RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pompeo-chinas-reckless-labs-put-the-world-at-risk/

In today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, along with Miles Yu, his top China policy adviser write that “China’s Reckless Labs Put the World at Risk,” and come right up to the line of outright declaring that the coronavirus pandemic is the result of an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Pompeo and Yu don’t point to any new or smoking-gun evidence, but they do point to a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that haven’t gotten much attention. Perhaps most notably, the op-ed column declares, “in January 2021, the State Department confirmed that people had fallen mysteriously ill at WIV in fall 2019, and that WIV conducts secret bioweapons research with the PLA.”

This echoes the fact sheet issued by the department that began with the cautionary note that the U.S government did not know how the virus first jumped into humans, but then continued, “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”

This past Sunday, President Trump’s former deputy national-security adviser, Matt Pottinger, said on CBS News’ Face the Nation:

We have very strong reason to believe that the Chinese military was doing secret classified animal experiments in that same laboratory, going all the way back to at least 2017. We have good reason to believe that there was an outbreak of flu-like illness among researchers working in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the fall of 2019, but right — immediately before the first documented cases came to light.

China signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1984, which outlaws the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling, and use of biological weapons.

China claims that it is in complete compliance with the BWC; the U.S. government disagrees. In 2019, the U.S. State Department’s updated report on compliance with arms-control agreements concluded,

the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC. In addition, the United States does not have sufficient information to determine whether China eliminated its assessed biological warfare program, as required under Article II of the Convention.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-iran-plays-chicken-with-biden-it-also-moves-closer-to-the-bomb/

Tehran appears to be jockeying for position ahead of nuke deal talks by blackballing inspectors and threatening to increase enrichment, but the posturing carries dangerous risks.

With each step Iran takes to advance its nuclear program, a path out of the dangerous quagmire becomes even more murky.

On Tuesday, Tehran officially suspended its implementation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Additional Protocol, which gave nuclear inspectors increased access to Iran’s nuclear program, including the ability to carry out snap inspections at undeclared sites.

“As of midnight tonight, we will not have… commitments beyond safeguards. Necessary orders have been issued to the nuclear facilities,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s envoy to international organizations in Vienna.

A day earlier Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that Tehran could enrich uranium to 60% purity if it so desired. US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the comment “sounds like a threat” and referred to it as “posturing.”

Analysts believe both the move to limit inspections and the enrichment threat are aimed at bolstering Iran’s negotiating position as it and US President Joe Biden’s administration maneuver ahead of expected talks aimed at bringing Washington back into the 2015 nuclear deal. But even if intended as bargaining chips, they carry the risk of moving Iran significantly closer to nuclear weapons capabilities.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/iranian-crown-prince-reza-pahlavi-speaks-joseph-puder/

Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi isn’t likely to return to his homeland anytime soon. Nor, for that matter, is he likely to succeed his deposed father Mohammad Reza as Shah of Iran in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, if Iran is to be liberated from its oppressive, radical, and messianic Ayatollahs regime, Reza Pahlavi would be considered a natural contender to serve as a future Iranian head of state. With a large supportive Iranian expatriate constituency in Los Angeles and in Europe, he is the obvious leader of the Iranian exile opposition to the Islamic Republic of the Ayatollahs.  

Reza Pahlavi was born on October 31, 1960, and married Yasmine Etemad-Amini in 1986. They have three daughters and reside in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1980, shortly after his father’s death and on his 20th birthday, Reza Pahlavi, declared himself to be the new Shah of Iran – Reza Shah II. The Jimmy Carter administration declined to recognize him, and instead recognized the Islamic Republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

In his address to the International Society of Human Rights, on March 27, 2010, Reza Pahlavi declared: “Since the establishment of the clerical regime in Iran, both democracy and human rights have been grossly compromised. Not only did the people not gain political freedom, which some may have thought would be attained as a result of the ‘Islamic Revolution,’ but sadly they ended up losing practically all of the social freedoms which have been attained and enjoyed for a long time, particularly since the advent of the Constitutional Revolution at the turn of the 20th Century.”

Honored with the Champion of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York on May 5th, 2016, Reza Pahlavi stated: “But while Iran has this proud history, my own compatriots have been held hostage for 37 years by a clerical regime that abuses the very notion of freedom. Since I left my beloved Iran, I have dedicated my life to fighting for my compatriots’ freedom and their human rights. I do appreciate the fact that, by recognizing my efforts, you have demonstrated your care and concern about the plight of the millions of Iranians who have suffered under the repression of the clerical regime ruling my homeland.”