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February 2017

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

‘Putting Iran on Notice’ Means Restoring American Credibility Trump should tear up the nuclear agreement. By Fred Fleitz

By on February 6th, 2017

After declaring that “Iran is on notice” for a recent ballistic-missile test and for missile attacks against a Saudi ship by Houthi rebels, and then announcing new U.S. sanctions against Iran on Friday, the Trump administration met with predicable criticism from Democrats and the foreign-policy establishment, who objected that the president was provoking Iran and risking war by threatening the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA).

In fact, it was President Obama’s Iran policy that made the Middle East much less stable, as his appeasement of Iran and “leading from behind” approach emboldened Tehran and did little to stop it from pursuing nuclear weapons and building ballistic missiles to carry them. The Obama administration did absolutely nothing in response to Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and its backing of the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Even worse, Obama officials during the nuclear talks gave Iran a green light to expand its role in Iraq and Syria. It’s no accident that Iran sent ground troops into Syria shortly after the JCPOA was announced.

The Obama administration claimed that the JCPOA would lead to an improvement in Iranian behavior and in U.S.–Iran relations. This did not happen. Iran has conducted at least a dozen ballistic-missile tests over the past two years. Some of these missiles had the words “Israel must be wiped off the map” written on the sides. Iran captured ten U.S. sailors and held them at gunpoint on the day of President Obama’s last State of the Union address. There has been a sharp increase in Iran’s harassing and threatening ships in the Persian Gulf, including U.S. Navy vessels. Houthi rebels, probably with Iranian assistance, fired anti-ship missiles at American and United Arab Emirates ships in the Red Sea last fall. Iran also has taken more American citizens and green-card holders prisoner since the JCPOA was announced and after five U.S. prisoners were released in January 2016.

Trump’s initial moves on Iran mark the beginning of an effort to reverse Obama’s disastrous Iran policy. The administration, actually addressing the threats Iran poses to global security, is holding Iran accountable for its actions and reasserting American power.

It’s no secret that no one believed President Obama when he said “all options are on the table,” drew red lines, or issued ultimatums after belligerent acts by Iran, North Korea, ISIS, the Syrian army, and Russia. The world knew that the use of American military power was never on the table for Obama and that his words were just empty rhetoric. They knew that Obama would never back up his red lines and ultimatums. While the Obama administration sometimes responded to rogue state actions with sanctions, they were usually weak and in every case ignored.

The Trump administration’s recent warning to Iran indicates that all options really are on the table when it comes to America’s responding to actions by rogue states and actors that endanger our security and the security of our friends and allies. The sanctions imposed today against 13 individuals and twelve companies involved in Iran’s missile program are long overdue and make clear that America will not look the other way while Tehran develops nuclear-weapons delivery systems.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Best Asset May Be His Unhinged Opponents Permanent outrage and hysterical doom-mongering do not attract moderate voters. By John Fund

By on February 6th, 2017

The good news for Democrats is that the apathy of many of their voters — which contributed to Hillary Clinton’s losing in November — is gone now that Donald Trump is president.

“We have never in living memory seen an electorate as fired up and angry and engaged as they are right now, Ben Wikler, Washington director of the left-wing group Moveon.org, told RealClearPolitics.

The bad news for Democrats is that the fires of protest could burn so brightly that they alienate moderate voters and threaten any Democrats who decline to throw gasoline on the fires.

The anger of the liberal base is such that “a firestorm of criticism . . . awaits [Democratic lawmakers] when they don’t stand up to Trump,” Wikler says. As for primary challenges for Democrats who won’t confront Trump at every turn: “Everything is on the table.”

It certainly has been when it comes to the ceaseless efforts to delegitimize Trump. As soon as the election was over, state recounts were mounted, with the approval of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, angry demands were made that members of the Electoral College go against the results of their state votes and dump Trump, and wild charges were hurled that Russian hacking swung the election. FBI chief James Comey, an Obama appointee, was accused of tilting the election against Clinton, and blue-collar voters in the Midwest were smeared as “racists” who were easily manipulated by Trump.

Of course, missing in the progressive reaction to Trump’s victory was anything more than cursory mention of why the Left, during Obama’s eight years, had failed to fulfill promises of “hope and change,” address rising income inequality and middle-class stagnation, or win the respect of either America’s friends or adversaries.

A few Democrats have recently begun to question the party’s relentless choice of a negative, obstructionist tone. “I’d leave [Trump] out of the message and appeal to his base with a meaningful jobs plan,” Craig Crawford, an adviser to former Democratic senator Jim Webb of Virginia, told U.S. News and World Report, adding:

Don’t take his bait. Braying donkeys only make noise. Democrats should present a shadow government agenda that gives working-class Americans jobs and hope. Democrats should learn something from their futile efforts of the Reagan years, attacking the man instead of winning back his voter base with a positive message.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mapping $27 Billion In Federal Funding Of America’s Sanctuary Cities: Adam Andrzejewski ,

By on February 6th, 2017

In the President Donald Trump-era, there could be a high-cost to running a sanctuary city…

On January 25, 2017, the President issued an Executive Order denying federal funding to sanctuary cities who choose not to comply with federal laws regarding deportation of illegal entrants.

Reaction to the new policy from across the political spectrum was immediate. However, the politicians, pundits and journalists admitted that the total amount of federal funding was undetermined.

Our organization, American Transparency (website: OpenTheBooks.com) was able to identify that number. We found nearly $27 billion ($26.74 billion to be exact) in federal funding (FY2016) for America’s 106 Sanctuary Cities. Our new report, “Federal Funding of America’s Sanctuary Cites” details federal grants and other forms of federal spending that flow to those cities.

Using our OpenTheBooks interactive map, search federal funding by city. Just click a pin and scroll down to review the municipal agencies and entities (FY2016). In fact, the map is quickly shareable to any website by copy/paste of the HTML code.

Across America, there are over 300 governmental jurisdictions claiming “sanctuary status.” Of those governments, there are 106 cities, while the rest are states, counties or other units of government.

Under Trump’s order, mayors defending their sanctuary city status are essentially imposing a defiance tax on local residents. On average, this tax amounts to $500 per man, woman and child. Major cities like Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago have the most to lose, and nearly $27 billion is at stake across the country.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DNC Purges Black Candidate for Chairmanship for criticizing Islam’s Discrimination against Gays

By on February 6th, 2017

Tolliver should have known from the outset that this would happen. It has long been established that in the hierarchy of politically correct causes, Islam trumps homosexuality. When AFDI ran ads highlighting the mistreatment of gays in Islamic law, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a resolutioncondemning not that mistreatment, but our ads. Gay advocates such as Theresa Sparks and Chris Stedman attacked us for daring to call attention to the institutionalized mistreatment of gays under Islamic law.

Tolliver said of Ellison: “His being a Muslim is precisely why DNC voters should not vote for him. Muslims discriminate against gays. Islamic law is clear on the subject, and being gay is a direct violation of it. In some Muslim countries, being gay is a crime punishable by death.”

That is quite correct. But in response, instead of challenging Tolliver on the facts, which they couldn’t do in any case, the Democrats rallied around Ellison. Said interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile: “The Democratic Party welcomes all Americans from all backgrounds. What we do not welcome is people discriminating against others based on who they are or how they worship.”

So noting correctly that Islam discriminates against and persecutes gays is now “discriminating against others based on who they are or how they worship,” at least according to Donna Brazile (and, no doubt, many other enlightened Leftists). And Ellison’s spokesman, Brett Morrow, declared that it was “disappointing that a fellow DNC candidate would fan the flames of intolerance.” He didn’t say anything about Sharia states fanning the flames of intolerance against gays.

Morrow added: ““Keith has shown first-hand his commitment to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, organizing tirelessly against the Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment in 2012.” That’s not the same thing as saying that he rejects Islam’s teaching that homosexuals should be put to death. Many Islamic groups supported same-sex marriage solely for tactical reasons: they knew it would open the door to the legalization of polygamy.

Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that The Hill, which is reporting here how the DNC has become Sharia-compliant and is prohibiting criticism of Islam, is itself also Sharia-compliant.

“DNC boots candidate from chairmanship race for criticizing Ellison’s Islamic faith,” by Jonathan Easley, The Hill, January 31, 2017:

The Democratic National Committee is kicking a candidate out of the chairmanship race after he told The Hill that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) should not be the party’s next leader because he is a Muslim.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Peter Smith :The Dumb Deal and a Presumptuous PM

By on February 6th, 2017

The agreement to offload uninvited arrivals warehoused in Nauru and Manus was struck five days after the election by a lame duck president intent on saddling his successor with an intolerable obligation. Is it any wonder Trump reacted the way he did?
Perhaps there have been others but to my knowledge only Andrew Bolt nailed it. The dust-up is Malcolm Turnbull’s fault. Though, mind you, slippery Julie Bishop shouldn’t be let off the hook. This is a dumb deal, as President Trump so pithily put it.

Now let’s see. The United States agrees to admit 1250 so-called refugees stuck in Australia’s offshore detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island. We knew this was even more bizarre that Julia Gillard’s Malaysian deal when we first heard of it. It never passed the sniff test. Why in the world would the US ever agree to it? Ah! The US body politic did not agree to it. Barack Hussein Obama and his left-wing henchmen did. There’s the rub that Mr Turnbull should have appreciated from the very start.

Does anyone think that Hillary Clinton would have agreed to such a dumb deal if she’d been elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. Of course she wouldn’t. If elected in 2016, she would not have undone it or railed against it, but that is not the same thing.

This is hard for nearly all commentators. Put yourself in Trump’s position. He was elected on November 8 in large part because he promised to crackdown on illegal immigration and take resolute action to prevent Islamic terrorists from entering the US. While in the making for some time, the dumb deal was not finally concluded and signed off until November 13. Five days passed during which Mal and Julie should have thought about it. Signing that dumb deal was tantamount to spitting in the eye of Trump. The honourable and diplomatically proper procedure for Turnbull to have adopted would have been to sign the deal subject to its ratification by the President-elect when he took office.

Turnbull knew that he would be pilloried politically if the deal fell through. He knew his political capital was rock bottom. He calculated that it was better to embarrass the new president than it was to suffer more domestic political odium. He was too clever by half, but seems to have got away with it. Why? Because Trump is a political pariah who can do no right.

Perception is reality. And all of the MSM reportage and commentary that I have come across in Australia and in the US has the little guy being bullied by the big guy. Trump is the villain; as he was absolutely bound to be. Republican Senator McCain apologised to the Australian ambassador for Trump’s behaviour. What a lark, Turnbull must be thinking.

This is a verbatim taste of the Australian press’s Trump-berating emphasis: petulant Trump, tweeting like a juvenile, badgering and bragging, appearing to be unhinged, treating Australia like dirt, stamping his feet and screaming, completely clueless, a narcissistic buffoon. The last ad hominem attack came courtesy of a dug-up quote from the diplomatic ex-diplomat Kim Beazley.

Not being privy to this particular telephone conversation nor to any of the others between world leaders since the telephone was invented in 1876, I don’t know how far out of diplomatic bounds this one was. No Trump fan, Greg Sheridan seemed to take a grounded view. “Too much is being made of Trump’s leaked testy language [it was] the end of a long day and he was tired and terse.” That kind of balanced comment is going to get Sheridan drummed out of the press collective. He should have at least once included the descriptor buffoon.

Never mind the substance, what about the style? This pretty well sums up the MSM’s reaction to everything Trump does. It is plainly pathetic and common-sense people — those Deplorables — can see through it. In this case, Turnbull pulled a shifty on Trump. Trump knew it. Imagine how galling it must have been for him to be reminded by Turnbull that they were both businessmen and a deal is a deal. I am surprised that Trump didn’t use a string of expletives. President Nixon undoubtedly would have, and there would have gone his reputation down the toilet.

Let’s go back to why this deal was ever contemplated by President Obama. Who first suggested it? I just cannot believe it came from the Australian end, as desperate as the government is to empty detention centres. I mean, surely, this would not have entered Turnbull’s or Bishop’s wildest imaginings. It must have come out of Obama’s henchmen. Maybe I am paranoid but if these refugees had been Hindus, Buddhists, Jews or Seventh Day Adventists would this deal have ever entered Obama’s wildest imaginings? I think not. He just likes Muslim immigrants; their religion and their proclivity for voting left.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Robert Kaplan Love, Peace and a Blow to the Head

By on February 6th, 2017

Ira Einhorn revelled in his role as a charismatic guru. Long-haired and white-robed, he was one of Earth Day’s original organisers and a fixture on university campuses, toasted for his wit and insight with copious cups of herbal tea. Oh, and he was a killer as well.
Ira Einhorn was a high priest of the hippy movement – rebellion, free love, drugs, anti-Vietnam war, the Age of Aquarius. He promoted these ideas with verve and was an organiser of the original Earth Day. That his German surname translated into Unicorn was perfect for the zeitgeist. He saw himself as an environmental activist and mixed with leading figures of the movement like Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Abby Hoffman.

Many thought Einhorn was a genius. There was no subject on which he could not discourse at length, all infused with his idiosyncratic ideas about environmentalism, UFOs, alien invasion, ESP, computer science and such esoterica. On close examination, his intellect was extremely broad, facilitated by his compulsive reading, but there was little depth. This hardly troubled his listeners. His compelling style drew in not just the young and impressionable, but environmentalists, corporation figures, businessmen and government officials, all taken in by his rodomontade.

Wearing the long hair of the time, his pudgy figure in a white robe, he paid no attention to hygiene or grooming. Yet this had little effect on his appeal. Women flocked to him and he made the most of the ensuing rewards. Einhorn was seriously into sex with as many women as possible and, in doing so, had a far from enlightened attitude to his lovers. He treated them like dirt and brutally dispensed with them as soon as he wanted to move on to another target. Rumours of his violence towards women did his love life no harm.

But the Sixties moved on, the Vietnam war ended and the hippy generation had to face the mundane facts of settling down and earning a living. Based in Philadelphia, Einhorn’s activities were constricted but he still displayed an amazing capacity to find wealthy sponsors and university positions. Barbara Bronfman, a Canadian Seagram heir, was to play an important part in his life. During a lecture, he lit up a marijuana spiff and undressed till he was naked and danced around. It was all a game to entrance those around him.

In 1972 Einhorn started going out with Holly Maddux, a beautiful young women from Texas. The relationship was predictably tumultuous. By 1977 she had enough and ended it. On September 9, she went to his apartment and was never seen alive again. Questioned, Einhorn claimed that she had gone out to buy food and never returned.

In the absence of any leads, let alone a body, there was nothing the authorities could do. Two years after complaints from neighbours about a bad smell, the police came to Einhorn’s apartment. Inside a closet they found a large trunk. When they opened it, it contained the mummified body of Holly Maddux. The cause of death was evident – her skull had been brutally smashed.

“You found what you found,” was Einhorn’s enigmatic response.

Bailed by his wealthy sponsors, the trial was scheduled for 1981. Many who knew him refused to believe that he could have committed such a violent crime and supported his appeal for bail. By the time of the trial, Einhorn had gone on the lam, disappearing without trace. The trial went ahead anyway, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

How can a people be called ‘settlers’ in their own homeland? Victor Sharpe

By on February 6th, 2017

The Oslo Accords, the Wye Agreement, the Roadmap, ad nauseam, have all attempted to separate much, if not all, of the eternal possession of the Jewish people from their God given homeland? This decades long political foolishness has continued in order to appease a succession of occupants of the White House whose policies have, alas, too often become a clear and present danger to the very existence of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

The reluctance by many Israeli leaders to resist various U.S. administrations or offend various presidents has inexorably led to Jewish rights not asserted vigorously enough. It has thus allowed the erosion of those very millennial and inalienable entitlements of the Jewish people to their ancestral heartland – primarily the narrow strip of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

History has proven that it was a near fatal mistake to embrace the pernicious, self-defeating and idiotic policies known as “land for peace” in which Israel gave away its historic land but never received peace.

That other evil seed, also spawned from the Oslo Peace Accords, namely what is called the “Two-State-Solution,” would, if enacted with the duplicitous and terrorist PLO, be as diabolical and deadly a euphemism for the Jewish state as was Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution” for Europe’s Jews.

Instead, there should have always been watertight demands made upon the so-called Palestinian Authority, which now occupies large swathes of Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank).

This was left undone and now the PLO and the so-called Palestinian Authority spew anti-Jewish propaganda in schools and through its regime controlled media, poisoning the minds of yet another generation of Arabs. At the same time its terrorist entities, Fatah and Hamas, unleash relentless and barbaric violence resulting in thousands of Israeli civilian deaths.

Demands should also have been made upon the artificial entity known as the Kingdom of Jordan for the return of biblical Gilead – the ancestral homeland of the Jewish tribes of Gad and Manasseh, east of the River Jordan.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government and previous governments stretching back to that of Yitzhak Rabin, all betrayed Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel. They did not effectively reject the Arab and pro-Arab lie that Israel “occupies” Arab territory – specifically territory occupied by a fraudulent Arab people who have come to call themselves Palestinians.

Judea and Samaria have still not been annexed yet they are the very warp and woof, the heartland and very fabric and fiber of Jewish history during and after Biblical times.

I was looking back at what Professor Talia Einhorn of the University of Ariel wrote in 2003 about Judea, Samaria and Gaza, or as it is known by its Hebrew acronym, Yesha: meaning Yehuda, Shomron and Azza.

She was commenting on the ‘slip of the tongue” by then Prime Minister Sharon who used the word “occupation” in reference to Israel’s presence in Yesha. In 2003, Yesha still included Gaza.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Israelis See the Settlements By Yossi Klein Halevi see note please

By on February 6th, 2017

This is generally a fair appraisal of the debate, but the majpr premise here is wrong. Israelis in the West Bank do not “occupy” another people’s land. The West Bank is a parcel of land included in the fraction of Palestine deeded to the Jews after Jordan was severed. rsk
Some want to annex the West Bank, others to separate from the Palestinians—and all view Jerusalem as anything but a settlement.

A billboard near the highway entering Jerusalem proclaims in Hebrew: “The Time for Sovereignty Has Come.” It is part of a new campaign for the formal incorporation into Israel of Ma’ale Adumim, one of the largest settlements in the West Bank and barely a 10-minute drive east of Israel’s capital. The campaign’s sponsors, backed by several ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s coalition, see annexing Ma’ale Adumim as the first step to annexing the entire West Bank and preventing the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israelis have been arguing about settlements ever since the Six Day War of June 1967, when the Israeli army captured the West Bank—the biblical regions of Judea and Samaria—and small groups of Israelis began establishing enclaves there. Annexation, long the goal of the settlement movement, has always been more aspiration than possibility, thwarted by opposition within Israel and from the international community.

But with the rise of Donald Trump, settlement leaders have sensed an opening. Mr. Trump’s nominee as U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is a longtime pro-settlement activist. And in a marked break with American policy, the Trump administration refused to condemn Israel’s announcement that it intends to build some 5,000 housing units in settlements, the largest expansion project in recent years.
A Palestinian laborer works at a construction site in the Jewish West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, near Jerusalem, Sept. 16, 2014. Photo: Dan Balilty/Associated Press

The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the chaos of the Arab world in recent years have reinforced the settlers’ sense of opportunity. So too has the imminent approach of a date fraught with symbolic significance: the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War. According to Jewish tradition, 50 years—a jubilee—is the time for a reset. For those who believe that Israel needs to overcome its hesitancy and claim its rightful borders, it is a moment of high expectation.

Unlike critics abroad, including the U.N. Security Council, who denounce settlements as illegal under international law, mainstream Israeli discourse takes for granted the legitimacy of Israel’s claims to the West Bank—lands where the Jewish people find their deepest historical roots, won in a war of self-defense against the Arab world’s attempt to destroy the Jewish state. The debate, instead, is over the wisdom of implementing these claims to the “territories” (the more politically neutral term preferred by many in Israel).

Permanently absorbing the West Bank would mean adding more than two million Palestinians to Israel’s population, forcing it to choose eventually between the two essential elements of its national identity as both a Jewish state and a democracy.

That is precisely the point of another new campaign, from the opposite side of the political spectrum, urging withdrawal from the territories. “We’re Not Annexing—We’re Separating,” reads one billboard near the highway in Tel Aviv. A second billboard warns of what will happen if Israel doesn’t separate from the Palestinians: “The One-State Solution. Palestine.”

That warning reveals a profound shift in Israeli discourse. The mainstream Israeli left no longer promises “land for peace” but instead offers a more modest formula: withdrawal as the best way to ensure that Israel remains both Jewish and democratic. This shift recognizes that, after years of terrorism and Palestinian rejection of past Israeli peace offers (the last offer was in 2008), the Israeli public has become deeply skeptical of Palestinian intentions.

Polls consistently show that a majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, while doubting the possibility of peace. According to an October 2016 poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Peace Index, nearly 65% of Israelis backed peace talks—but only 26% thought they would succeed.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Libel Suit Threatens Catastrophe for the Climate of Public Debate Michael Mann sues to silence critics, and errant courts ignore the First Amendment to help him. By Michael A. Carvin and Anthony Dick

By on February 6th, 2017

The First Amendment provides robust protection for political and scientific debate, but it faces a new threat from a climate activist determined to silence his critics. In a case pending before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Penn State professor Michael Mann is waging an aggressive campaign of lawfare, accusing of defamation those who dare to question his work. So far, the courts have given this assault on free speech a green light.

Mr. Mann is famous as the creator of the “hockey stick” graph, which portrays a dramatic trend in global warming over the past century. Numerous critics have cast doubt on the quality and accuracy of his work. They argue that his historical temperature proxies are unreliable, his data presentation misleading, and his statistical techniques skewed.

Even among those who support the theory of global warming, some have singled out Mr. Mann’s work as sloppy and exaggerated. David Hand, a former president of Britain’s Royal Statistical Society, has written that Mr. Mann’s technique “exaggerated the size of the blade at the end of the hockey stick,” which corresponds to the 20th-century temperature rise.

Not content to answer his critics in the public square, Mr. Mann has sued them. One target of his lawsuit is the political magazine National Review, which published a 270-word blog post criticizing Mr. Mann as “the man behind the fraudulent . . . ‘hockey-stick’ graph.” His lawsuit objects to the magazine’s decision to quote a critic who wrote that Mr. Mann “could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data.”

National Review moved to dismiss the suit, citing a phalanx of Supreme Court precedent. The Constitution obviously does not allow crippling damages to be imposed for voicing one’s opinion, however vehemently or caustically. Punishing such criticism because a jury disagrees with it does not aid the search for truth, but impedes it by stifling conflicting views. As the liberal Justice William Brennan observed: “Truth may not be the subject of either civil or criminal sanctions where discussion of public affairs is concerned.” Such speech “is the essence of self-government.”

As a federal court once put it in the particular context of scientific controversies: “More papers, more discussions, better data, and more satisfactory models—not larger awards of damages—mark the path toward superior understanding of the world around us.” Even a meritless defamation suit can be an effective weapon to intimidate critics and shut down debate through ruinous litigation costs.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Iran Deal Can’t Be Enforced The agreement’s entire basis is appeasement. It merely ‘calls upon’ Tehran not to test missiles. John Bolton

By on February 6th, 2017

Iran’s continued missile testing on Saturday has given President Trump one more reason to tear up his predecessor’s deal with the regime in Tehran. After Iran’s Jan. 29 ballistic-missile launch, the Trump administration responded with new sanctions and tough talk. But these alone won’t have a material effect on Tehran or its decades-long effort to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons.

The real issue is whether America will abrogate Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, recognizing it as a strategic debacle, a result of the last president’s misguided worldview and diplomatic malpractice. Terminating the agreement would underline that Iran is already violating it, clearly intends to continue pursuing nuclear arms, works closely with North Korea in seeking deliverable nuclear weapons, and continues to support international terrorism and provocative military actions. Escaping from the Serbonian Bog that Obama’s negotiations created would restore the resolute leadership and moral clarity the U.S. has lacked for eight years.

But those who supported the Iran deal, along with even many who had opposed it, argue against abrogation. Instead they say that America should “strictly enforce” the deal’s terms and hope that Iran pulls out. This would be a mistake for two reasons. First, the strategic miscalculations embodied in the deal endanger the U.S. and its allies, not least by lending legitimacy to the ayatollahs, the world’s central bankers for terrorism.

Second, “strictly enforcing” the deal is as likely to succeed as nailing Jell-O to a wall. Not only does the entire agreement reflect appeasement, but President Obama’s diplomacy produced weak, ambiguous and confusing language in many specific provisions. These drafting failures created huge loopholes, and Iran is now driving its missile and nuclear programs straight through them.

Take Tehran’s recent ballistic-missile tests. The Trump administration sees them as violating the deal. Iran disagrees. Let’s see what “strict enforcement” would really mean, bearing in mind that the misbegotten deal is 104 pages long, consisting of Security Council Resolution 2231 and two attachments: Annex A, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the main nuclear deal, known by the acronym JCPOA); and Annex B, covering other matters including ballistic missiles.

Annex B isn’t actually an agreement. Iran is not a party to it. Instead it is a statement by the Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany, intended to “improve transparency” and “create an atmosphere conducive” to implementing the deal. The key paragraph of Annex B says: “Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons” for eight years.

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