RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-bad-bargain-with-iran-11567973948

Iran on Saturday took another giant step toward gaining nuclear weapons by admitting it is now using arrays of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium. This is its latest violation of the 2015 nuclear deal and puts more pressure on Europe to decide whether it wants to keep subsidizing this nuclear breakout.

First the European signatories tried to evade U.S. sanctions by creating a new trade and finance system. That failed, so now French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed giving Tehran a roughly $15 billion credit line, guaranteed by Iranian oil, if the regime renews compliance with the nuclear deal.

Mr. Macron would do better to save the money and help Mr. Trump ’s Iran efforts. Sanctions the U.S. has imposed since last year are designed to coax Tehran to renegotiate a better deal. This has included designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization and sanctions that have reduced Iranian crude oil exports some 80%. U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook announced fresh measures against the IRGC and Iranian oil last Wednesday.

This appears to be working. Iranian leaders such as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif have gone from refusing talks with Washington to probing ways to get back to the negotiating table. That’s important context for Iran’s provocations that are supposed to scare Washington into offering a new deal, such as attacks on oil infrastructure in the Middle East, threats against a Washington think tank, and news that Tehran is now openly violating the 2015 deal by stockpiling highly enriched uranium.

The mystery is why, in light of all this, Mr. Macron is eager to send Iran more money—especially since Mr. Trump can block the transfer by refusing to waive U.S. sanctions. Perhaps Mr. Macron and the Europeans hope to buy off Iran in the short term as they wait to see if Mr. Trump wins re-election. But in the meantime they are advancing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/surprise_iaea_finds_uranium_traces_in_tehran_where_netanyahu_told_them_to_look.html

Samples taken by investigators from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency at the so-called “secret atomic warehouse” in Tehran — where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told them to look — have come up glowing.

Iran has yet to explain those traces of uranium, says the nuclear watchdog agency, according to two diplomats who are tightly connected with the agency’s inspection work

According to Reuters, a quarterly IAEA report issued a week ago did not mention the sample results because inspection-related matters are highly confidential. But it did say Iran’s cooperation could be better.

Better.  Uh…  yeah!  And so could IAEA’s communications, not to say honesty, on the matter, even with the need for secrecy.  But don’t expect it.  

 Although Prime Minister Netanyahu is too restrained and too diplomatic while President Donald Trump  is not, now that both have been more than vindicated, they should crow loudly “I told you so!  I told you so! Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah!”  And then demand more information on what Iran is really doing.  And demand more access from Iran.  And demand other countries condemn and also restrain Iran.  

https://www.steynonline.com/9726/johnson-vs-johnson

Across the continent and an ocean, Westminster continues to be roiled by Brexiteers and Remoaners locked, like the latter seasons of Dynasty, in ever more demented plot twists. Today Her Majesty’s Government suffered its first resignation since Boris Johnson took over as Prime Minister. The Minister for Universities and Science quit, and is leaving Parliament. His name is Jo Johnson. Any relation? Why, yes. He’s Boris’ brother. In the normal course of events, no normal person knows who the Minister for Universities is, or indeed that such a post exists, or, if aware of this grand office, what the chap who holds it does all day long: He ain’t a heavy, he’s his brother – that’s all. But the junior Johnson, a Remainer, has walked out on the senior Johnson, a Leaver, so it’s the biggest thing since Cain fired his Secretary of State for Sheep-Herding. Boris was his brother’s keeper, but he couldn’t keep him. So the Remainer leaves, putting a question mark over whether the Leaver can remain.

~All sides are throwing around media accusations of “constitutional outrage”, ever since Boris got the Queen to prorogue Parliament and was instantly ungraded from PM to Caudillo of the new dictatorship. I am more sympathetic to the charges against his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, has been claiming for months to want a general election. Indeed, there is no reason not to have one. On Tuesday the Prime Minister formally lost his majority, when some Tory nobody I’d never heard of crossed the floor and became a Liberal. So Boris and his team cannot govern. Indeed, even their minority is shrinking by the hour, as he removes the whip, expels and deselects those who vote against him on Brexit.

And yet Corbyn voted down Boris’ motion for a general election – because the Opposition Leader is determined to force the Government to enact not its own but the Opposition’s policy, by making Boris go to Brussels, grovel, and beg for another extension of Britain’s zombie membership in the European Union. To put it in American terms, the legislative branch wants to maintain the executive branch in power purely as its dead-eyed sock puppet. That is certainly a constitutional abomination, and, cautious as she is in such matters, I have no doubt the Queen regards it as such.