Nuclear

China is surely America’s most dangerous threat over the medium term, but Iran is surely the most dangerous right now. The Islamic Republic would be even more dangerous if the Israelis had not decimated the Mullah’s deadly “ring of fire,” the proxy forces across the Middle East funded, armed, trained, and directed by Tehran. But removing these proxies (all except the Houthis in Yemen) does not remove Iran’s nuclear threat. That threat now faces the Trump administration and Netanyahu’s coalition in Israel, leaving only difficult choices. To understand the current problems, we need to grasp a series of fundamental issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. • What are Iran’s objectives?

Jimmy Carter is commonly depicted as one of America’s worst presidents. His four-year tenure is said to be a mishmash of screw-ups, from high energy prices and even higher inflation to low economic growth and a very public, very embarrassing hostage rescue attempt in Iran. His signature achievement, the 1978 Camp David Accords, which codified peace and normalized diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel, is treated as a small stretch of fresh pavement in an otherwise potholed road. Fair or not, that’s the perception.

Did you make good use of the neatly palindromic 2/22/22? To refresh your memory, it was a day that turned out be the narrow window between the moment when the evolving “science” suddenly allowed Democratic governors to start lifting their states’ mask mandates, and Vladimir Putin launching his special mission to “protect the people” in eastern Ukraine. I hope you enjoyed it, because given the way the mainstream media portray the news these days, it may be a while before we’re all allowed our next respite from the seemingly permanent existential crisis that runs as a through-line to our human condition.