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SEOUL—North Korea said it has successfully made nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles, a claim which, if true, would represent a clear threat to the U.S.

Military officials and analysts outside North Korea have debated for years the isolated nation’s ability to make nuclear explosives small enough to mount on missiles. The opacity of its nuclear program makes it difficult to determine progress in its stated objective.

In a report from Pyongyang’s state news agency on Wednesday, North Korea said leader Kim Jong Un was briefed by scientists about advances in nuclear missile technology.

“The nuclear warheads have been standardized to be fit for ballistic missiles by miniaturizing them, he noted, adding this can be called true nuclear deterrent,” the Korean Central News Agency paraphrased Mr. Kim as saying.

The report also said the warheads were able to generate a thermonuclear reaction, making a more powerful form of explosion if a hydrogen-based weapon is used. North Korea said its latest nuclear bomb on Jan. 6 was a hydrogen-based explosive, although outside experts said the relatively small size of the explosion made it unlikely that it was caused by a typical hydrogen bomb.

Photos released by North Korea’s state media showed Mr. Kim talking with officials while standing close to a large metal sphere. Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, said it was possible the device was a nuclear explosive, either a stand-alone fusion bomb or a trigger for a more powerful thermonuclear device. CONTINUE AT SITE

DUBAI—Iran test fired two types of medium-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday, extending a barrage of tests this week following vows by officials to press ahead with its missile program despite U.S. pressure to curtail it.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired off “Qadr-H” and “Qadr-F” missiles from mountainous sites in northern Iran, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency. The missiles traveled 870 miles to the country’s sparsely populated southeastern coast, it said.

The tests followed the previous day’s tests of several ballistic missiles from silos in central Iran, the country’s first since the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned 11 Iranian entities in January over alleged links to the missile program.

A senior U.S. official said on Tuesday that while the tests were “inconsistent” with a United Nations Security Council Resolution calling on Iran not to pursue missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads, they didn’t constitute a violation of last year’s historic nuclear deal.

The U.S. sees Iranian missiles as a threat to Israel, its key Middle Eastern ally, and to Arab allies in the Persian Gulf. There are also substantial U.S. military assets in the region, including a large naval base in Bahrain.

Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Tuesday that most of Iran’s arsenal of missiles was capable of reaching Israel, according to Tasnim. Iranian enemies in the region “should be in panic about the roar of the IRGC missiles,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Robert Spencer, the Director of JihadWatch.org and the author of the new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS.

Robert discussed Why a Muslim Woman Beheaded a Child in Moscow, focusing on how Gulchekhra Bobokulova has insisted that Allah made her do it. Did he?

Don’t miss it!

Even before last week’s election, the Irish government was considered among the most hostile in Europe to Israel, second only to Sweden.

It may take weeks to sort out the recent Irish election and crown a new government in Dublin, but one thing is already certain: Israel’s position in the Emerald Isle is about to go from bad to worse.

Though it is not clear whether the ruling Fine Gael will form a coalition together with its bitter political rival Fianna Fail, or whether Fine Gael will form a minority government, it is clear that pro-Israel candidates were roundly defeated across the board, while pro-Palestinian candidates enjoyed a good day Friday at the polls.

For instance, Fine Gael’s Alan Shatter, the sole Jewish MP who served from 2011 to 2014 as both justice and defense minister, and who has been the victim of anti-Semitic swipes for his willingness to speak up for Israel, was defeated.

As was Joanna Tuffy, a Labor Party parliamentarian who headed the small Irish-Israel parliamentary friendship caucus. In fact it is not clear whether there will even be such a group in the next parliament, as the three or four members of this group were either voted out or retired.

On the other hand, new MP Gino Kenny, from the Anti-Austerity Alliance, celebrated his election victory on Saturday by waving a Palestinian flag. (Imagine the reaction were a congressman from Oklahoma to celebrate his victory on election night by waving not the US flag, but rather the blue and white banner of Israel.) Another candidate who won, Independent John Halligan, launched his candidacy in January in the presence of Palestinian Authority Ambassador Ahmad Abdelrazek.

Seventy years ago this past weekend an elderly, rotund man stepped up to a podium in Fulton, Mo., and delivered one of the great speeches of the 20th century — and arguably the single most relevant speech for our own time.

The man was Winston Churchill, and the speech he gave on March 5, 1946, has been known ever since as the Iron Curtain speech, both because it coined a phrase — “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent’’ — to describe the inexorable advance of Josef Stalin’s Communist empire in the aftermath of World War II, and because Churchill had summed up the ideological, as well as the geopolitical, map of the Cold War world for the next 45 years.

Certainly it was a prescient moment. In March 1946 many in the United States, including in the Truman administration, still believed the cooperation with the Soviet Union that had won World War II would blossom into permanent friendship.

Churchill knew better. Even before the Berlin blockade and Communist coups in Czechoslovakia and Hungary finally awoke the apathetic and the gullible to Stalin’s true designs, Churchill saw that the struggle between freedom and tyranny would continue after the fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan — because that struggle is perpetual and unending.

Young male asylum seekers have turned Sweden’s public swimming pools into ordeals of rape and sexual assault.

Swedish politicians seem convinced that some education on “equality” will change the ways of men, who, since childhood, have been taught that it is the responsibility of women not to arouse them — and therefore the woman’s fault if the man feels like raping her.

More and more Swedes are now avoiding public pools altogether.

Staff at Malmö’s Hylliebadet family adventure pool were given strict instructions not to report certain things, and above all, never to mention the ethnicity or religion of those who cause problems at the pool.

“What the Afghans are doing is not wrong in Afghanistan, so your rules are completely alien to them. … If you want to stop Afghans from molesting Swedish girls, you need to be tough on them. Making them take classes on equality and how to treat women is pointless. The first time they behave badly, they should be given a warning, and the second time you should deport them from Sweden.” — Mr. Azizi, manager of a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan

Men and women, in a Swedish tradition, have swum together in public pools for over 100 years. Many people are now wondering if we will be forced to give up this practice — because young male asylum seekers have turned public swimming pools into ordeals of rape and sexual assault.

Mixed bathing in Sweden started in the small southern fishing village of Mölle. Around 1890, the “Sin of Mölle” gained notoriety. Men and women were swimming together! Out in the open and shamelessly flaunting their striped bathing attire. It was a sensation that echoed all over Europe, and people came from everywhere to partake in the exciting new activity. Danes poured in, and even the German Emperor Wilhelm II made his way to Mölle in July 1907.

It should come as surprise to no one that men from the Middle East and North Africa have quite a different view of women than Swedish men do. The only mystery is why Swedish politicians have got it in their heads that everyone who sets foot on Swedish soil will immediately embrace our values, our view of women and our traditions.

Now that it is finally beginning to dawn on them that many Afghan, Somali, Iraqi and Syrian men (the largest immigrant groups coming to Sweden now) think that women who run around scantily clad are fair game, the politicians are dumbfounded. Of course, they cannot admit that this — to Swedes — completely alien view of women has anything to do with Islam, because then they would become victims of their own claim that everyone who criticizes Islam is an “Islamophobe.”

I certainly hope so. Calls for genocide are bad enough. But prejudiced calls for genocide are even worse.

After getting stuck in London traffic, Rashal Miah got out of his Mercedes and started shouting that he would “kill all the Jews” at an Orthodox Jewish school-bus driver in front of a bus full of young children.

During Miah’s sentencing, Judge Murray Shanks in the UK called the driver’s behavior “horrible.”

“I accept this was mainly driven by you being wrongly angry and suffering from road rage, as well as being arrogant about what you were entitled to do on the road,” Shanks told Miah. “I hope it doesn’t indicate some underlying prejudice.”

Surely shouting “Kill all the Jews” because you’re angry at a Jewish bus driver in no way indicates some underlying prejudice.

“If this was the other way around and Muslims were being insulted, I have a good feeling you would feel strongly. You need to understand that before you open your mouth,” the judge said.

Well of course he would feel strongly. But that’s different. Because Muslims are the Master Race.

These condescending liberal lectures are great, but Muslims don’t see themselves as a minority. Our friend Rashal has been informed by the Koran that Jews are accursed by Allah. He recites this every day in his prayers. His preachers tell him the Hadiths that the apocalypse won’t come until Muslims kill all the Jews.

Open Doors, an organization that advocates for persecuted Christians, recently released its latest World Watch List—a report that highlights and ranks the 50 worst nations to be Christian. It found that 2015 was the “worst year in modern history for Christian persecution.”

Who claims the lion’s share of this unprecedented persecution? Muslims—of all races, nationalities, languages, and socio-political circumstances: Muslims from among America’s closest allies (Saudi Arabia #14 worst persecutor) and its opponents (Iran #9); Muslims from economically rich nations (Qatar #21) and from poor nations (Somalia #7 and Yemen #11); Muslims from “Islamic republic” nations (Afghanistan #4) and from “moderate” nations (Malaysia #30 and Indonesia #43); Muslims from nations rescued by America (Kuwait #41) and Muslims from nations claiming “grievances” against the U.S. (fill in the blank __).

The report finds that “Islamic extremism” is the main source of persecution in 41 of the top 50 countries—that is, 82 percent of the world’s persecution of Christians is being committed by Muslims. As for the top ten worst countries persecuting Christians, nine of them are Muslim-majority—that is, 90 percent of nations where Christians experience “extreme persecution” are Muslim.

Still, considering that the 2016 World Watch List ranks North Korea—non-Islamic, communist—as the number one worst persecutor of Christians, why belabor the religious identity of Muslims? Surely this suggests that Christian persecution is not intrinsic to the Islamic world but is rather a product of repressive regimes and other socio-economic factors—as the North Korean example suggests and as many politicians and other talking heads maintain?

Here we come to some critically important but rarely acknowledged distinctions. While Christians are indeed suffering extreme persecution in North Korea, these fall into the realm of the temporal and aberrant. Something as simple as overthrowing Kim Jong-un’s regime could lead to a quick halt to the persecution—just as the fall of Communist Soviet Union saw the end of religious persecution. The vibrancy of Christianity in South Korea is suggestive of what may be in store—and thus creates such fear for—its northern counterpart.

In the Islamic world, however, a similar scenario would not alleviate the sufferings of Christians by an iota. Quite the opposite; where dictators fall (often thanks to U.S. intervention)—Saddam in Iraq, Qaddafi in Libya, and ongoing attempts against Assad in Syria—Christian persecution dramatically rises. Today Iraq is the second worst nation in the world in which to be Christian, Syria fifth, and Libya tenth. A decade ago under the “evil” dictators, Iraq was ranked 32, Syria 47, and Libya 22.

Last week, opposition figures Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Yisrael Beytenu and Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid, convened an emergency conference in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) under the banner “Fighting for Israel’s International Status.” Lieberman charged that, “Netanyahu (Israel’s Prime Minister) is trying to take the Israeli Foreign Service and destroy it by force.” He added, “The Foreign Ministry is no one’s private property, including the Netanyahu family, you can’t take it and destroy it completely.” Lieberman served as Foreign Minister in Netanyahu’s previous government as did Lapid, who served as Finance Minister. Both could have received the Foreign Ministry portfolio had they joined Netanyahu’s coalition government. The conference did not include the leader of the opposition and chairman of the Zionist Camp, Yitzhak Herzog. Both Lapid and Lieberman seek to replace Netanyahu as prime minister.

Lapid’s criticism was less personal and more issue oriented. He stated that, “The deterioration of the situation is dramatic. The BDS Movement is gaining power, the international institutions and the UN as well, are leading an anti-Israel line. There is a crisis with the American administration, there is a crisis with the European Union, the world media is leading a serious slanderous anti-Israel line, aided by anti-Israel organizations.” Lapid added, “Our international standing has never, throughout the state’s history from 1948 until today, been so bad. What makes the situation worse is the fact that the Israeli government won’t admit it.”

One point made by Yair Lapid is clearly valid. He pointed out that “The Foreign Ministry is divided between six ministers and none of them knows what the others are doing. Israel’s hasbara (public relations) is divided between five government ministries, and none of them knows what the other is doing.” The Israeli government has to speak with one voice, and preferably, allow hasbara overseas to be handled by qualified PR and advertising experts, and led by a reputable NGO.

In the March 2016 issue of National Geographic it is noted that a marble dolphin with a fish in its mouth turned up at a site in the Negev Desert in Israel. The 16-inch statue was embedded in the floor of a seventh-century building. Although some archaeologists believe it may have been part of a statue of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, others maintain that “a dolphin eating a fish symbolizes the persecution of early Christians [.]”

And thus, persecution and murder of Christians continues into the 21st century. In Nigeria, violent killings of Christians are up 62 percent according to Open Doors which monitors religiously motivated violence and persecution. In 2015 there were 4,028 killings and 198 church attacks, nearly double those of the previous year. Since 2009, 11,500 Christians were killed, 13,000 churches were destroyed and 1.3 million Christians have fled to safer areas of Nigeria or have attempted to reach Europe.

According to Rose Gamble, “the persecution of Christians is carried out by three groups: Islamist terror group, Boko Haram, Muslim Fulani herdsmen; and the Muslim religious and political elite that dominate northern Nigeria. In fact, several areas of northern Nigeria have seen Christianity virtually wiped out.”

The ongoing ISIS slaughter of Christians has resulted in the European Parliament unanimously passing a resolution referring to the Islamic State’s (ISIS) killing of religious minorities under its control as “genocide” in the Middle East. But the Obama administration dithers and when asked, White House spokesman Josh Earnest claims that the word genocide “involves a very specific legal determination that has, at this point, not been reached.” This should come as no surprise since the FBI has “released a new edition of its anti-terror video game, ‘Don’t Be a Puppet’ that scrubs all references to Islamic terrorism” per the demands of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Thus, as Clare M. Lopez explains, “Islamic jihad is now excluded from a list of potential terror threats.”