RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14573/persecution-christians-may-2019

“The assailants asked the Christians to convert to Islam, but the pastor and the others refused.” So “they called them, one after the other, behind the church building where they shot them dead.” — World Watch Monitor, Burkina Faso, May 2, 2019.

“When the next wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your campuses hold demonstrations and carry signs that say ‘We are all Christians’?” — Rev. Bashar Warda, Archbishop of Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, in an address delivered in London.

” [A] new form of persecution is on the rise—Christian girls are being targeted by Muslim men… Influential leaders are literally training young men to target Christian girls to impregnate them”… “[T]hey’re forced into marrying that daughter into a Muslim family…. Once girls are married into the Muslim families, they’re often cut off from or abandoned by their families and they face even more difficult circumstances. In some cases, girls are the second or third wife of their persecutor and they have few freedoms.” — Mission Network News; Lindsey Steele; May 22, 2019. — Indonesia.

“The mob began shouting outside our home asking for our family to exit our home and receive divine retribution for our sin. It did not seem very divine—we just saw raging evil violent people ready to kill us.” — British Pakistani Christian Association; May 21, 2019 — Pakistan.

The Slaughter of Christians

Burkina Faso: A number of fatal Islamic terror attacks on Christians and their churches took place or were reported in May:

On Sunday 26 May, armed Muslims stormed a Catholic church during mass and opened fire on the gathered worshippers; four were killed and several others injured. killing four and injuring others.
On May 13, armed Muslims attacked a Catholic procession, slaughtered four Christians and “burned a statue of the Virgin Mary.”
On May 12, approximately 30 armed Muslims stormed a Catholic church, slaughtered at least six worshippers—including the officiating priest—and then burned the church to the ground.
On Sunday, April 28, Islamic terrorists stormed a Protestant church and killed six worshippers, including the 80-year-old pastor and his two sons. According to a local, “The assailants asked the Christians to convert to Islam, but the pastor and the others refused.” So “they called them, one after the other, behind the church building where they shot them dead.”
On April 5, Islamic gunmen entered a Catholic church and murdered four Christians.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14554/europe-get-over-iran-deal

Yet, while Iran shows no sign of scaling down its aggressive stance towards the US and its allies in the region, Europe continues to cling to the wreckage of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to give the nuclear deal its proper name, in the misguided belief that the deal remains the best means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The determination of the Europeans to stick with the nuclear deal at all costs was very much in evidence earlier this week during a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels at which they came up with the decidedly bogus notion that Iran’s breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal were not significant and therefore did not require the Europeans to withdraw from the JCPOA.

Europe’s insistence on sticking with the nuclear deal, and its refusal to support Washington’s attempts to provide naval protection for international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, could ultimately prove self-defeating.

Europe is far more dependent on energy supplies from the Gulf than the US, and any further attempts by Iran to disrupt oil and gas supplies from the Gulf would have catastrophic consequences for Europe’s economy.

With tensions rising in the Gulf by the day as a result of Iran’s increasingly provocative conduct, the refusal of the major European powers to back the Trump administration’s determination to confront Iran is looking increasingly untenable.

In the past few months Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on oil tankers operating in the Gulf, and forced a British Royal Navy warship to intervene when a number of fast patrol boats operated by the naval division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attempted to harass a British-owned tanker sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, the main shipping route into the oil-rich Gulf.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boris-johnsons-iran-test-11563741151

Boris Johnson is expected to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom this week with a mandate to deliver Brexit. But before he can even say Brussels, the new leader will confront an international crisis started by Iran. This is an opportunity for Mr. Johnson to display independence and strength while nudging Europe toward a new approach to the Islamic Republic.

On Friday Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized a British-flagged oil tanker and its 23 crew members in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians claimed to board the ship for “security reasons” but this was clearly retaliation.

The British recently impounded an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar because the ship was suspected of bringing oil to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions. The Brits have offered to release the ship as long as it won’t go to Syria, but Iran refuses anything but an unconditional release.

“Unlike the piracy in the Strait of Gibraltar, our action in the Persian Gulf is to uphold int’l maritime rules,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted on Saturday. “UK must cease being an accessory to #EconomicTerrorism of the US.” Mr. Zarif is trolling, but his reaction suggests the Trump Administration’s maximum-pressure campaign against the regime is working.

President Trump left the nuclear Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action last year not to start a war but to build leverage for new negotiations. Mr. Zarif outmaneuvered John Kerry and got a sweetheart deal in 2015 that allowed the regime to regain its economic strength while temporarily putting its nuclear ambitions on hold. Rather than address Iran’s malign regional behavior, the agreement left Tehran with more cash to finance terrorism and other aggression.