Contrary to belief, decertification neither violates nor cancels the agreement. It does not betray our commitments to our allies and it does not abrogate our obligations to the Iranians. It’s an act of domestic politics between two branches of the United States government.
But it’s also a psychological step, a brash signal that Trump is prepared to see the deal fail and accept the consequences, including war, if he can’t negotiate a better one.
.. There’s escalatory risk, as the United States, its forces thinly stretched in the Middle East, become vulnerable to attack by Iran’s terrorist proxies. Think of the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983 and the humiliating American withdrawal in its wake.
There’s diplomatic risk, as Iran traps Western diplomats in a process of never-ending negotiations designed to go nowhere — all the while turning the Islamic Republic into a reputable member of the international community and the United States into the global pariah.
.. the risk that Iran will call Trump’s bluff, much as Bashar al-Assad called President Obama’s when he failed to enforce his chemical red line in 2013. A superpower repeatedly exposed as a paper tiger by lesser, if more willful, adversaries will not maintain its pre-eminence for long.
.. Iran’s regional behavior has become worse since the nuclear deal came into effect, not least because it provided the regime with a huge new income stream — $10 billion in cash and gold in 2016 alone.. plus more than $100 billion in additional sanctions relief.. it wants a robust nuclear base that puts it within a screw’s twist of a sizable nuclear arsenal without the economic and security risks of actual possession... If we couldn’t prevent Pakistan or North Korea from going nuclear in the 1990s, why should we think we’ll be able to stop Iran in the nick of time?.. The American Goliath needn’t be helpless against a Middle Eastern state with a gross domestic product only slightly larger than that of metropolitan Atlanta... We are living through a nuclear nightmare on the Korean Peninsula after more than two decades of optimistic diplomacy. That’s a fate we ought to do everything possible to avoid with Iran... decertification isn’t a sufficient condition to break the paralysis of our Iran policy, but it is a necessary one
John Bolton: Inexplicable to Say Iran in Compliance with Nuclear Agreement
He proceeded to criticize Trump administration officials, like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, for protecting the Iran nuclear deal despite Iran’s clear violations of the agreement.
“Whatever capability North Korea has, Iran will have the next day,” Bolton told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.
In Bolton’s estimation, “to be successful, the Trump administration has got to get control over the entire federal bureaucracy, particularly in the national security arena.”
“Too often, I think we’ve seen the bureaucracy still on autopilot from January the 19 of this year,” he said. “The decision a couple of weeks ago for the second time to certify that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal is just inexplicable.”
.. “Now, the president said yesterday he doesn’t think they’re in compliance. So he needs to grasp the bureaucracy by its coat lapels and say, ‘Listen to what I’m telling you. We need to get out of this deal.’ If he doesn’t do that, not only will the policy not change, eventually, it will come back to bite him,” Bolton warned... Bolton replied. “Every bureaucracy in Washington has its own culture. Some of them, like the State Department, have several sub-cultures. The overwhelming political perspective of the career employees of the State Department is liberal Democrat. It affects their policy in virtually every aspect.”.. “What you need at the State Department is not a reorganization. You need a cultural revolution,” he contended.
Unable to Buy U.S. Military Drones, Allies Place Orders With China
Several countries in the Mideast and Africa have deployed weapons in conflicts after buying from Beijing—at lower cost
Last October, satellite images captured the distinctive outlines of some powerful new weaponry at a Saudi runway used for military strikes in Yemen. Three Wing Loong drones had appeared, Chinese-made replicas of the U.S. Predator with a similar ability to stay aloft for hours carrying missiles and bombs... growing evidence that military drones exported by China have recently been deployed in conflicts in the Mideast and Africa by several countries, including U.S. allies that the U.S. blocked from buying American models... The U.S. has long refused to sell the most powerful U.S.-made drones to most countries, fearing they might fall into hostile hands, be used to suppress civil unrest or, in the Mideast, erode Israel’s military dominance... State companies are selling aircraft resembling General Atomics’s Predator and Reaper drones at a fraction of the cost to U.S. allies and partners, and to other buyers...Among the Pentagon’s concerns is that advanced drones could be used against American forces. In Syria, U.S. pilots have shot down two Iranian-made armed drones threatening members of the U.S.-led coalition... Chinese and Saudi officials agreed to jointly produce as many as 100 Rainbow drones in Saudi Arabia.. proved “on the battlefield,” hitting 300 targets in the previous year or so with Chinese laser-guided missiles... Beijing used to sell mainly low-tech arms to poorer countries; now it is marketing sophisticated items including stealth fighters, and targeting markets once dominated by Russia and the U.S... “China faces little competition for sale of such systems, as most countries that produce them are restricted in selling the technology” by international agreement.. The Pentagon estimates China could produce almost 42,000 aerial drones—sale value more than $10 billion—in the decade up to 2023... U.S. armed drones are still overwhelmingly considered the most capable, in part because the U.S. satellite infrastructure that controls them is superior. Israel has been the top military-drone exporter for years, according to SIPRI. But Israel has largely avoided selling them in its own Mideast neighborhood... A Wing Loong, meanwhile, costs about $1 million compared with about $5 million for its U.S.-made counterpart, the Predator, and about $15 million for a Reaper, whose Chinese competition is the CH-5... Chinese strike and surveillance drones have been used by Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. in the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen... A North Korean drone that crashed in South Korea in 2014 was Chinese-made..The CH-5 can in fact operate for up to 40 hours, its manufacturer says—about 50% longer than its American competition.
Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win Fields Medal in mathematics, dies at 40
Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian-born mathematician who in 2014 became the first woman awarded the Fields Medal, often called the most prestigious prize in mathematics, died July 15. She was 40.
Stanford University, where she had been a professor since 2008, announced her death but did not say where she died. The cause was breast cancer.
Another academic collaborator, University of Chicago mathematician Alex Eskin, described her contributions as “the kind of mathematics you immediately recognize belongs in a textbook.”
.. She is the only woman to have received the medal, named for Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields
.. She did say that she became interested in mathematics after her older brother told her about a shorthand way to add all the numbers from 1 to 100. The trick, devised in the 18th century by Carl Friedrich Gauss, is to add the outermost pairs of numbers: 1 plus 100, 2 plus 99, 3 plus 98, and so on. Each time, the sum is 101. There are 50 pairs of numbers. Multiplying 50 by 101 yields the answer: 5,050.