Palestinians: Abbas's Security Doubletalk

by Bassam Tawil  •  July 25, 2017 at 5:00 am

• So, who is taking Abbas's threats to suspend security cooperation with Israel seriously? Not Israel, not the Americans, and certainly not many Palestinians. Abbas is caught between two bad places -- both of his very own making. On the one hand, he knows that security cooperation with Israel is his only insurance policy to remain in power and alive. On the other hand, Abbas is acutely aware of his status among many Palestinians, who would be more than happy to replace him with someone more... to their taste.

• Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj's message was directed to the Israeli public with the goal of pressuring the Israeli government and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cave in to Palestinian threats and remove the metal detectors. This is why Faraj chose an Israeli journalist who is known to be sympathetic to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. Faraj and his boss -- Abbas -- wanted to scare the Israeli public and turn them against Netanyahu by telling them that Palestinians will stop security coordination with Israel unless the metal detectors were removed.

• Abbas is still playing his old game. Out of one side of his mouth he claimed a desire for a peaceful solution to the metal detectors crisis, and out of the other side, he egged his people on to murder more and more Israelis. As it turns out, whether security coordination is "sacred" or "suspended," Abbas is in it for one person only: himself.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

The conflicting reports emerging from Ramallah concerning security coordination with Israel serve as yet another reminder of the Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders' astounding hypocrisy.

Israel, for its part, has brushed aside reports about a suspension of the security coordination with the Palestinian Authority as yet another Abbas gimmick.

It is far from lost on Mahmoud Abbas and his PA that such security coordination is what stands between a very hungry Hamas and Abbas served up on toast for breakfast.

In the past, Abbas has rightly and reasonably described security coordination with Israel as "sacred," saying he will never succumb to pressure from Hamas and many Palestinians to stop working with Israel in the West Bank.

"I wish to say this openly – security coordination (with Israel) is sacred and will continue regardless of our political differences," Abbas declared in 2014.

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Norway's Political Elites Cheer for Islam

by Fjordman  •  July 25, 2017 at 4:00 am

• If current levels of immigration continue, native Norwegians will be a minority in their own country within a few decades. In some parts of inner city Oslo, they are already a minority.

• Ethnic Norwegians living in these areas are called "infidel whore." Many feel as if they are strangers in what once was their own country. Yet the politicians and mass media are not interested. The ruling elites are far more interested in cases of alleged "Islamophobia" or "white racism."

• A report commissioned by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) suggested in early 2017 that the Muslim Brotherhood is secretly leading Islamic groups in building a parallel society in Sweden by infiltrating organizations and political parties in the country.

Oslo, Norway. (Image source: Helge Høifødt/Wikimedia Commons)

Ramadan is supposed to be an Islamic holy month of fasting. In reality, as one is thought to be doubly rewarded in paradise for deeds "fighting corruption" during Ramadan, it is a month of "jihad and victories."

It therefore nearly always leads to an increase in jihad violence in different parts of the world.

Breitbart News counted at least 1,620 people killed by militant Muslims during Ramadan in 2017. Most of these were killed in Muslim-majority countries. However, deadly Islamic terrorist attacks also hit Western cities such as London.

When dealing with Muslim terror, it can be useful to separate it into two different, categories: Big Terror and Little Terror. Big Terror includes mass casualty attacks such as suicide bombings. Little Terror includes other forms of violence and harassment, such as torching cars, that have a negative impact on daily life. Both forms of terror are intended to spread fear.

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Hero Imams

by Khadija Khan  •  July 24, 2017 at 5:00 am

• More than 60 Islamic leaders and imams -- from France, Belgium, Britain, Tunisia, and of different Islamic faiths -- in a move that may be unprecedented, are touring Europe to denounce Islamic terrorism and to pay homage to the victims of terror in Europe by visiting many of the sites of terror attacks.

• The idea seems to have shaken extremists to the core. They have been sending these imams death threats.

• It is therefore high time, as mankind faces a crucial turning point, that people will pull together and support any voices of peace such as those of the marching imams, and restrain any hands that would try to sabotage their noble mission.

Hassen Chalghoumi (pictured at center on January 8, 2015), the imam of Drancy Mosque in suburban Paris, is leading a peace march of more than 60 Islamic leaders and imams, to denounce Islamic terrorism and pay homage to the victims of terror in Europe. (Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty Images)

More than 60 Islamic leaders and imams -- from France, Belgium, Britain, Tunisia, and of different Islamic faiths -- in a move that may be unprecedented, are touring Europe to denounce Islamic terrorism and to pay homage to the victims of terror in Europe by visiting many of the sites of terror attacks.

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U.S. Abuses Its Mandate to Spread Democracy and Freedom in Iran

by Avideh Motmaen-Far  •  July 24, 2017 at 4:00 am

• Mohammad Reza Yazdanpanah was fired, he believes, for refusing to produce a report painting Israel in an evil light, while defending Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at the NGO Human Rights Watch. Instructed by duty editor Keyvan Hosseini to do a story on Israel's denial of a work visa for Shakir (which ultimately it granted), Yazdanpanah objected that the topic was irrelevant to the station's audience and unrelated to Radio Farda's mission -- "to inform people about the corruption and human rights violations in Iran."

• "So biased has been their broadcast in favor of the Iranian regime that the people of Iran and the dissidents derogatorily call Voice of America the 'Voice of Ayatollahs,' and Radio Farda 'Radio Khatami.'"

• Reza Parchizadeh proposed that one step the U.S. government can take to "advance the project of regime change in Iran" is to "replace the regime sympathizers in Voice of America and Radio Farda."

Iranian-American political theorist and analyst Reza Parchizadeh recently said: "So biased has been their broadcast in favor of the Iranian regime that the people of Iran and the dissidents derogatorily call Voice of America the 'Voice of Ayatollahs,' and Radio Farda 'Radio Khatami.'" Pictured: Mohammad Khatami, then President of Iran, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, on December 20, 2000. (Image source: Khamenei.ir/Wikimedia Commons)

Radio Farda, the Prague-based Persian-language branch of the U.S. government-funded network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, recently fired one of its journalists for doing his job: providing Iranians at home and abroad with access to information they are denied by the ayatollah-led regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

On June 30, 2017, Mohammad Reza Yazdanpanah was told that he was being let go for retweeting an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, written by Sohrab Ahmari, which attacked the station for abusing its U.S. taxpayer-funded mandate by covering for the mullahs in Tehran and for bias against Israel.

Announcing his ouster on Facebook (in Farsi), Yazdanpanah wrote:

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A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in France: June 2017

by Soeren Kern  •  July 23, 2017 at 5:00 am

• "I am in fundamental disagreement with these left-wing people who do everything to dissociate fundamentalism from Islam. Islam has been radicalized for fifty years. On the Shiite side, there was Imam Khomeini and his Islamic revolution. In the Sunni world, there was Saudi Arabia, which used its immense resources to finance the spread of this fanaticism of Wahhabism. But this historical evolution took place within Islam and not outside. When the people of the Islamic State attack, they do it by saying 'Allahu Akbar.' So how can we then say that this has nothing to do with Islam? It must be stopped." — Sir Salman Rushdie, author of the novel The Satanic Verses, who has been hunted to be killed by Muslim extremists for nearly 30 years.

• Residents of the Paris suburb of Mée-sur-Seine complained that a mosque was blasting prayers on outdoor loudspeakers well beyond midnight each night during Ramadan. Mourad Salah, a local Muslim leader, said the city council was to blame for the noise because of its failure to provide Muslims with a larger mosque: "The ball is in the mayor's court. Until we have a place of prayer worthy of the name, with a greater capacity, things will be difficult."

• An online petition — "Women: An Endangered Species in the Heart of Paris" — accused Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo of allowing a large swathe of the city to become a no-go zone for women. Every night, hundreds of migrants from Africa and the Middle East line the pavements to form an intimidating gauntlet for women walking from the Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est railway stations to their homes, the petition said. Shouts of "bitch" and "dirty whore" are common.

A policeman stands guard near Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, on June 6, 2017, after Farid Ikken, a 40-year-old Algerian, attempted to murder a police officer at the site. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

June 1. Saber Lahmar, a 48-year-old Algerian who has lived in Bordeaux since his release from Guantánamo Bay in 2009, was charged with "terrorist association" and placed in pre-trial detention. He is suspected of providing financial, logistical and doctrinal aid to French jihadists who were planning to travel to Iraq and Syria. Lahmar was arrested in Bosnia in 2001 after being accused of plotting to bomb the American embassy in Sarajevo. In November 2008, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered Lahmar to be released from Guantánamo because there was insufficient reason to hold him. In December 2009, Robert C. Kirsch, a lawyer at the firm of WilmerHale, which represented Lahmar in federal court, said: "We are grateful for the courage and generosity of the French people and government, and for the ongoing effort by President Obama... which will now give Mr. Lahmar a chance to rebuild his life in France."

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Deny the Holocaust, but Don't Question Sharia?

by Majid Rafizadeh  •  July 23, 2017 at 4:30 am

• Why is it encouraged, even praised, to deny the unimaginable suffering that millions went through during the Holocaust, but if anyone dares to question Sharia their lives are in danger?

• If you dare even to joke about Islam, your punishment can range from torture, long terms of imprisonment, to swift death sentences, either judicial or from mob violence.

• "They have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets," — Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Iranian state television.

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that his Holocaust denial was his biggest achievement. Pictured: Then-President Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University in New York City, on September 24, 2007. (Photo by Stephen Chernin-Pool/Getty Images)

If you grew up between Iran and Syria, as I did, you would have lived underneath the iron rule of dictators such as Bashar Assad, Ayatollah Khamenei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In addition to the fear and oppression they maintained over their people, all of these rulers appeared to have another "tradition" in common. They are all deny the Holocaust.

It was common to hear from whoever worked for the Iranian regime that the Holocaust did not exist. Despite the mountain of clear facts before them, they chose, and continue to choose, not only to believe that the Holocaust was a fabrication, but to spread this belief to their people.

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Trump Kicks the Iranian 'Can' Down the Road

by Amir Taheri  •  July 23, 2017 at 4:00 am

Then US Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 2014, during negotiations that led to the drafting of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). (Image source: US State Department)

Over the past six months, in one way or another, President Donald Trump has kicked several of the cans inherited from Barack Obama down the road.

After several attempts at abolishing it, the so-called Obamacare has been kicked into legislative oblivion. Obama's policy of courting the Castro brothers has been slightly modified but not scrapped. The Paris Climate Accord has been verbally dismissed but not definitely buried, if only because it won't become binding until 2020.

The latest can to be kicked down the road is the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the curious press release which enumerates things that Iran must do about its controversial nuclear project in exchange for the temporary suspension of sanctions.

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Metal Detectors and Palestinian Lies

by Bassam Tawil  •  July 22, 2017 at 5:00 am

• The slain police officers were stationed there to ensure the safety of Muslim worshippers. The Palestinian spin doctors are attempting to divert attention from the terror attack by making it look as if the crisis began when Israel installed the metal detectors and not when two police officers were murdered.

• First, the security measures, including the placement of the metal detectors, was not an Israeli initiative but came as a direct and necessary response to a specific terror attack. The Israeli government did not convene and take a decision to install the metal detectors in order to alter the status quo or stop Muslims from praying.

• Second, it was the Palestinians who took the decision not to enter into the Temple Mount unless the metal detectors are removed. The Palestinians and the Waqf are lying to the world by telling it that Israel is denying Muslims access to their holy sites.

• The Palestinian opposition to the metal detectors at the Temple Mount means one thing only: that the Palestinians are determined to turn the holy site into a weapons cache and use it as a launching pad to carry out terror attacks against Israelis. If the mosque were then actually destroyed in the process, guess who would be blamed? Possibly that is even the real agenda.

Approximately 4,000 Palestinian Muslims pray outside the entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem, on July 19, 2017, in protest at the installation of metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount. (Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

The controversy surrounding the Israeli authorities' decision to place metal detectors at the gates of the Temple Mount calls to mind the famous Arab saying, "he beat me and cried then came to me to complain." This inversion of reality is a common among perpetrators who pretend to be victims.

The decision to install the metal detectors came after Arab terrorists murdered two Israeli police officers at the Temple Mount on July 14. The three terrorists -- Israeli Arab citizens from the city of Umm al-Fahm -- used a submachine gun and knives to carry out their attack. The weapons were easily smuggled into the Temple Mount thanks to Muslim worshippers not having been required to pass through metal detectors or undergo body searches by policemen stationed at the gates.

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Sweden: A Failed State?

by Judith Bergman  •  July 21, 2017 at 5:00 am

• The Swedish state, in true Orwellian style, fights those Swedish citizens who point out the obvious problems that migrants are causing.

• When police officer Peter Springare said in February that migrants were committing a disproportionate amount of crime in the suburbs, he was investigated for inciting "racial hatred".

• Currently, a 70-year-old Swedish pensioner is being prosecuted for "hate speech", for writing on Facebook that migrants "set fire to cars, and urinate and defecate on the streets".

In 2015, only 14% of all crimes in Sweden were solved. In 2016, 80% of police officers were allegedly considering quitting the force. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (pictured above) refused to call it a crisis. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

The security situation in Sweden is now so critical that the national police chief, Dan Eliasson, has asked the public for help; the police are unable to solve the problems on their own. In June, the Swedish police released a new report, "Utsatta områden 2017", ("Vulnerable Areas 2017", commonly known as "no-go zones" or lawless areas). It shows that the 55 no-go zones of a year ago are now 61.

In September 2016, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and Minister of Interior Anders Ygeman refused to see the warnings: in 2015, only 14% of all crimes in Sweden were solved, and in 2016, 80% of police officers were allegedly considering quitting the force. Both ministers refused to call it a crisis. According to Anders Ygeman:

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The Worst Ideological Enemy of the US is Now Europe

by Drieu Godefridi  •  July 20, 2017 at 5:00 am

• The vast majority of these European courts -- whether the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) or the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) -- in their attempt to be moral and just, have dismissed the sovereign laws of Italy as irrelevant, and trampled the rights of the Italian state and ordinary Italians to approve who enters their country.

• In Europe, Amnesty International and the like are, it seems, a new source of law.

• Those who gave the Statue of Liberty to America in 1886 "to commemorate the perseverance of freedom and democracy in the United States" are willingly trampling their own people's liberties today through courts of appointed, unelected, unaccountable ideologues. The danger is that, with the help of many doubtless well-intentioned, international NGOs, the EU will not stop at its shores.

In Europe, there are now two Supreme Courts: the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg (pictured above), in addition to national courts. (Image source: Transparency International/Flickr)

Europe is the worst enemy of the US? You cannot be serious. Islamism, Russia, illegal immigrants... whatever, but surely not Europe! Are we not still together in NATO? Do we not conduct huge amounts of trade every day? Do we not share the same cultural roots, the same civilization, the same vision of the future? Did France not give the US her famous Statue of Liberty – "Liberty Enlightening the World?"

Not anymore. In a sense, Europe looks like a continent where American Democrats have been in power for 30 years, not only in the European states, but also at the level of the European Union.

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Is Turkey Becoming Another Iran?

by Uzay Bulut  •  July 20, 2017 at 4:00 am

• Evolution will no longer be taught in Turkish secondary schools, after being described as a "controversial subject" by the government.

• So, the question naturally arises what exactly will Turkish schoolchildren be taught instead. The answer is "jihad." Turkey is in the process of including the concept of jihad in compulsory school curricula. In eighth grade, jihad will also be taught under the title "Struggling on the Path to Allah: Jihad," under a chapter called "Worshipping Allah."

• The Ministry of National Education has also increased class hours for the mandatory course in "religion, culture and morality," and decreased art and philosophy classes to one hour per week.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2015. (Image source: Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons)

Turkey has recently been in the news for various developments that include, among other matters, its record number of jailed journalists, the destruction of Kurdish towns and forced displacement of thousands of Kurds, the dismissal or suspension of thousands of government employees for political reasons, the arrest of thousands of citizens for allegedly "organizing" last year's failed coup, the creeping conversion of the Hagia Sophia Basilica-museum into a mosque, and the seizure of Assyrian Christian lands, churches and cemeteries by the government.

One additional trend begging the media's attention is the determined Islamization of the Turkish educational system.

Here is a short list of some of the latest developments in Turkish schools and their curricula:

Turkey to stop teaching evolution in secondary schools as part of new national curriculum

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UNESCO is an Immoral, Anti-Semitic Organization
Decent Countries Should Leave

by Guy Millière  •  July 19, 2017 at 5:00 am

• Although Europe claims to respect human rights and the rights of peoples, it has been a party to violating the most essential right of the Jewish people: the recognition of its existence for more than 3,000 years, and the anchoring of this existence to its sacred monuments. Worse, Europe does so in the name of a people fictitiously invented less than 50 years ago. No serious scholar can find any trace of a "Palestinian people" before the 1960s. Europe has apparently been all too happy to accept lies.

• While claiming to fight terrorism, Europe complies with the demands of a terrorist movement that does not even bother to hide its terrorist nature. When Mahmoud Abbas speaks Arabic, he continually incites the murder of Jews. He recently repeated that he would not stop paying tried, convicted and imprisoned murderers of Jews, and still calls these murderers heroic "martyrs". On all maps used by the Palestinian Authority and in Palestinian textbooks, Israel does not exist; it is called Palestine.

• Europeans, imbued with a generic sense of guilt, began attributing all that is wrong in the world to Western civilization. Because they had colonized parts of the Muslim world, they failed to note that Muslim culture had, in fact, colonized Persia, the Byzantine Empire, the Middle East, Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans, North Africa, Southern Spain, and, more recently, northern Cyprus.

The director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Lebanon, Ann Dismorr, poses with a map devoid of any trace of the State of Israel, instead presenting it as a map of "Palestine," May 2013. (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)

On July 7, UNESCO voted for a resolution defining the Old City of Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs as Palestinian heritage sites. Before that, in 2016, two resolutions making the same type of counterfactual assertions concerning the Old City of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall were adopted. And the year before that, in 2015, UNESCO again upended history to rename two ancient biblical sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, Islamic holy sites -- even though Islam did not even exist at that time.

Three days before this month's Hebron resolution, still another resolution, reaffirming the Jerusalem resolutions, was passed.

The Israeli government reacted with indignation. It decided to stop cooperating with UNESCO. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said she was shocked and that the decision would not be without consequences.

The rest of the world has remained silent. How come?

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Can Trump Lead the Way to Regime Change in Iran?

by Hassan Mahmoudi  •  July 19, 2017 at 4:00 am

• What is needed now is a push for regime change, a watering of the seeds of popular resistance that are again budding -- after Obama abandoned the Iranian people in 2009, when they took to the streets to protest the stranglehold of the ayatollahs.

Hassan Abbasi, a strategist for Iran's Revolutionary Guards, recently boasted that Iran would lead "global guerilla organizations" against American targets: "If only 11 people carried out 9/11, do you realize that the possibility exists for us to do what we want? We don't need nuclear weapons..." (Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons)

American leadership expert John C. Maxwell defines a leader as "one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." During his two terms in the highest office in the world, former U.S. President Barack Obama failed at all three, with disastrous consequences.

There is no realm in which Obama's lack of leadership was more glaring than that of foreign policy, particularly in relation to the Middle East. His combination of action and inaction -- pushing through the nuclear deal with Iran at all costs, while simultaneously adopting a stance of "patience" with and indifference to Tehran's sponsorship of global terrorism and foothold in Syria -- served no purpose other than to destabilize the region and weaken America's position.

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Qatar, Saudi Arabia to Islamize One of Europe's Greatest Cathedrals

by Giulio Meotti  •  July 18, 2017 at 5:00 am

• In Islamic symbolism, Córdoba is the lost Caliphate. Political authorities in Córdoba dealt a blow to the Catholic Church's claim of ownership of cathedral by declaring that "religious consecration is not the way to acquire property". But this is how history works, especially in the lands where Christianity and Islam fought hard for dominion. Why are secularists not pressing Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to give Christians back the Hagia Sophia? No one has raised an eyebrow that "Christendom's greatest cathedral has become a mosque".

• The Spanish left, governing the region, would like to convert the church into "a place for the meeting of faiths". Nice ecumenical words, but a death trap for the Islamic domination over other faiths. If these Islamists, supported by the militant secularists, will be able to bring Allah back inside the Cathedral of Córdoba, a tsunami of Islamic supremacism will submerge Europe's decaying Christianity. There are thousands of empty churches just waiting to be filled by the voices of muezzins.

• The Western attempt to free Jerusalem in the Middle Ages has been condemned as Christian imperialism, while the Muslim campaigns to colonize and Islamize the Byzantine Empire, North Africa, the Balkans, Egypt, the Middle East and most of Spain, to name but a few, are celebrated as a season of enlightenment.

The main altar of the Cathedral of Córdoba. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons/© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Muslim supremacists seem to have fantasies -- as well as a long history -- of converting Christian sites to Islamic ones. Take, for example, Saint-Denis, the Gothic cathedral named for the first Christian bishop of Paris who was buried there in 250, and the burial place of Charles Martel, whose victory stopped the Muslim invasion of France in 732. Now, according to the scholar Gilles Kepel, this burial place of most of France's kings and queens is "the Mecca in Islam of France". The French Islamists are dreaming of taking it over and replacing the church bells with the call of the muezzin.

In Turkey's greatest cathedral, Hagia Sophia, a muezzin's call recently reverberated inside the sixth-century church for the first time in 85 years.

In France, Muslim leaders called for converting abandoned churches into mosques. thereby echoing The late writer Emile Cioran once predicted of Europe: "The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque".

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Trump Must Withdraw From Iran Nuclear Deal - Now

by John R. Bolton  •  July 18, 2017 at 4:30 am

• Tehran's violations of the deal have become public, including: exceeding limits on uranium enrichment and production of heavy water; illicit efforts at international procurement of dual-use nuclear and missile technology; and obstructing international inspection efforts (which were insufficient to begin with).

• There is ominous talk of America "not living up to its word." This is nonsense. The president's primary obligation is to keep American citizens safe from foreign threats. Should President George W. Bush have kept the United States in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rather than withdraw to allow the creation of a limited national missile-defense shield to protect against rogue-state nuclear attacks?

• Care to bet how close Tehran — and North Korea — now are? Consider the costs of betting wrong.

Donald Trump talks with VIP guests during a rally against the Iran nuclear deal on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol September 9, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

For the second time during the Trump administration, the State Department has reportedly decided to certify that Iran is complying with its 2015 nuclear deal with the Security Council's five permanent members and Germany, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

If true, it will be the administration's second unforced error regarding the JCPOA. Over the past two years, considerable information detailing Tehran's violations of the deal have become public, including: exceeding limits on uranium enrichment and production of heavy water; illicit efforts at international procurement of dual-use nuclear and missile technology; and obstructing international inspection efforts (which were insufficient to begin with).

Since international verification is fatally inadequate, and our own intelligence far from perfect, these violations undoubtedly only scratch the surface of the ayatollahs' inexhaustible mendaciousness.

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