Friday's Final Word

AP Photo/Tomer Neuberg

Everybody (but the mullahs) are tabbing for the weekend ...

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Ed: Trump knows trolling. Some wonder why he called Bash rather than someone from a more friendly news org, but the answer is simple -- this will get more attention. He also gets to make CNN and others play his game rather than the other way around. 

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On the basis of these calculations, Ali Khamenei was riding high. On June 4, he declared, “The U.S. can’t do a damn thing about our program,” dismissing American demands to halt uranium enrichment. Trump’s threats, he clearly believed, were empty, mere posturing for domestic political consumption.

Just in case, Khamenei sought to buy added insurance, with tried-and-true diplomatic maneuvers. On June 11, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated on social media that his talks with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, would continue. “President Trump entered office saying that Iran should not have nuclear weapons,” Araghchi wrote. “That is actually in line with our own doctrine and could become the main foundation for a deal. As we resume talks on Sunday, it is clear that an agreement that can ensure the continued peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program is close at hand.”

Araghchi calculated that as long as talks in Oman remained alive, Netanyahu would not dare disrupt the process, fearing it would derail Trump’s broader strategy of avoiding Middle East entanglements.

Ed: To quote Mad Dog Tannen: You thought wrong, dude. And astoundingly, the Iranian regime didn't even prepare for the possibility that they had guessed wrong. 

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Ed: Maybe? I think Trump really wanted a deal, and wanted to give the mullahs every last second to engage in good faith. Both of these could be true at the same time, too. 

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French President Emmanuel Macron says that Iran bears heavy responsibility for the destabilization of the Middle East and that it had pushed ahead with an unjustified nuclear program, but he also urged restraint after Israel struck Iran. ...

“Iran bears a very heavy responsibility for the destabilization of the region,” Macron says.

“Iran is continuing to enrich uranium without any civilian justification and to levels that are very close to what is needed for a nuclear device,” he says.

Ed: A rare moment of moral clarity from an EU leader. Good for Macron, but let's not kid ourselves; the Europeans not only wanted to give Tehran a deal that would have allowed for nuclear weapons, but also wants Israel to commit suicide by allowing Hamas to build a state in Gaza. 

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Ed: Pray for both Israel and the Iranian people, and that things will get better and better for both by the end of the genocidal cult in Tehran. 

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Natural uranium ore contains less than 1 percent U-235. Fuel-grade enrichment levels hover around 4–5 percent. Weapons-grade material must reach roughly 90 percent. For this reason, the IAEA imposes tight monitoring once the 20 percent threshold is crossed. Damaging centrifuges can release low-level radiation and industrial chemicals that threaten technicians onsite, but it does not trigger a nuclear explosion or wide-area contamination.

“Spinning gas in centrifuges raises enrichment through physics alone,” explained Dr. Eyal Pinko, a former IDF Navy intelligence officer and now a researcher at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center. “Inside a reactor, enrichment rises through a self-sustaining chain reaction. Hitting a reactor risks uncontrolled fission and, under certain conditions, even a nuclear yield. A reactor is therefore a far more environmentally sensitive target.”

Bushehr, Pinko noted, lies barely 20 kilometers from the United Arab Emirates’ coastline, amplifying regional concern over any misfire.

Ed: I mentioned earlier that Israel won't target Bushehr for this reason. The Mossad might be able to infiltrate it at some point and initiate a SCRAM event that would safely disable the reactor on a permanent basis, but even that may be too dangerous. Only a change in regime can make Bushehr truly safe. 

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Ed: This is a very good demonstration of why the Israelis could not allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon. As soon as they did, Tel Aviv would have ceased to exist. 

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The problem here for the press corps is that so many of them hate Trump so much, they cannot nuance the cleverness of this.  They must either approach it as Trump is a failure who even Israel does not respect or Trump is a liar who lied to everyone to get Iran.

The reality is everyone honest knows Iran has always been the liar, claiming it had no nuclear ambitions even as it plotted a bomb.  The Obama/Biden policies helped Iran, which embedded agents within the Biden Administration.  And Trump has turned the tables on it all, including probably taking advantage of Iran's embedded agents to amplify his misdirection.

And now Iran has been set back significantly and the world is safer today.

Ed: This should have happened years ago, but the time was particularly ripe now. Iran couldn't see it coming, and now has few options for defense except ballistic missile terrorism. And that isn't going to stop Israel. 

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Ed: Amen. 

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I’m not going to re-vicitimize my clients by identifying them or posting video from their cases. Instead, I’m going to do to Padilla what DOJ prosecutors did to my clients at trial and during sentencing hearings. Below are screen shots dissecting Padilla’s conduct on a moment-by-moment basis and pointing out each instance where his conduct — non-assaultive or otherwise — would have been a basis for a felony charge at the Capitol on January 6.

When I started looking at the video, the first thing I learned is that the press conference had been underway for 6 minutes when Padilla entered the room. He entered while Sec. Noem was still reading her prepared remarks. There are several people at the front of the room flanking Sec. Noem on both sides. There are several rows of chairs in front of the podium she was standing behind, and many camera crews behind and around the sides of those chairs.

Padilla moved down the side of the room to Sec. Noem’s left and reached a position no more than 10 feet away from her and started speaking above her — she was still in the middle of her prepared remarks — and was immediately confronted by law enforcement and they began to push him back along the wall to her left towards the door he had entered. At first they were successful and he had his back to the officers as they pushed. THEN HE TURNED TO FACE THEM AND PUSHED BACK trying to continue making his statement. It is only at that point that he identified himself as Senator Padilla.

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Ed: Be sure to read it all from my friend Shipwreckedcrew. He wants Padilla charged, but I think censure should be enough. And an admission from Democrats that security acted properly and professionally to a very stupid stunt by someone who should know better -- and has the responsibility to act maturely. 

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Ed: The governor who set up a Stasi-esque snitch line during the pandemic has no moral authority at all to define moral authority. The fact that Tim Walz thinks a slave-operating state like China has "moral authority" in ANY context should amount to a lifetime disqualification from office. 

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The Right’s preferred take on the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles is that they’ve brought together the full spectrum of hard-Left ideals — what Mary Harrington has labelled the “Omnicause”. At National Review, Jeffrey Blehar sighed that in LA, “all the radicalisms combine into one.” Some of the riots’ college-age protagonists no doubt accept that framing, donning kaffiyehs to signal that they are united in one universal struggle against white supremacy (or whatever).

Yet the most dominant images and slogans from the riots suggest that the motive force might be something else entirely. Consider the numerous photos and videos of balaclava-clad rioters waving the flags of Mexico and other Latin-American nations and shouting slogans such as “Viva La Raza!” — long live the race. Rightly understood, these symbols and watchwords evoke not progressivism, but instead nationalism and reactionary cultural revanchism, with Mexico and Hispanic identity as their objects of devotion.

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What we’re dealing with, in other words, is a scenario more akin to banlieue riots in France, in which a subset of the population feels little to no attachment to their country of citizenship and is bent on claiming — or reclaiming — space for other national or civilisational identities.

Ed: That's an even better reason to put an end to it immediately and forcefully. 

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