beginning to find fault with the automatic following of socialists, liberals and greens. Von der Leyen is indeed to blame for having led the Commission and that majority toward a centralist, interventionist and eco-climatic-hysterical ideological radicalism that does infinite harm to the nations.

In Von der Leyen’s favor, it must be said that her radicalism and despotism have done much to open the eyes of ever broader sectors of European societies. And her selection as the European leader of the various nations’ people’s parties, including the Spanish PP, makes it very clear that her intention is to continue with the policy that is causing endless disasters in Europe. The electoral forecasts suggest that Europeans have noticed. The only groups rising in the polls are the two to the right of the PP, which are the ECR with Vox and the Polish conservatives of PiS and Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia on one side, and the ID with Le Pen’s French, the Lega and the AfD on the other. All the rest, including the PP of Von der Leyen and Feijóo, are falling.

That being so, many movements can be expected on the European right, which for the first time can form a majority leaving out socialists, liberals, greens and communists. What is clear is that the PP is heading toward a rupture between those in its ranks who still have something conservative about them and those who are openly social-democratic. And it is clear that Von der Leyen will not count on the votes of the Polish conservatives this time.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

By: Ahmed Zawitey, Director General of Kurdistan 24 Media Foundation

Kurdistan’s Territory and Population

I am not merely referring to Greater Kurdistan, which extends between more than four countries in the Middle Eastern region: Turkey in the southeast, Iran in the northwest, Iraq in the north, and Syria in the northeast. It also extends, accordingly, into parts of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

These areas encompass nearly half a million square kilometers. However the global Kurdish population, inclusive of Europe and America, exceeds 45 million, per legitimate Kurdish sources.

For the purpose of brevity, my focus in this article entails the area of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, which is almost half its real size in area and population in this country, more specifically, the areas under the administrative governance of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq.

The area of this region is 45 thousand square kilometers, and its population is nearly 7 million, not including the so-called disputed areas between Baghdad and Erbil, according to Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution. Such areas are in close proximity to the region administered by the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Amidst Complex Geography and Tense Security

When reflecting upon its narrow border, the Iraqi Kurdistan region, which is geographically complex, politically and security tense, threatened by all its neighbors, north and south, east and west, a startling truth presents itself regarding how the region has been exposed for more than seventy years to twentieth century wars between the Kurdish movement demanding its rights to self-rule in Iraq and the successive ruling regimes in Iraq. Such struggles spanned from the monarchy in the forties and fifties, through the two slaves, Karim Qassem and Salam Arif in the sixties, and then Saddam Hussein in the seventies and eighties. Upon further scrutiny of historical turmoil, a question emerges – How did this region manage to endure for more than 32 years?

Despite acute obstacles, it transformed into the most stable region in Iraq, in terms of security and economic development, particularly after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 by American forces. In Iraq, this metamorphosis involved rebounding from a war diverse in its complexity – from resistance against the occupier, to terrorist operations targeting every urban area (including land and people), a sectarian struggle, the collapse of prominent Iraqi elites (mainly Sunnis) to the era of ISIS, which occupied a third of Iraq and left it a devastated area, between 2014 to 2017.

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The Kurdish of the Present Remember History

After the end of the war on ISIS and Baghdad’s resulting euphoric feeling of victory, as the government, the army and armed militias were at the height of their power.

Historically, Saddam and his army after the end of the eight-year war with Iran in 1988, felt similar levels of euphoria. However, he carried out the Anfal operations, consisting of invading Kurdistan, bombing it with chemical weapons, destroying 4,500 villages, and kidnapping more than 180 thousand Kurdish citizens. Said citizens were buried alive in the deserts of the center and the south. Legitimate Kurdish sources convey the armed Kurdish movement was obliterated in totality.

When the Kurdish side is not strong in many aspects, it remains strong in terms of its historical memory, which preserves images of tragedies that are replicated from one decade to another, a memory that led him to feel that a threat similar to what happened in 1988 was returning again from the south. Hence the hastened step to proceed with a referendum on its independence from Iraq on September 25, 2017 was to eradicate this ever-present threat. Unfortunately, Kurdish expectations were proven wrong, unsurprising however if we consider the lack of international support and threats from neighboring countries who sought to strangle the region within itself! After the referendum, initiatives were taken in order to preserve what remained of the region and its powers, but hostile steps by Baghdad against the region continued and intensified, resulting in the following results:

1. The Kurdish role in Baghdad was weakened by comparison to the strengthened of the role of the Shiite parties which dealt hostilely with the Kurdistan region.

2. The Federal Court took negative measures against the region and withdrew its powers. The negative impact of these decisions involved:

* Canceling the Kurdistan Parliament’s ability to hold elections, the date of which has not yet been set. Indeed, the court, itself, is postponing the holding of these elections under various pretexts, and thus, the Iraqi Kurdistan region is currently undergoing a period of legal vacuum.

* Preventing the Iraqi Kurdistan region from exporting its oil, thus leaving the region without a budget.

3. Not disbursing the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s share of the Iraqi budget, including disbursing employee salaries, thus harming the economy in the region, which was in a better condition than the rest of the Iraqi provinces more than a decade ago.

Pretexts to Disturb Stability

The process of hostility towards the stable, safe, and most developed region in Iraq did not stop at what happened above. Rather, it reached the most precarious step threatening this region, which is the bombing of it and its civilian facilities by bomb-laden drones via militias affiliated with Iran. The matter escalated to a more dangerous level through Iran’s strategic targeting, i.e., the regional capital, Erbil, was attacked with ballistic missiles under the pretext of Israeli Mossad sites.

The Kurdistan region vehemently denied Mossad affiliation in detail, and its position was confirmed by the security and parliamentary investigation committees which were formed in Baghdad. These committees confirmed that the bombed site was the home of businessman Peshraw Dizayee. Of note is that businessman Sheikh Baz, whose residence was also identically bombarded by ballistic missiles a year and a half prior, had likewise been accused of Mossad affiliation.

Peshraw Dizayee, however, succumbed from the attack, along with members of his family. Sheikh Baz survived his attack due to him not being present during the strike on his house. Peshraw Dizayee held a predominant role in transforming Erbil into the most developed city in Iraq in the last twenty years.

The second accusation leveled at Erbil by Iran and its allies in Iraq is the presence of American bases in the region, but what is conspicuously striking is that no drone directly targeted these bases they are referring to. The casualties were centered on Erbil and its citizens.

Iran’s Deceptive Targeting of Erbil

In short, the Kurdistan Regional Government (the KRG) is the only region in Iraq which has not yet submitted to Iranian-directed demands, as opposed to the Shiite and some Sunni groups in Iraq; also, despite the submission of a Kurdish party competing with the administration of Erbil, namely the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Talabani’s party (in Sulaymaniyah). Erbil, specifically the Kurdistan Democratic Party, headed by the leader Masoud Barzani, has eluded Iran until now.

Iran’s broadcasted reasons for its basis of bombing purported Israeli Mossad headquarters are misleading. Rather, it knows before anyone else that they are not Mossad sites. In fact, it could be argued that if such Mossad sites existed, Iran would not have dared bomb them.

Behind its apparent declared messages are other secret messages, which are to forcefully align Erbil, specifically the Kurdistan Democratic Party and its head, Masoud Barzani, to its side, just like other Iraqi Shiite and Sunni leaders. When Iran achieves this, it will ensure the formation of the Shiite crescent extending from Qom, through Iraqi Kurdistan, all the way to Qamishli in Syria.

Iran’s intent is the crescent will have safe passage, which cannot occur if this crescent passes through central or even southern Iraq. Reaching the Mediterranean Sea thus severs Turkey’s influence and influence in Iraq through Erbil and through the Kurdistan Democratic Party, in addition to inflicting a loss on America by removing its strong local ally, which is the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Killing Two Birds with One Stone

By bombing Erbil, Iran aims to kill two birds with one stone. Its reasons are two-fold. It regards the Iraqi Kurdistan region to be an impediment to its desire for regional control. Secondly, it sends a posturing message to the Americans about the range of distances that Iranian missiles can travel and the accuracy of the target of these missiles. These missiles fell less than one kilometer from the American Consulate in Erbil, which is considered the largest American consulate in existence, and less than five kilometers from the American military base inside Erbil Airport.

A Diplomatic Message in response to a Military Pronouncement

Iran’s military message led the United States to deliver a diplomatic message to Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, the content of which has not yet been revealed, but leaks indicate that the message is about the ongoing negotiations between the two sides regarding the steps of the American withdrawal from Iraq, and the threat of the return of ISIS if that occurs, and the transformation of the relationship between the two parties, from being a relationship of allies, and the Americans militarily supporting the Iraqi side, to a normalized relationship between the two countries. The American message to Iraq, so quickly and coincidentally after the bombing of Erbil, is indicative of a response to the Iranian threat to its forces in Iraq.

The Iraqi Foreign Minister exhibited great interest in this message, declaring that it was an important message, which subsequently was followed by a meeting of the Iraqi Council of Ministers. This means that the Iraqi and American sides gave positive signals about the negotiations to shift the mission of the American forces from the fact that the two parties are allied and that the American forces are present at Iraqi request to merely establish bilateral relations between two countries.

The Iraqi governments, firstly, and the American governments, secondly, wanted, with their positive signals, to reassure the Shiite groups that are demanding the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, as well as to reassure the Iranian side in order to stop sending drones and missiles towards American targets in the region, until the withdrawal steps are achieved, which will take time.

Iranian Proxies Decline the Message

The armed militias inside Iraq, which send explosive drones to the regions they consider allied with the Americans, in Iraq (Kurdistan Region) and Syria (self-administered areas), showed that they did not receive the American message positively, announcing they will not follow this message and will not give it credence, and shall continue targeting American sites.

It is an indirect message from Iran to the Americans that establishing normalized bilateral relations is not enough. Iran’s goal is more than that – to perhaps to scare the Americans away from taking any preventative measures against Iran or bombing Iranian sites.

Thus, an indirect war ensues (which exceeds the limits of the Cold War) – between Iran and the Americans. It takes place on lands which do not belong to either of the two countries, but rather on land that is considered the weakest link at the center of the conflict between the two major powers. Iran may want to preoccupy the Americans, exhaust them, and exhaust them with the intent of keeping them away from a direct war with Iran or strikes inside Iran, and it has succeeded in doing so thus far. Nevertheless, it perceives its easiest and ultimate goal to entail the complete surrender of the Kurdistan region to the Iranian will.

The Return of ISIS

For the Americans, the matter is not limited to this. When Iran is able to forcefully send direct and indirect threatening messages, the Americans also have their own way of responding. In the message they sent to Iraq alluding to the danger of the return of ISIS, this is interpreted to mean that if the Americans withdraw their forces from Iraq and the phase of the alliance between them ends, then the Americans are paving the way for the return of ISIS! Or we can call it the second phase of ISIS.

In the eyes of the Americans, just as Iran is confronting them with loyalist groups and an indirect war, they can take a similar step, which is to pave the way for the return of ISIS to fight the groups loyal to Iran, and perhaps in the future, an ISIS war inside Iran itself, similar to the last operation that killed more than a hundred people inside Iran. Perhaps there are signs in this meaning. When ISIS returns, the Americans and the international coalition will not intervene as they did previously. They will leave it to ISIS to do what it wants without air defense against it. The Americans will say to both sides: Go and fight each other. We remain on the sidelines.

What about Iraq and the Kurdistan region?

The longer the political and security situation between the Americans and Iran remains as status quo, the more this will affect the Iraqi internal situation, and the problems that exist between Baghdad and Erbil will continue sans a solution. Therefore, the Iraqi Kurdistan region finds itself a victim of this situation, as the region has reached its weakest stage in comparison to more than ten years ago.

But if a cat is trapped in a narrow corner, beaten and hurt, and does not find a way to escape, it will inevitably jump towards its attacker’s face. The region also sees itself as being trapped in a tight corner and exposed to material, moral, military and political blows. It has started waving the cards it possesses, as it always declares that it possesses them. Among these cards may be the threat of ending the freezing of the results of the referendum that took place seven years ago, in which more than 90% of the region’s citizens voted. The citizens are in favor of independence, but this will depend on several factors, the most important of which are:

1. The Americans support this option, and this is not excluded if the Iraqi government continues to request the Americans to withdraw, and Iran and the Iranian militias continue their policies towards the region and the Americans.

2. Turkey’s support for this option in exchange for signing alliance cooperation between Turkey and the region, so that the region fully joins the Turkish decision to adopt its agendas in the region. There is no choice left for Turkey if Iran continues its hostility to the region, except for the region to withdraw to its side because the region represents an important depth for Turkey.

3. International, American, and perhaps Turkish permission for the region to re-export its oil for Baghdad has continued to prevent the export of this oil and the region has remained without a budget.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Pánico y mentira)

They are in panic. So is the current majority in the European Parliament, that social-democratic two-party system of the People’s Party and the Socialists which, together with the Greens and some other invited leftist, has held the total, never-questioned hegemony in the institution’s history.

They are in panic in the European Commission and in the governments of the countries that have always controlled EU policy and that are reeling from one failure to another, as is the case with Germany and France.

In Germany, the three parties of the Berlin government (SPD, Greens and FDP) today barely add up to 20% in the polls. And in the three states holding elections in September, all three could vanish from the parliaments. Meanwhile the advance of the AfD seems unstoppable; in some states it is already the leading force and in the rest the second, behind the CDU.

And in France there are already polls giving victory to Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National (RN) even in the second round. Both the AfD and RN are in the Identity and Democracy group, which sits to the right of the ECR, the European Conservatives and Reformists, the group that includes VOX, Fratelli d’Italia and Poland’s Law and Justice party.

Exactly four months before the European elections of June 9, these two groups, ECR and ID, are the only ones growing while all the others lose seats — the European PP, Socialists, Renew, Greens and Communists. The fall of some is dramatic. And the growth forecast for ECR and ID is spectacular.

That being so, the traditional parties, all of social democracy — in which one must include the People’s Party which, as Esteban González Pons says, «governs Europe in coalition with the Socialists and the Greens» — are desperately looking for ways to confront conservative forces that, for the first time in history, threaten their hegemony.

They did not expect this conservative tsunami and now they seek weapons to try to keep dictating everything in the EU — they, the signatories of the Green Deal, that piece of social-engineering nonsense against which, of the Spanish votes, only those of Vox were cast.

They are aligned in defense of Agenda 2030, «our gospel» in the emphatic expression of another MEP and leader of the Spanish People’s Party, former minister José Manuel Margallo.

Cordons sanitaires work against minorities, but not against governing parties. And that business of calling everyone who is fed up with the policies made by the majority parties «far right» no longer works either.

Not even against the AfD have the government campaigns in Germany taken effect — campaigns that have resorted to unheard-of fabrications of supposed coups d’état and fanciful conspiracies of deportation plans, all grotesque for being implausible.

They have even called government demonstrations «against the far right», cheered and celebrated by the chorus of the German media that march out their talking points with Prussian discipline.

They want to try censorship, and the European Commission is assembling a sinister set of arguments to try to veto or amputate the networks that do not apply the filters they want.

They have it in for X, the former Twitter, where Elon Musk, after buying it outright, abolished the iron-fisted leftist censorship that prevailed.

Thierry Breton, the great chieftain of the French and European telecommunications industry, now turned Commissioner for the Internal Market (someone will have to tell me how such conflicts of interest are digested in a man who regulates for all the big companies of his friends, his former partners and employees), has become a Savonarola of social-democratic political correctness who threatens every dissenter.

Now they want to turn what they dislike into hate crimes. Criticizing illegal and uncontrolled immigration could be a hate crime, as could denouncing the evident and brutal relationship between illegal immigration and crime, or condemning the policy that promotes sex-change operations among children and adolescents.

Alongside defamation, the cordons sanitaires, censorship and the hate crime, they have set in motion another device — of course also a trick — which they intend to intensify ahead of the elections.

It is their supposedly well-intentioned «fight against antisemitism and Islamophobia». The farce is complete because antisemitism and Islamophobia are presented as if they existed equally and were the same thing to be combated. Which is radically false.

It is true that Europe has a very grave problem of antisemitism which, to everyone’s shame, once again makes Europe a continent where grave dangers lie in wait for Jews for the mere fact of being Jews.

But European antisemitism today clearly has two origins. One antisemitism we import daily, with borders open to the illegal and uncontrolled entry of millions of haters of Jews. Who are, by the way, also consummate haters of Christians, though they display that less where they do not hold sway. The persecutions of Christians do not for the moment take place in Europe, though they are numerous and monstrous in their death toll, for example in Africa.

But the imported antisemitism has already lost all barrier of shame in Europe, and in the past months we have seen crowds of Muslim immigrants in the streets of the big cities demanding the extermination of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

Then there is the modern antisemitism of the left, disguised as anti-Zionism but as aggressive and fanatical as the other.

It springs from unconditional hatred of Israel, is allied with all the enemies of the Jewish state and has become widespread in the parties of the left.

In the past there was a democratic left so favorable to Israel that it even held it up as a model; today that left no longer exists.

In an inverse development, the antisemitism of the Catholic right, very widespread in the past among the popular classes, is today marginal, confined to fundamentalist and obscurantist groups.

In the Spanish left that antisemitism has soared, and there are flagrant examples such as the professional Israel-haters that are Pedro Sánchez, celebrated by the Hamas terrorists, or his minister Sira Rego, who leads pro-terrorist demonstrations in Madrid in favor of the disappearance of Israel.

And here is the trap that the European Commission and the entire shrinking and terrified social-democratic majority wants to spring ahead of the European elections.

With the mendacious and intellectually contemptible equating of the really existing antisemitism with the supposed Islamophobia, they want to strangle what is the crucial debate ahead of the elections, alongside social engineering, the Green Deal, the lack of democracy and subsidiarity in the EU, and the meddling, authoritarian drift: immigration and the identity of the European nations.

«Islamophobia» as a problem is precisely an invention of that antisemitic left, to intimidate Europeans and thus prevent their reactions and protests against the invasion they are suffering.

If the stigma of «fascist», «far-rightist» or «Nazi» has always served the left very effectively to intimidate and silence truths, Islamophobia is the war cry to stop European societies from reacting and taking measures and decisions in defense of their identity.

They want to force them to accept the unacceptable with this invasion. And they want to discredit this struggle for security, legality and Western civilization. In Europe there are no assaults by Christians on Muslims. There is daily news of crimes and violence or intimidation against Europeans by immigrants arrived from the Muslim world.

It is a fact that millions of immigrants have not come to integrate but to a territorial conquest that in some European regions is well advanced. Many Muslim leaders already take it for granted, and it is carried out by way of both the birth rate and open borders.

And if Bumedian said it decades ago, today Erdogan says it about «his armies» in Holland or Germany, and they say it in the mosques in the Middle East as in London, Paris or Brussels.

Let us all be very clear, in the face of these traps of a social democracy in panic, that the rejection of invasive attitudes is not hatred of any ideology or religion. It is the self-defense of those who are invaded and are not defended by their rulers, who cheer on, finance and open the doors to the invader.

The struggle of self-defense is therefore directed today not against the immigrant but against the false defenders of the nations, who are the rulers that betray their interests and practice a policy of conscious destruction of national identities. And that is what is at stake in the June elections.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) now warns that Iran has enough nuclear material to make several atomic bombs. Iran is the only non-nuclear weapon state to enrich uranium to near full weapons-grade levels. Iran continues to deny inspectors access to its facilities to verify that Iran is, as it claims, complying with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—to which it acceded under Iran’s last Shah, Reza Pahlavi.

In 2012 I published a scenario titled The Day America Died. Set in April 2013, it had Iran destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa (intentionally), and render all Jerusalem uninhabitable (unintentionally; it only wanted to destroy West Jerusalem). Israel launches a retaliatory nuclear strike. The first-ever nuclear war sets off mass panic in Western capitals, causing a global economic crash, disintegration of our alliances, and spurring rapid nuclear proliferation. The likely effects of such an attack are supported by this summary of the radii of various kinds of destruction generated by detonations of atomic (A-bomb) and thermonuclear (H-bomb) weapons.

I intended my scenario as a warning to anyone who might think that the U.S. would survive the destruction of Israel largely intact, showing in graphic detail how America would be irremediably devastated. Recent events show that the risk of an Iran nuclear strike against Israel are growing, with no effective action being taken by the Biden administration.

Consider:

(1) Team Biden undermines an Israeli prime minister it detests, whilst making no effort to bring down the Iranian clerical fascist regime;

(2) Team Obama hailed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as blocking all of Iran’s four paths to a nuclear weapon;

(3) After U.S intelligence discovered Iran’s violations of the JCPOA, President Trump withdrew from the deal;

(4) The belief that a nuclear-armed Iran can be deterred is highly dubious;

(5) Israel’s small size and population—its consequent lack of geostrategic depth—means it cannot survive as a functioning country after even a small number of nuclear detonations on or over its major cities;

(6) Iran’s threat to Israel is real and growing (see my recent TAS article), and thus Iranian leaders may vastly underestimate the devastation they would face after a nuclear attack on Israel, tempting them to strike;

(7) It is hardly coincidental that Iran accelerated its uranium enrichment in November 2020, after Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

No American leader will say, openly, that America would survive the destruction of Israel. But allowing Iran to arrive at the cusp of nuclear weapons status, given the fallibility of assessments as to clandestine advances in nuclear weapons development, recklessly risks America’s future as a free, prosperous, society. If our country seems divided now, after a nuclear Holocaust in Israel our country will be torn asunder.

Let Israeli prime minister Netanyahu have the last word—which should be taken as a final warning:

Our fight is your fight.. . . part of the larger struggle between the pro-American forces in the Middle East and the anti-American terror axis led by Iran. [If Iran gets nuclear weapons], every American will be held hostage to an ideological enemy with an implacable hatred for America. If we lose, you lose. If we win, you win.

Bottom Line. It increasingly appears that the administration intends to pursue its twin Mideast obsessions: making a deal with Iran, and forcing Israel to accept a West Bank + Gaza Palestinian state, run by the Palestine Authority or its successors. Two terrorist statelets and Iran’s longtime proxy, Hezbollah, effectively controlling Lebanon will collectively surround Israel. It will fatally undermine America’s security position in the Mideast, and hand Iran an unearned spectacular triumph. This will end any serious efforts to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold, and possibly lead to the full horror detailed in my 2012 scenario. If such comes to pass, America will never recover its position as leader of the free world. Hell will break loose globally, with sauve qui peut the emergent disorder of the day.

John Wohlstetter is author of Sleepwalking With the Bomb (Discovery Institute Press, 2d. ed. 2014)

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. La farsa antifascista ya no funciona)

In the German state of Saxony, the new parliament and government will be voted on in September. Current polls give figures that keep the federal government and the German and European Union social-democratic elites from sleeping. Because, according to all of them, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would win 35% of the vote and keeps growing.

Meanwhile the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz would get 6% and falling.

Faced with such a situation, the best idea that occurs to a part of the SPD and to the shrewd analysts of the “progressive” media — which since the era of Angela Merkel are already 98% of all the country’s media, with a uniformity that recalls terrible times — is that the party 36% of voters want to vote for must be banned, in order to prevent the disappearance of the one that has 6% and that perhaps is already at 3% today and without parliamentary representation.

It is true that in the AfD there are far-right elements. In some regions more than in others. Although, as a member of parliament from this party told me last week, “the radicalization is not taking place within the AfD but throughout German society.”

It is the betrayed voters of the big parties, both the CDU and the SPD, who increasingly join a party that has neither a leadership nor a very developed program but that defends the exact opposite of what the traditional parties are doing.

That is enough for more and more Germans. Because the massive impositions, restrictions and regulations of the social engineering advocated by the social-democratic majority of the two-party system of Berlin and Brussels has definitively led to the rupture of the consensus that, for better or worse, German society had maintained since the postwar period.

The sacrifices demanded of the population and the destruction that immigration, eco-climatic fanaticism and the consequent social, business and economic degradation have caused have already broken that basic agreement of the federal republic. “In Germany anything can now happen.”

That is why the political and media class and the big corporations that had adhered to the ideological drift imposed by parties initially in the minority on the two big ones, CDU and SPD, are in panic. And with the entire left in free fall, they pull out of their sleeve the option of a ban.

Fortunately there are still judges in Germany, as was said long ago after the Reichstag trial. There are also still jurists who are something more than the Bolaños gang that has invented cuddly terrorism.

They have already warned the public and political powers of the CDU/SPD/FDP and Green social-democratic consensus that trying to outlaw the AfD is going to cause them many more problems than it supposedly solves.

In the AfD there are ultra-rightists, but there are no terrorists, nor do they carry murderers on their lists, nor do they have convicted and pardoned coup-plotters, nor embezzlers, nor defendants accused of wanting to destroy the federal republic with the Kremlin’s help.

The German basic law has many defects, as has been seen in Germany itself and in all the countries that have gone on copying it, such as Spain.

As a principle it is inadvisable to copy the laws of defeated countries that are still partially or totally occupied, because they may have little respect for voters. And that is what happens with the party state, in which the guardians of the parties are protected from the opinions, options and real will of the people.

Those who ruled Germany when that text was drafted did not trust the German people much. The truth is that outlawing a party is difficult if it has not committed proven and serious crimes as an entity.

And although the German secret services devote themselves with relish to searching for such offenses on the government’s orders, the truth is that when they want to stir up sentiment, with the help of the media, against the AfD, they have to invent, exaggerate and manipulate some very peculiar stories. Whereby they demonstrate how weak their arguments are beyond the artificial “anti-fascist” hysteria that, through governmental channels, journalism is tasked with generating.

As has been the case with last weekend’s demonstrations, called by parties and media against the supposed “monstrous” conspiracy meeting of some “ultra-rightists,” among them two members of the AfD, who near Berlin were talking about the deportation of immigrants.

The meeting, which an obscure outlet — now known to live on official funding and to have fed on material from the intelligence services — has tried to present as “the secret Wannsee meeting,” when it was not at Wannsee and was private, not secret, in an obscene evocation of the Wannsee Conference at which in 1942 the Nazi leadership decided “the final solution,” the extermination of European Jews.

The truth is that while the media had tried to hide or minimize the massive farmers’ demonstrations for a whole week in an unprecedented mobilization, the pro-government demonstrations against the AfD were modest and did not exceed the usual left-wing ones.

And the AfD has kept rising, and a spectacular increase in memberships is being recorded of people who support the AfD out of rejection of the other parties and of everything Olaf Scholz’s three-party government does.

And Olaf Scholz’s government is a sleepwalking body that has neither objectives nor plans, nor agreements nor cohesion nor scarcely any hope of finishing the legislature. And European elections are coming in which, for the first time in history, a broad majority to the right of the socialist party is being forecast. In a parliament in which the European People’s Party will no longer have the pretext of having no alternative but to always vote with the left.

In the last Strasbourg plenary the People’s Party and the socialists went together in 94% of the votes. From June 9 on, the members of the EPP will have their existential dilemma open: whether they are going to vote with a broad right with the ECR groups (European Conservatives and Reformists) and ID (Identity and Democracy) or go definitively over to social democracy and accept the loss of parties and voters who do not want to follow them on that adventure.

Hence the German panic is being transferred to other capitals and also to Brussels. We are entering a new era and, of course, the social-democratic elites are not going to save themselves by banning the large majorities that are being generated in most European nations of very dedicated and active resistance against the leftist, eco-climatic hysterical drift of Agenda 2030, of woke fanaticism and anti-Western and anti-national fury.

If they attempt that path, a scenario of extensive civil conflict quickly opens up.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Pseudoperiodismo y pseudodemocracia)

Many scenes are deeply shameful in Spain today. Every day we are served images that look like set-ups designed to humiliate and embarrass Spaniards. Starting with any appearance by the President of the Congress, Francina Armengol. But one that ought to generate, besides shame, a great deal of horror is without doubt one that has been repeated, in which we see in the Parliament’s press room a young journalist ask a question of a government official. Or of that grotesque figure, unfortunately representative of his kind, who is Pachi López. And immediately afterward we see the majority of colleagues get up after hearing the questioned politician hurl some disqualification, insult or impertinence at the journalist who asked the question.

All as one, they obey the dictate of the politician who declares the press conference closed with the act of contempt toward a colleague whom none of the other journalists support or stand by. When the last question, that of the scorned one, being the most uncomfortable, is always the most pertinent of all. Before this scene, and for probably half an hour, one after another the journalists have asked the questions the politician expected and that they brought on assignment, and some will have helped the member of the government to place his message better on his preferred terms.

Now the government “asks for protection” from the Press Associations so that they shield the executive from what it calls “pseudo-media.” To be clear, “pseudo-media” are the ones that have those solitary journalists who ask the questions that are not welcome. There was a time when it was understood that true journalism was to publish what power did not want published. Today the journalism of the majority is to publish what power dictates so that the company can know it will receive its slice of the public-money pie to pay the staff and allow itself some indulgence. But it is also to denounce, accuse and harass the colleagues who still hold that concept of journalism, which is to ask power what it does not want to hear and to expose everything power wants to hide.

Thus official journalism has already gone, after many years of being a flock of parrots repeating what their masters say, to being a gang of informers for power who help it in the repression, in the reprisals and the threats against those journalists who have not sunk as low as they have, and against those political forces that are neither power nor a consented and controlled opposition.

With honor abolished, there are television programs in which people compete to be the most snitching, groveling and villainous in demanding total submission to the government’s messages. If this is always a baseness and an infamy, it is even more so when practiced as informers and accomplices of a coup-plotting government allied with all kinds of forces hostile to democracy and to the nation. The acts of indignity multiply. There are the associations that were created to protect journalists against power, scolding journalists on power’s orders.

The Association of Parliamentary Journalists, which is the Association of Parodists of Journalists of a parliament that, for the rest, no longer exists in its democratic sense, recently gave proof of the abysmal degeneration I am referring to at an event that defines the regime, its parrots and also its lackeys. There they gave an award, for being likable, to a woman who not so long ago used a newspaper to tell the murderers where the shots should go. And the shots went there. But who remembers today the dead that the Pachi-Lopezes buried in the mornings after having been at cozy dinners in farmhouses negotiating peace deals between fish and steaks with those who were killing them?

These gangs, which are more and more the mop-wielding hacks of a government that lives solely and exclusively off and for the lie, the abuse and fiscal plunder, increasingly recall that Association of Soviet Writers that Mikhail Bulgakov so wonderfully described in “The Master and Margarita.” It is not only in Spain that we now have a press turned into cheap servitude, with some exceptions such as this newspaper, which has the independence of its solvency and allows me to publish this reflection.

In Germany, all the national media that once had reputation, dignity and a commitment to the truth are humiliating themselves by turning a pseudo-item from an obscure outlet about a private meeting of right-wing people, including some member of the AfD, an informal gathering to exchange opinions where someone had a somewhat heated comment about how to combat immigration, into a terrifying conspiracy that they compared to nothing less than the Wannsee Conference, no less, at which the Nazi leadership decided the extermination of European Jews. They spoke of deportations, something the French

Macron and German politicians in general have done. But here it is a monstrous conspiracy according to the entire press. This is not merely trivializing monstrosities. It is one more proof that European social democracy, under whatever initials — because in Poland it is under a President Donald Tusk — who belongs to the European PP group, is in full offensive to have the whole press subdued and to close the cracks that might allow alternative messages to emerge. And the truth, which is what they fear most.. And if the media do not submit, they are physically stormed, as happened in Warsaw a few weeks ago.

It is about leaving no opening for the truth, because the unified and seamless message must be that of the struggle against those truly national and conservative forces — not of electoral pretense — which in every European country grow in vitality by the day. And ahead of the June 9 elections, panic is spreading in many capitals and now nothing shames them anymore. In Spain the government asks the press associations to armor-plate its messages against some intrepid journalist eager to know the truth.

In Poland the new government that came to power thanks to the massive interference of Brussels and Berlin and the agitation of the German-owned media, which the naïve members of the previous Polish government failed to combat or counter, is trying to criminalize the conservatives who governed for eight years with much success and little public relations or media skill. And everyone, as in Germany, invents the return of Nazism or fascism, when what they have in front of them are societies fed up with lies, with failures and with an ideology that makes them ever less free and more poor. And it organizes within the national-conservative parties to confront and thwart the plans in Davos that aim to turn Europeans into subjects of a socialist mega-state with the same rights as the Chinese and the same Chinese controls, because it is cheaper and does less harm to the planet.

These plans, which a few years ago they believed were already fully on track and without any opposition, are beginning to crack because of the massive resistance in the nations that are becoming aware of the threat and are willing to make it fail. And for that, the essential thing is to stop listening to the snitch journalists and to attend to the questions of the marginalized.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

The strategic significance of the Red Sea, a crucial conduit for global commerce and connectivity, cannot be overstated. The disruptive impact of Houthi attacks on shipping in this area not only poses a direct threat to regional security but also has ripple effects on international trade and commerce. The U.S. initiative to draft a resolution condemning these assaults is a testament to the collective endeavor to preserve the safety and stability of essential maritime routes. However, Algeria’s decision to abstain from this resolution represents a significant challenge, necessitating a robust U.S. response to uphold the efficacy of this vital initiative.

Algeria’s rationale for its abstention, which revolves around concerns about the situation in Gaza, invites scrutiny regarding the selective approach of its foreign policy. While the global community recognizes the imperative of addressing humanitarian crises, the focus of the Security Council’s resolution was explicitly on the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Algeria’s abstention, citing reasons disconnected from the resolution’s primary aim, suggests a misalignment between the resolution’s objectives and Algeria’s stated rationale.

The significance of addressing global humanitarian issues, including the situation in Gaza, is unquestionable. Nonetheless, the Security Council is a forum designed to tackle a multitude of global challenges, each necessitating dedicated attention. The U.S.-proposed resolution on the Houthi attacks was crafted to confront a distinct security threat. Effective multilateralism mandates that nations address individual issues while collaboratively engaging with broader humanitarian challenges. A decisive U.S. response is imperative to reinforce the principle that peripheral problems should not derail resolutions targeting specific threats.

The ongoing Houthi insurgency in Yemen has extensive implications for regional stability, especially in the strategically pivotal Red Sea. The Security Council’s resolution, aimed at condemning Houthi aggressions, aligns with the overarching objective of maintaining regional peace and security. Algeria’s abstention from this resolution not only undermines these goals but also jeopardizes efforts to ensure unfettered navigation in a critical global waterway. The United States, as a champion of international security, must respond decisively to safeguard the interests of nations dependent on secure maritime transit.

The efficacy of the United Nations Security Council hinges on its members’ commitment to confront distinct challenges with targeted resolutions. Algeria’s abstention, motivated by concerns unrelated to the resolution’s focus, sets a troubling precedent that could weaken the credibility and decision-making efficacy of the Security Council. A forceful U.S. response is crucial to underscore the seriousness of such actions and to uphold the integrity of the Security Council as an essential body for global governance.

In light of Algeria’s abstention from the U.S.-proposed resolution condemning the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, a vigorous response from the United States is warranted. The necessity to counter maritime security threats, preserve regional stability, and maintain the Security Council’s credibility calls for a firm stance. While acknowledging the complexities of regional conflicts and humanitarian crises, the United States must underscore the urgency of targeted resolutions and the importance of collective action in addressing specific challenges, without undermining the broader objectives of international cooperation and security.