RUTHFULLY YOURS

Iran’s negotiations with the P5+1 powers are narrowly defined to include only the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. However, Tehran’s abysmal record on human rights should reveal to the world what to expect by way of compliance on any nuclear deal.

In facilities under their control, both the IRGC and the MOIS are permitted to execute prisoners without trial or effectively any judicial proceeding.

Iran will also have permission to import or develop Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to other continents, including to the United States.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s human rights record is among the earth’s worst. Iran’s horrific treatment of its own citizens, however, has long been obscured by headlines of the ongoing nuclear negotiations, from which human right issues have been excluded.

With the world in turmoil following the recent deal between Iran and the P5+1, the Israeli Defense Forces are preparing to serve as the world’s best defense against a nuclear Iran.

“Over the years, the Israeli Defense Forces have managed to thwart the evil plans of our enemies,” said Dr. John Grossman, chairman of American Friends of LIBI, the IDF’s unit supporting humanitarian aid to soldiers. “We have no doubt that the IDF will continue to play a vital role as Israel’s and the Jewish people’s first line of defense.”

Since April, amid the foreshadowing of the acceptance of an agreement between Iran and the P5+1, the IDF has been instructed to prepare plans for a military response to the Iranian problem. Israel for some time has been developing air defense systems that will be able to counter Iranian missiles with a nuclear payload, such as David’s Sling, the Arrow, and the Patriot missile systems, as well as Iron Dome for smaller missiles.

However, Israel has no physical defense system in place to prevent the smuggling of a nuclear bomb into the country and being detonated in a population center by Iranian supported terrorist groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah. That is, aside from the soldiers of the IDF.

If Iran remains a threat, the deal bars the US from taking any steps to counter it aside from all-out war.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is a reasonable man. After hearing back to back interviews with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Obama administration’s pact with Iran’s ayatollahs, he tried to balance them out.

Speaking Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ignatius equivocated that on the one hand, “My takeaway [from Kerry] is that the details of this deal are pretty solid, that it’s been carefully negotiated, that it will hold up for 10 years or more.”

“In the meantime, there is nothing to see here as devout Muslims, shouting Allahu Akbar, kill military personnel; Jews in delis; artists caricaturing Muhammad; writers not showing appropriate sensitivity and reverence; people in the street, in buildings, in cafes, in hotels, in railway stations. The perpetrators must all be mad or driven to desperation by disadvantage and historical injustices. They don’t represent Islam. They think they do, as do those radical Islamic scholars who have spent their whole lives studying the sacred texts. We know better.”

The problem with Islam is not its fanatics, diabolical though they are. No, the problem is the vast majority of self-identifying Muslims who do not, of course, want to kill other people, thereby creating the impression that their creed is peaceful. As the devout demonstrate with their every outrage, it isn’t.
I flicked between Fox News and CNN on the day (last week) when five marines were gunned down and killed, and two other people wounded, in Tennessee by twenty-two-year-old Mohammad Yousuf Abdulazeez. He was apparently a devout Muslim born in Kuwait but brought up in the US from a young age. He apparently did well at school, was well liked, and earned an electrical engineering degree at college. His father had been on a terrorist watch list at one point but had been taken off some years ago. A picture (below) of the killer and his family showed his mother and two sisters in hijabs. Presumably all of the family were devout.

Defenders of the system say bureaucratic hurdles prevent failure. Have they not heard of the RAH 66 Comanche?

Here’s an anecdote that illustrates the problems with U.S. defense acquisition: The Navy, concerned about corrosion of equipment that spends its operating life surrounded by salt water, began requiring paperwork to certify that new systems would be corrosion free. But the rule applies without exception, meaning Navy staff go through the motions to certify the corrosion resistance of, say, new software programs they acquire.

Rep. Mac Thornberry cited this example when rolling out legislation in March that would overhaul Pentagon procurement. Mr. Thornberry, who leads the House Armed Services Committee, wants to give program managers more responsibility and eliminate dozens of reports required by Congress or the Pentagon. “The system has just grown these barnacles around it that’s made it so sluggish it’s a wonder anything comes out the other end,” he told the Washington Post.

When Michael Bloomberg tried to limit the size of soda to 16 oz cups in an effort to combat the national epidemic of obesity, he was reviled for his arrogant attempt to micro-manage people’s personal decisions regarding their appetites and health. Now the NY State Education Department has released new guidelines about how schools should treat transgender students. Among other questionable tactics is one that seems pregnant with the possibility of lawsuits over parental rights. Schools are advised to maintain student privacy about their gender identity at school – even to the point of withholding that information from parents if deemed necessary. So a school that needs parental consent on file in order to give Johnny an aspirin may decide not to tell his legal guardians who are totally responsible for his health and welfare that Johnny is registered as Janey, uses the girl’s bathroom and refers to himself as she.

Tehran will have much time and many loopholes to exploit.

‘Around-the-clock monitoring of Iran’s key nuclear facilities.” “Access to Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain.” “Access [to] any suspicious location.” “Access where necessary, when necessary.” “Unprecedented verification.”

These are among the claims President Obama is making about the inspections and enforcement contained in the Iran deal, which are supposed to reassure Americans that Tehran won’t cheat—or at least that it will be promptly caught and punished if it does. A closer look tells a different story.

Take that carefully finessed phrase, “where necessary, when necessary.” This is supposed to be the Administration’s version of “anytime, anywhere” inspections that experts have long insisted needs to be a condition of any agreement.

If the ayatollahs have a nuclear weapon, they will use it. Now they’re on the path to get one.
When giving Moses the Ten Commandments, God says that he will “visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” Of course, God doesn’t have to punish these later generations himself; rather, the perils that follow are the natural course of events. Bad actions or bad choices made by one generation lead inevitably to consequences for future generations.

The generational calamity that will result from President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran will last a very long time indeed. This can be said with perfect confidence because of two undeniable facts.

For those of us who predicted the inevitable, watching Donald Trump verbally wander into a field of face-whacking garden rakes like Sideshow Bob fills one with a mixture of schadenfreude and affirmation. We knew it was coming, but it still feels good to be proven right.

Of course Trump wouldn’t hesitate to attack John McCain’s war-hero status. Trump’s bottomless insecurity cannot countenance the idea that his critics have any legitimacy. Of course Trump won’t apologize — because his dog-and-pony show is predicated on the idea that he “tells it like it is” and “fights.” He’s the omniscient master of The Apprentice. He can’t behave like the Biggest Loser.

The Trump squall is not over, alas. But it’s nonetheless obvious that we will someday soon look back on this as the beginning of the end of Trumpmania.

Ames, Iowa
A smoldering policy dispute over the Iran deal between two frontrunners for the Republican nomination caught fire over the weekend, as the campaigns of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and former Florida governor Jeb Bush traded accusations of bad faith and the candidates themselves engaged in a pointed back-and-forth about how a newly elected president should handle the deal.

Speaking to reporters here Saturday after an appearance at the Family Leadership Summit, Walker said the next president will need to be prepared to take aggressive action against Iran, “very possibly” including military strikes, on the day he or she is inaugurated, and said he would not be comfortable with a commander in chief who is unwilling to act aggressively on day one of a new presidency. In his announcement speech at the beginning of the week, Walker had promised to ‘terminate’ the Iran deal on day one of his presidency, and Bush, at a town hall four days later, said ending the deal on the first day of a new administration was unrealistic and suggested that promises to do so, while politically appealing, reflected a lack of seriousness.