RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama and his subordinates blatantly lied to Congress in order win approval — or, more accurately, to escape disapproval — of his Iran nuclear deal. At a time when jihadist mass-murder attacks are surging, and when Syrian-regime war crimes are abetted by Iran’s jihadist armed forces (which include Hezbollah and the Quds Force, both formally designated terrorist organizations), Obama’s deal infuses Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and an unapologetic enemy of the United States, with over $100 billion in sanctions relief . . . some slice of which, the Obama administration admits, will be diverted to terrorism.

This is old news, of course. Yet, it is worth repeating, for two reasons.

First, these are impeachable offenses of the first order. As I recounted in Faithless Execution, the Framers of our Constitution counted presidential dishonesty in dealings with Congress and presidential concealment of dealings with foreign powers as among the most egregious high crimes and misdemeanors.

Second, Obama is doing it again.

To persuade the Republican-controlled Congress to refrain from rejecting the Iran deal, even under the shamefully indulgent Corker-Cardin process to which GOP leaders agreed, the Obama administration made two key promises. The first was that, if Congress went along with Obama on dismantling nuclear sanctions (for the purportedly greater good of winning the terror regime’s commitment not to build nuclear weapons), the administration would stand strong on other sanctions — sanctions that punish Iran for its terror promotion, ballistic-missile development, and related aggression. The second promise was that Iran would continue to be banned from the U.S. financial system.

Robert S. Litwak is a vice president of the Wilson Center and the author of “Iran’s Nuclear Chess: After the Deal.” He was director for nonproliferation on the National Security Council staff in the Clinton administration.

North Korea’s missile test Friday highlighted the threat discussed by President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and others gathered at the Nuclear Security Summit.

Since 2010 these meetings have spearheaded progress in securing some 2,000 tons of weapons-grade nuclear material around the world, with the goal of denying terrorist groups such as Islamic State the essential component to build a weapon. Still, much work remains to secure nuclear material in the former Soviet republics, South Africa, and elsewhere. And theft or purchase of a weapon are the more immediately plausible routes of terrorist acquisition.

Concern about these two routes to nuclearization focuses on Pakistan and North Korea. Pakistan has the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It is developing small, low-yield tactical nuclear weapons potentially for use against India. Their size and portability makes these weapons vulnerable to theft, whether by rogue commanders or other forces. President Obama said in 2009 that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was secure but administration officials no longer offers such assurances, the New York Times reported this week.

In North Korea, there is more to worry about than the regime’s threats to use weapons. The government in Pyongyang is desperate for funds to maintain the lifestyle of Kim Jong Un and his cronies. The regime needs to raise about $1 billion a year, estimates David Asher of the Center for a New American Security. For the right price, the North Koreans might sell anything to anyone. And Pyongyang’s arsenal of a dozen weapons is poised to surge to as many as 100 weapons by 2020. CONTINUE AT SITE

Islamic State has been using a well-stocked university chemistry lab in Mosul, Iraq, for the past year to concoct a new generation of explosive devices and train militants to make them, according to U.S. and Iraqi military officials and two people familiar with the university.

Gen. Hatem Magsosi, Iraq’s top explosives officer, said the facilities at the University of Mosul have enhanced Islamic State’s ability to launch attacks in Iraq and to export bomb-making know-how when its fighters leave the so-called caliphate and return to their home countries.

The weaponry churned out includes peroxide-based chemical bombs and suicide-bomb vests like the ones used in the Brussels attacks and by at least some of the Paris attackers, according to the general and others in the Iraqi military, as well as an official from the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.

Other bombs made include nitrate-based explosives and chemical weapons, Gen. Magsosi said.

“The University of Mosul is the best Daesh research center in the world,” the general said, using another name for Islamic State. “Trainees go to Raqqa, [Syria], then to Mosul university to use the existing facilities.”

Its current status isn’t clear, however. The U.S.-led coalition has targeted the campus with airstrikes more than once, most recently on March 19. CONTINUE AT SITE

Christians in Raqqa, ISIS’ self-declared capital in Syria, have no way of getting out of the city. The terrorist organization has declared it illegal for them to flee.

The last remaining Christians in Raqqa could suffer a horrendous fate as hostages in their own city. The Islamic radicals started mistreating Christians immediately after they conquered Raqqa, but this travel ban for Christians is new.

The decree spells disaster for the 43 Christian families remaining. ISIS considers Christians to be subhumans, and the terrorists have oppressed them for years. The Iraqi city of Mosul, which once was a stronghold of Arab-Christians in the Middle East, has already been cleansed of all Christians. Many Christians living there were murdered; others fled when they realized what ISIS had in store for them.

Christians in Raqqa have already gone through hell and back again (they’re forced to pay a special tax, are not allowed to improve their churches let alone build new ones, and they can’t pray in public or even display Christian symbols like crosses), but this makes matters even worse for them: now they can’t even flee Raqqa to rebuild their lives in a different city or country.

The United States Department of State issued a statement two weeks ago, declaring ISIS’ anti-Christian campaign to be a “genocide.” It was important that the State Department finally said this out loud, but it does no good if they don’t act on it.

President Teddy Roosevelt once told a campaign audience that weakness invites contempt. Let’s just say that those words apply to our new friend Raul Castro, who keeps going out of his way to show the world that it was President Obama not him who really wanted to do the wave at the baseball game.

First, Raul Castro skipped President Obama’s arrival. We heard all week that it was the first presidential visit to Cuba since President Coolidge. Historic? I guess that Raul didn’t get the memo or doesn’t care about history.

Second, Raul Castro watched the president of the U.S. praise his education and health care system. Incredibly, President Obama read the regime’s talking points from A to Z. What was the point of President Obama doing this?

Third, Fidel Castro jumped into the act and wrote an op-ed in the state media blasting President Obama. Let’s call that column: “Don’t meddle in Cuba” or I will shoot one of those Soviet missiles against your plane like I did in the missile crisis!

Finally, the state-run media (La Tribuna de la Habana) hit one right over the Rays’ centerfielder head with an attack on President Obama that would have a lot of Democrats screaming “racista”:

The Havana Tribune, a state-controlled Cuban newspaper, has added insult to injury following Fidel Castro’s scathing criticism of President Barack Obama upon his departure from the island. In an editorial, the title of which refers to President Obama as “negro,” an opinion columnist has accused him of “inciting rebellion.”

The article is titled “Negro, ¿Tu Eres Sueco?” which roughly translates to “Black Man, Are You Dumb?” (The idiom “pretend to be a Swede” means to play dumb, hence the title is literally asking, “Are you Swedish?”) The author, who is black, goes on to condemn President Obama for meeting with Cuban pro-democracy activists and “subtly” suggesting that the Cuban Revolution needed to change. “Obama came, saw, but unfortunately, with the pretend gesture of lending a hand, tried to conquer,” Elias Argudín writes.

“[Obama] chose to criticize and subtly suggest… incitations to rebellion and disorder, without caring that he was on foreign ground. Without a doubt, Obama overplayed his hand,” he continues. “The least I can say is, Virulo-style: ‘Negro, are you dumb?’”

Virulo is a white pro-Revolution comedian.

In a recent speech on “[t]he security implications of climate change in fragile states,” Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs — Stephane Dion, who named his dog after the Kyoto Protocol and holds dual citizenship to France — made some problematic claims regarding climate change and food production:

Ladies and gentlemen, to speak in front of you about climate change as a risk amplifier for security is quite a challenge. After all, you are among the best experts that the United States and Canada have produced on this crucial issue. So I will not pretend to teach you anything; my objective is rather to reassure you that as a minister, I am fully seized with how critical the topic of this conference is for humankind.

Critical? Certainly. But how many people really know? For most, conflict and unrest have nothing to do with climate change. Yet look at the facts.

Five years ago, when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians filled Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, they were not shouting “climate change.” They shouted “down with injustice, corruption and poverty.” But the motto on the square was “bread, freedom, social equality.”

Bread. It accounts for almost 40 percent of the Egyptian diet. And food accounts for roughly 40 percent of Egyptians’ household budget. With serious land and water scarcity issues, the country cannot produce enough wheat for domestic demand. Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer.

In the winter of 2010 and 2011, China — the world’s second-largest wheat producer — was struck by a “once-in-a-century” drought. At the same time, wheat production in Russia, Ukraine, Australia, Pakistan and Canada also fell dramatically due to drought, wildfires, floods and abnormal weather.

With global wheat supplies down and protectionist measures up, the Egyptian government failed to balance its massive subsidies, and market prices shot up. At the time of the uprisings in early 2011, food prices had increased by 20 percent, and 40 million Egyptians — about half of the population — were receiving food rations.

Or look at Syria. The 2007-2010 drought in Syria was the worst drought on record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centres. A United Nations Development Programme report found that nearly 75 percent of farmers in northeastern Syria experienced total crop failure and herders lost 85 percent of their livestock. Another United Nations report found that more than 800,000 Syrians lost their entire livelihoods as a result of the droughts.

A lot of misinformation hear to unpack, so we will tackle it sequentially — starting with the 2007-2010 Syrian drought.

Dion claims it caused “widespread crop failure” between 2007 and 2010. Syria’s primary agricultural crops are wheat, sugar beets, barley, and olives — in that average order of production quantity since 1993.

The guidelines for teaching Islam in public schools — drafted by the Islamic Commission of Spain and approved by the Ministry of Education — are aimed at stirring religious fervor and promoting Islamic identity among young Muslims in Spain.

The guidelines, which envision the teaching of every aspect of Islamic doctrine, culture and history, are interspersed with “politically correct” terminology… but the overall objective is clear: to inculcate young people with an Islamic worldview.

According to the guidelines, preschoolers (ages 3- 6) are to learn the Islamic profession of faith, the Shahada, which asserts that “there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.” The Shahada is the gateway into Islam: one becomes a Muslim by repeating the Shahada three times in front of a witness. They are also encouraged to “emulate, through different forms of expression, the values observed by Mohammed.”

In primary school (ages 6-12), the guidelines call for children to “recognize Mohammed as the final prophet sent by Allah and accept him as the most important.”

The Spanish government has published new guidelines for teaching Islam in public preschools and primary and secondary schools.

The guidelines are being touted as a way to prevent Muslim children and young people from being drawn into terrorism by exposing them to a “moderate” interpretation of Islam.