RUTHFULLY YOURS

U.S. gave up on eliminating most of Iran’s nuclear program, while Tehran took steps such as agreeing to mothball centrifuges

Top Obama administration officials entered negotiations with Iran in September 2013 hoping to dismantle most of the country’s nuclear infrastructure—but carrying gnawing doubts such an outcome was possible. Those concerns were quickly confirmed when U.S. and Iranian diplomats sat down for their first formal meeting the following month at the United Nations offices near the shores of Lake Geneva.

Iranian negotiators made clear that a dismantling of their facilities, including eliminating tens of thousands of centrifuge machines, a plutonium-producing reactor and an underground fuel-production site, wasn’t feasible, senior U.S. officials said. “It’s our moon shot,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told a U.S. official at one point, arguing that the program’s economic and scientific benefits were that important to Iranian society and national pride.

Pew Research forecast shows number of Muslims will almost equal that of Christians world-wide

The world’s Islamic population is growing so rapidly that by 2050, the number of Muslims will be nearly equal to the number of Christians across the planet—possibly for the first time in history.

The new forecast is part of a sweeping religious-population study released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center that projects significant demographic shifts across the global religious landscape.

Most major religions—including Christianity—will see their numbers increase. But the exceptional growth of Islam, as well as the rise of those unaffiliated with any religion, is poised to alter historic religious balances across Europe, the U.S. and Africa over the next four decades, the study suggests.

By 2050, the study says, there will be more Muslims than Jews in the U.S.—though both groups will remain small minorities.

The fundamental question posed by President Obama’s Iran diplomacy has always been whether it can prevent a nuclear-armed Middle East—in Iran as well as Turkey and the Sunni Arab states. Mr. Obama unveiled a “framework” accord on Thursday that he said did precisely that, but the claims warrant great skepticism, not least because they come with so many asterisks.

The framework is only an “understanding” among Iran and the six powers because many of the specifics are still being negotiated. But Mr. Obama wanted to announce some agreement near his self-imposed March 31 deadline, lest Congress ratchet up sanctions on Iran, and now Secretary of State John Kerry will go back to negotiate the crucial fine print.

On the chilly morning of July 18, 1994, at a busy intersection in Buenos Aires, a white Renault van sped in front of Mrs. Nicolasa Romero, who was walking her son, Nahu, to nursery school. “A real lout,” thought Nicolasa, “no respect for pedestrians.” He would have run us over, she fumed, had I not yanked Nahu back onto the pavement. “Idiot!” she yelled. The driver, she later recalled, “was dark-skinned, with large eyes; he wore a beige shirt and his dark hair was cut army-style.” He looked impassively into Nicolasa’s eyes as she held tightly to Nahu’s hand.

Minutes later, a tremendous explosion, a deafening roar, shattered the morning. The screams and the storms of stones, rubble, and broken glass meant that it came from somewhere nearby, and Nicolasa and her son, together with many others, crouched on the ground in fear. People were yelling, “A bomb! A bomb!” When, dazed and covered in dust and shards of glass, Nicolasa managed to pull herself and Nahu up, she immediately saw that they were the lucky ones. Others lay on the bloodied ground mutilated, some dead.

Social media, mobility, analytics and cloud technologies are transformational catalysts for communication and transactional relationships. They are rapidly becoming staples to the way people communicate both personally and professionally, and therefore carry huge implications for government across a wide range of areas.

Creating IT Futures Foundation, the philanthropic arm of CompTIA, recently published the Federal Technology Convergence Report which identifies the potential impact that converged technologies — social media, mobility, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) — could have on government communication, cooperation, and the ability to address the nation’s most significant issues.

The report defines convergence as a phenomenon that occurs when individuals use SMAC technologies to communicate, cooperate, and solve big problems. The 2013 Boston marathon bombing provides interesting insight into the power of convergence and the collective intelligence that can be gathered when SMAC is used cooperatively.

Pending further successful final run, Israel could bring David’s Sling online in months, boosting long-range missile defenses

The David’s Sling anti-ballistic missile system successfully passed a series of trial runs, shooting down incoming surface-to-surface and air-to-surface-missiles in a drill simulating rocket bombardments of Israeli cities, Defense Ministry officials said Wednesday.

The Defense Ministry indicated that the mid-range missile defense system, which is capable of intercepting incoming projectiles from over 300 kilometers (180 miles) away, should become operational in two months.

The series of tests was carried out under the auspices of the Defense Ministry’s research and development branch in conjunction with the US Missile Defense Agency and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

The system’s MMR radar discovered and tracked an incoming missile and submitted the data to the battery’s central nerve center, whereupon the flight-path was mapped and an interception point calculated. The system then launched an anti-ballistic missile that intercepted the target, destroying the approaching rocket as planned.

A few months ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook arrived in Israel to inaugurate Apple’s Herzlia R&D center. Many speculate that the primary motivation for this move was to capitalize on Israel’s long history and prowess in micro-chip design, but there also seem to be inextricable cultural factors Apple and other companies hope to capitalize on.

While Cook was in Israel, Israeli President Rivlin emphasized the importance of companies like Apple and innovators like Apple Vice-President for hardware technology Johny Srouji, an Israeli Arab, and their role in making Israel a vibrant, successful, and inclusive state.

The two men are different: They represent opposite ends of the political spectrum: Barack Obama was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. Ted Cruz was reared in Texas. Unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Cruz speaks flawlessly without notes or a teleprompter; we know more about Mr. Cruz’s years at Princeton than we do about Mr. Obama’s at Occidental and Columbia; while Mr. Cruz was described by Alan Dershowitz as one of the smartest students he ever taught at Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama’s transcripts have been kept under wraps.

But, it is similarities that are striking. Both men were born outside the continental United States: Mr. Cruz in Calgary, Canada and Mr. Obama in Honolulu, Hawaii. Both had emigrant fathers: Mr. Obama’s was born in Kenya and Mr. Cruz’s in Cuba. Both fathers abandoned their sons in their youth, Mr. Cruz’s temporarily and Mr. Obama’s permanently. They were both raised, at least for a time, by their mothers. Barack Obama’s mother found solace in the communist beliefs of her father, while Ted Cruz’s mother got comfort from religion.

Hysteria works. That’s the lesson of the debate, such as it is, over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Nothing so captured the spirit of the discussion as an exchange Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show.” That is, of course, the eponymous program hosted by Ed Schultz, who is the Edward R. Murrow of poorly informed bombast. For him, “Shut up, he explained,” is a high-toned argument. Schultz proved it when his guest Ryan Anderson of The Heritage Foundation badly overmatched him by saying knowledgeable things about RFRA, and, unable to handle it, the host had Anderson’s mic cut off. Ah, yes, #debate. Rarely has one side had so few facts on its side and gotten such results through sheer repetition of the word “discrimination” and through lurid, fantastical denunciations. Indiana Governor Mike Pence has been on the run.

If the Benghazi committee is planning on subpoenaing Clinton once her campaign starts, they’re in for a rude awakening.
Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), who chairs the House select committee investigating the Benghazi massacre, has invited former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to submit to a private, transcribed interview with committee staff. The interview would cover her improper use of a private e-mail system to conduct government business, and her unilateral decision to destroy over 30,000 e-mails previously stored on a Clinton-owned server – e-mails that she and her counsel dubiously claim have been irretrievably deleted.
In a column on Tuesday, I argued that this invitation is a mistake: Mrs. Clinton should be subpoenaed, forthwith, to provide public testimony under oath. Congress’s Benghazi investigation is supposed to be about public accountability, and there is no justification for extending the courtesy of a private interview to a critical witness who has been impeding investigations of Benghazi for two-and-a-half years. Some sympathetic to Representative Gowdy’s approach point out that the private interview is not an either-or proposition: Having Mrs. Clinton submit to a private interview with committee staff now does not preclude calling her as a witness at a public hearing later on. The point is academic since, as I will explain, it is hard to imagine Mrs. Clinton and her lawyers agreeing to submit to a private staff interview. But it is nonetheless worth considering this “private interview now, public testimony later” strategy.