https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/2022/08/29/trumps-return-to-centre-stage-could-bode-well-for-the-democrats/

Suddenly the Democrats appear to have a real shot at a historically improbable victory.

Summer is traditionally derided as the “silly season” in US politics. Swampy Washington gets abandoned by everyone who can afford to leave and little, if anything, tends to happen. But these days, American political norms are shattering, one after another.

And what a difference a few weeks can make. Since early July, US President Joe Biden and his razor-thin Democratic majorities in Congress, have been making a spectacular case that even under terrible conditions they can produce major legislative and other breakthroughs. And in August that positive case has been compounded by the return of former president Donald Trump to national attention given the growing severe legal jeopardy he faces.

Mr Trump could have kept a low profile, but instead he seized upon the increasing likelihood that he is going to be indicted for major crimes to press his characteristic politics of grievance. Few are as skilled at playing the victim, and the former president has been performing that to the hilt.

All that means the November midterms have been upended. Everyone, including the Democrats themselves, fully expected a major Republican victory, and Republicans were confident of a “red wave” giving them a sizable House of Representatives majority and renewed control of the Senate. That scenario no longer appears likely.

Republicans will still probably retake the House. They have secured lots of underhanded gerrymandering, which Democrats also attempted but largely failed to sustain.

Historically a new president’s party faces defeat in congressional midterms because of buyer’s remorse among the public, which generally likes divided government. So, midterm elections have served as referendums on the new president’s (generally perceived as disappointing) initial performance.

But not only is it increasingly difficult to call Mr Biden’s performance disappointing, the re-emergence of Mr Trump as the key American political figure means the midterms will be as much about the former president as the current one.

That is terrible news for Republicans, because not only is Mr Trump increasingly unpopular, he is also dominating headlines because various authorities are getting so much closer to charging him with major crimes.

The release of the FBI affidavit justifying the August 8 search warrant execution at Mr Trump’s southern Florida hotel, where he often lives, demonstrated that the most plausible defence against all three underlying crimes suspected, and by finding the hundreds of pages of classified documents at his residence, would be for Mr Trump to claim that he somehow didn’t know he had them.

Any such assertion is contradicted by several apparent facts, including his reportedly repeated insistence to numerous aides, who were imploring him to hand over the highly sensitive material, that “it’s not theirs, it’s mine”. By law, all presidential records belong to the public in the care of the National Archive.

The more is learnt about the 20-month long efforts by the Archive and the Department of Justice to retrieve these documents, and the evasions and excuses used to withhold them, the harder it is to imagine a prosecutor like US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who operates strictly by-the-book, deciding not to charge Mr Trump with, most obviously, obstruction of justice, if he believes his own pronouncements about no one being above the law.

The thundering outrage on the right against the FBI fizzled into whimpers, mixed with threats of violence from the fringes, as the facts about Mr Trump’s conduct became clear. The main defence now is to dismiss it as “a dispute over the handling of documents,” as if laws and precedents about the strict guarding of national security secrets – in this case reportedly including “among the most sensitive we have” such as the identities of key foreign human assets – were not crystal clear.

Mainstream Republicans are reduced to trying to suggest, “it’s no biggie,” but are clearly shaken. And Republican candidates are in the unenviable position of either defending this misconduct or infuriating Mr Trump’s passionate base.

And then there is the state of Georgia. Mr Trump is on tape apparently breaking several major state laws when, on January 2, 2021, he tried to high-pressure officials to miraculously “find” him the exact number of votes he needed to win. Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis appears to also be considering racketeering and other potential anti-conspiracy laws that usually used to go after organised crime, but which may apply neatly to this sustained attack on Georgia’s election.

Rudolph Giuliani, who was Mr Trump’s lead attorney at the time, last month was formally told he faces potential indictment regarding this campaign. But Mr Trump could be even more vulnerable, seemingly caught red-handed on the tape recording.

In addition to the re-emergence of Mr Trump as a second key figure in a drama that is only supposed to have one protagonist, Democrats are being buoyed by the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional guarantee of women’s right to an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.

Republicans are in the position of the proverbial dog who finally caught the car it was chasing and has no idea what to do next. Republican state legislatures are passing sweeping bans, often with few, if any, exceptions, that have stunned a public that has regarded this as an established constitutional right – which several of the justices who just voted to overturn it assured the country, under oath, during their confirmation hearings, that it indeed was settled law and a constitutional right.

Outraged women and men, horrified by the first loss of an established individual constitutional right in US history, also seem to be emerging as a much more powerful factor in upcoming elections than was initially anticipated.

Republican Senate hopes have seemed dim for weeks because of what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell described as “candidate quality” problems. Former football player Herschel Walker, celebrity physician Mehmet Oz, and other Trump-endorsed nominees who pleased the leader and his base, but apparently not the general public, seem to have made it likely Democrats will keep control of the Senate.

Republicans still have every possible advantage to retake the House. And it’s going to take a minor miracle for Democrats to stop that. But between Mr Biden’s remarkable string of successes, Mr Trump’s return to centre stage amid mounting legal jeopardy, outrage at the elimination of abortion-rights, and the nomination of Trump-approved but implausible Republican candidates, suddenly the Democrats appear to have a real shot at a historically improbable victory that seemed completely impossible a few short weeks ago.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/08/24/trumps-reckoning-is-the-us-justice-systems-duty-to-america/

The justice system may be the last, best hope to draw a line against the former president’s transgressions.

Donald Trump poses a unique question for the American system: when will the line be drawn? Republican voters seem to not be troubled by that question, despite endless scandals and neither are the Party’s leaders. Their nearly unanimous protection twice prevented the impeachment process from holding the former US President accountable.

Now the legal system, in the form of multiple criminal investigations in various jurisdictions on a range of potential charges, must grapple with the question of whether any aspect of the American system can effectively respond to his transgressions.

That question has been thrown into stark relief by the August 8 execution of a search warrant by the FBI at the former president’s membership club in Florida searching for highly classified government documents that Mr Trump allegedly improperly removed from the White House and has been refusing to surrender to the National Archive, which is the lawful repository of presidential papers. The Justice Department alleged three potential crimes, including violation of the Espionage Act, it was able to persuade a judge it had probable cause to suspect were being committed related to withholding the documents.

It’s unlikely but possible that the Justice Department’s main aim was to retrieve the papers, some of which reportedly are related to nuclear secrets, among other exceptionally sensitive topics. Still, it appears Mr Trump is potentially in serious legal jeopardy in this matter, particularly since the Archive had attempted for over a year to retrieve the documents, and one of his attorneys, Christina Bopp, reportedly signed a letter attesting that all classified documents had been returned before the August 8 operation.

All told, over 300 classified documents, totalling over 700 pages, have reportedly been recovered from Mr Trump, and there are indications the government is not satisfied that all presidential records that belong to the public have been returned.

Mr Trump is also potentially liable for serious charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. And an investigation in Georgia into his efforts to convince state officials to miraculously “find” him 11,780 votes, exactly the number he needed to win the state, is a third, and in many ways perhaps the most dangerous, investigation that could easily lead to serious criminal charges against the former president. In addition, his company, although not Mr Trump personally, appears to be in serious legal jeopardy in New York State for allegedly routinely cooking the books on the value of its properties.

The conundrum that all these cases raise is that any indictment, trial and potential conviction of Mr Trump would likely set off an unprecedented firestorm of outrage, and very likely violence, on the political right. Yet the essence of the American system – at least in theory – is that no one is above the law. Despite that, there are established traditions that make exceptions for presidents.

A Justice Department policy, which appears oddly immutable, holds that no sitting president can be charged with a federal crime while in office. This is usually explained as necessary for a president to continue to function effectively without the burden of mounting a vigorous legal defence. Special Counsel Robert Mueller cited this policy when he refused to say whether his investigation found Mr Trump had obstructed justice regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Gerald Ford added another layer of impunity by pardoning Richard Nixon in 1974 for all federal crimes he may have committed as president, mainly abuses of power related to the Watergate scandal. Ford said it was necessary for the country to heal after its “long national nightmare”.

The reaction to the FBI search warrant on the political right was infuriated and frequently hysterical. It was unanimously described as a politically motivated attack by Democrats and strengthened Mr Trump’s grip on the party. Calls to “defund the FBI,” hold its leadership “accountable,” and effectively dismantle the national police were rampant. One Trump supporter was killed during an armed attack on an FBI office in Ohio.

What’s notably missing among almost all Republicans is any concern about why Mr Trump decided to essentially make off with highly classified government documents, why he refused to return them, and why the FBI felt obliged, after numerous failed efforts, to take such drastic action to recover them.

The impulse to support Mr Trump supersedes even national security. He once boasted he could shoot people in public and not lose voters. This alarming degree of impunity appears effectively confirmed.

So, the legal system, ranging from the Justice Department and federal judges, as well as state-level prosecutors and courts in Georgia and elsewhere, must confront the reality that holding Mr Trump accountable, even for the most outrageous unlawful conduct – potentially including seeking to overturn elections and stealing hundreds of classified and highly sensitive government documents – will likely prompt an unprecedented wave of fury and quite possibly significant political violence. It could also prompt incensed Republicans, convinced that this is all crude political payback rather than professional law enforcement, to initiate political prosecutions of their own as soon as they get the opportunity, just as they are now loudly threatening.

Everyone sensible, therefore, is correctly urging the utmost caution. Clearly the search warrant needed to be an unavoidable final effort to retrieve extremely sensitive documents, which it certainly seems to have been.

Some are even suggesting that legitimate prosecutions of Mr Trump should simply be avoided because of these probable negative consequences. Others are urging US President Joe Biden to be prepared to issue him a Ford-like pardon and spare the country the inevitable convulsions. But these are terrible ideas.

The justice system may be the last, best hope for finally drawing an effective line against Mr Trump’s transgressions. The voters did that in November 2020, but he and his followers, including a vast majority of Republicans, simply refuse to accept the truth of his election defeat.

Republicans appear willing to nominate Mr Trump for president again even if he is indicted for serious crimes, including threatening national security. If he insists on running for office from the dock, or even a prison cell – as some US mayors have in the distant past – so be it.

If any prosecutors have a solid criminal case to make against him on serious charges, the line must finally be drawn. The aura of impunity surrounding sitting and former presidents, especially Mr Trump, is toxic and corrosive to the constitutional order. Smashing it may be dangerous but it is a badly needed, long-overdue corrective.

The latest fighting in the Gaza Strip signals that a dismal status quo promises more radicalization and mayhem.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-19/latest-israeli-palestinian-conflict-on-the-gaza-strip-is-alarming?sref=tp95wk9l#xj4y7vzkg

Periodic bouts of aerial bombardments between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip have become a regular feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the most recent spasm wasn’t between Israel and Hamas. Instead, it heralds the rise of an even more militant group: Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In the latest round of conflict, at least 44 Palestinians were killed, including 15 children, between Aug. 5-8 in a back-and-forth between hundreds of PIJ missiles fired into Israel and Israeli air force strikes against Palestinian targets. While the PIJ missiles were largely ineffective, a Palestinian militant opened fire on a bus in Jerusalem, injuring eight Israelis. In the process, the PIJ acquired a new level of militant credibility.

This is as predictable as it is alarming. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories seized in 1967 — East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — with no political horizon for ending it, has ensured a steady radicalization among Palestinian factions. That’s a disaster not just for the Israelis and the Palestinians, but also for the Middle East and wider world.

The second Palestinian intifada, which broke out after what should have been the culmination of the Oslo peace process at the 2000 Camp David summit, radicalized both sides. Approximately 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis — both mostly civilians — were killed between late 2000 and early 2005.

Another casualty was the Israeli “peace camp” and the credibility of its Palestinian counterpart, the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli politics turned to the hard right. Among Palestinians, Hamas, which rejected the peace process and championed armed struggle, became a contender for national leadership.

That set the stage for the Palestinian split in 2007 as the Palestinian Authority held on to the small areas of self-rule, mostly West Bank towns and cities, secured through the Oslo process in the 1990s, while Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, the peace process has been non-functional, and the two Palestinian factions have treated each other as mortal enemies.

Yet over time Hamas has ossified from the leader of armed Palestinian resistance into a kind of entrenched de facto government in Gaza, dependent on regular financial bailouts from Qatar while engaging in periodic aerial bombardment conflicts with Israel that have become less frequent and more opportunistic.

Conditions have long been ripe for the rise of a more radical faction, and the Iranian- backed PIJ has been vying for that role for years.

The Gaza Strip is a perfect incubator for extremism. Some 2 million people, mostly refugees from what is now southern Israel, are crammed into a tiny, wretched area subjected to a total blockade mainly by Israel and, in some ways, Egypt.

Hamas appears content to rule this open-air prison of misery, but the PIJ is increasingly usurping Hamas’s traditional role, by using Gaza as a launchpad for attacks on Israel not just from the strip itself but in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On Wednesday, the PA reported seizing two PIJ members with 17 kilograms of explosives in the West Bank city of Nablus.

This latest bout of radicalization of the Palestinian national movement may not be surprising, but that does not make it any less dangerous. And there is a  great deal the outside world can and must do to contain and reverse it.

The PA and the PLO have been made to look ridiculous and ineffective as their policies of negotiations and security cooperation with Israel have resulted in no major gains since 1996. That’s a huge boon for all extremists.

They need to be strengthened with greater economic support, more diplomatic recognition — including the restoration of the US consulate in East Jerusalem and the PLO mission in Washington — and an end to constant, often abusive Israeli raids into PA-controlled areas, which have been condemned by international human rights  groups.

Hamas has indicated it wants greater international recognition and to join the PLO. The international community should lay out a clear roadmap for the group to become a legitimate interlocutor, including Hamas’s acceptance of Palestinian treaty commitments such as the Oslo agreements and, even if the group will not disarm, at least abjure  all forms of terrorism.

A significant effort to improve the daily lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — and in Gaza without unduly strengthening Hamas by relying on international NGOs and UN agencies — in sectors such as health and education is essential. Hopelessness and despair make radicalization inevitable.

Finally, a horizon for liberation is essential. Israel should, at long last, formally recognize the Palestinian right to a genuinely independent state. The details can be left to future negotiations. But such a commitment would provide Palestinians with much-needed hope for eventual freedom.

Without such measures, just as Hamas rose to challenge the PLO, the PIJ will continue to bedevil and challenge Hamas, with increasing success. The death toll among Israelis and Palestinians will incrementally rise until the next, and inevitable, explosion of massive and sustained violence.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/08/15/the-violence-iran-stoked-around-rushdie-was-not-even-about-his-novel/

Khomeini’s murderous fatwa was primarily in response to the brilliant lampoon of him in.The Satanic Verses.

On Friday, the renowned author Salman Rushdie was attacked and repeatedly stabbed while on stage to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in New York State. A 24-year-old man named Hadi Matar has been arrested. Mr Rushdie appears to be recovering but his nerves and liver are damaged and he may lose an eye.

Little is known about the suspected assailant. But in 1989 the government of Iran cynically put a target on Mr Rushdie’s back and has kept it there.

After the publication of Mr Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses in September 1988, protests broke out in the largely South Asian English city of Bradford, and spread to India and Pakistan.

Few, if any, protesters had actually read the book, which they accused of being blasphemous. This is crucial, because the novel is not, in fact, blasphemous, depicting the wild fantasies of an insane character, Gibreel Farishta, who is under the delusion he has turned into the Archangel Gabriel.

These surrealistic – or rather magical-realist – fantasies include a fever dream inspired by the life and works of the prophet Mohammed, but no reader could come away with the idea that the novel was attempting to tell the tale of the birth of Islam or critique the religion.Although some Muslims may find the passages offensive, throughout the novel, the author was effectively reading his South Asian Muslim tradition, culture and experience through a magical-realist lens.

Of course, the protests were not really about the author or the book, but rather about strengthening the political clout of communal leaders, and an effort to make life difficult for local authorities. Protests about anything abstract or faraway are always really about very different targets much closer to home.

But Iran, still riding high on the revolutionary fervor of the 1980s, sought to place itself at the forefront of this latest iteration of highly manipulated “Muslim outrage” supposedly against the West. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary supreme leader, issued a fatwa – or religious opinion which, in some Shiite traditions, can be considered effectively binding on followers – on February 14, 1989, calling for the author and anyone else involved in the publication of the book to be murdered.

Tehran subsequently offered a $6 million bounty for Mr Rushdie’s assassination. He was forced to live in hiding for years, and a wave of violence followed. Five bookstores in Britain were bombed. The Japanese translator of the book was stabbed and killed, and the Italian translator seriously injured. The Norwegian publisher was shot three times and badly wounded. The list of other violent incidents is long.

The Iranian government and various official institutions not only reiterated the validity of the bounty and the fatwa, but have added to the amount of money they say they’re willing to pay for this anti-civilizational terrorism.

All of this background to Friday’s attempted murder of Mr Rushdie is widely understood, but the deeper roots of Khomeini’s rage has been largely overlooked.

Chapter 11 of the novel paints a stinging and remarkably incisive caricature of Khomeini himself. It depicts a character called “The Imam” – a fanatical cleric forced to live in the West (just as Khomeini was when he was exiled to France after being expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein). Among the many absurdities of this madcap figure is that he wants to stop time, an obvious parody of Khomeini’s passionate hatred of progress and modernity.

“After the revolution there will be no clocks;” the Imam decrees, “we’ll smash the lot. The word clock will be expunged from our dictionaries. After the revolution there will be no birthdays. We shall all be born again, all of us the same unchanging age in the eye of Almighty God.”

This nightmarish character jumps on Gibreel Farishta, demanding the “angel” fly him to Jerusalem as he “slings his beard over his shoulder, hoists up his skirts to reveal two spindly legs with an almost monstrous covering of hair, and leaps high into the night air, twirls himself about, and settles on Gibreel’s shoulders, clutching on to him with fingernails that have grown into long, curved claws.”

Farishta realizes “he is a suicide soldier in the service of the cleric’s cause.” Eventually, the Imam has “grown monstrous, lying in the palace forecourt with his mouth yawning open at the gates; as the people march through the gates he swallows them whole… and now every clock in the capital city of Desh begins to chime, and goes on unceasingly, beyond twelve, beyond twenty-four, beyond one thousand and one, announcing the end of Time, the hour that is beyond measuring, the hour of the exile’s return, of the victory of water over wine, of the commencement of the Untime of the Imam.”

It’s hard to imagine a more precise and stinging lampoon of Khomeini and his malevolent mission. He and his followers were certainly well aware of it when they decided the author had to die. Of course, they claimed to be responding to an attack “against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qur’an.” But there is no doubt it was, above all, about the wounded ego of a man happy to anoint himself a “supreme leader.”

The reaction to the brutal attempted murder in Iran’s heavily-controlled media ranged from bland factual descriptions to joyous celebrations – and promises that Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo will be next – along with conspiratorial musings that it could really have been a Western “false flag” operation to derail nuclear negotiations.

But not a hint of concern, regret or objection. None.

That Khomeini and his followers recognized him and his murderous, fanatical regime in the character of the Imam — and then acted precisely according to monstrous type in 1989 and ever since — tells us everything we need to know about their ongoing addiction to violence and hostility to creativity and freedom of thought.

It’s bad enough they’ve never stopped encouraging extremists to kill Mr Rushdie to bolster their image among radical Muslims, especially since that powerfully stokes Western Islamophobia. That it is rooted in the wounded ego of a narcissistic tyrant is even worse.

Mr Matar is unlikely to see any of the promised millions. But Iranian gloating confirms who is responsible for this heinous attack, not just on a great artist, but on the essence of culture and civilization everywhere.

Iran Has One Last Chance to Revive the 2015 Nuclear Deal

A new EU proposal, embraced by the United States, gives Iran a last chance, but Tehran seems fixated on using it to shut down the IAEA investigation.
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Negotiators appear to be on the brink of either securing the revival of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal with Iran or confronting the stark reality that over 18 months of intensive work have produced no substantial results and the agreement is officially defunct. Senior officials from the European Union said they presented a draft agreement proposal to both Washington and Tehran that constitutes a last chance. Josep Borrell Fontelles, the EU foreign policy chief, phrased it bluntly in a tweet: “What can be negotiated has been negotiated, and it’s now in a final text.” For months, negotiations have been stalled and appeared stalemated, but neither side was willing to declare total failure. Now, however, the moment of truth appears to be close at hand.

Iran has reportedly dropped the two conditions that had been impeding an agreement in recent months: a demand that the State Department rescind its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization and some sort of guarantee that the United States would not abandon the agreement under a future administration as happened when former President Donald J. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in May 2018. Now, however, Tehran is insisting that the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency into unexplained uraniumfound at Iranian nuclear facilities be ended.

Indeed, in recent months Iran’s most bitter quarrels have not been with the United States but with the IAEA, as Tehran has shut down the agency’s surveillance in key nuclear facilities. In June, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said the move amounted to a “fatal blow” to reviving the JCPOA and warned that Iran’s nuclear program was “galloping ahead.” Iranian officials seemed to confirm this assessment by announcing that the country is now capable of building a nuclear weapon but has not decided to do that. Kamal Kharrazi, a senior advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, said in July that, “In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60%, and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium … Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb, but there has been no decision by Iran to build one.” Under the JCPOA, Iran was restricted to 3.67% enrichment, and 90% constitutes weapons-grade uranium.

Is the 2015 Agreement Still Relevant?

This means that Iran has already achieved the status of being a nuclear-threshold power, at least in terms of enrichment. It would take several months, at the very least, however, to develop a deliverable warhead or nuclear weapon once a sufficient supply of 90% enriched uranium is produced. But this is exactly the conundrum the JCPOA was supposed to postpone, if not entirely prevent. In November 2021, Robert Malley, the U.S. special envoy for Iran and lead negotiator, was already warning that Iran’s ongoing nuclear activities “are gradually emptying the deal of the nonproliferation benefits for which we bargained.” However, he added, “We’re not going to agree to a worse deal because Iran has built up its nuclear program.”

This means that even if a solution can be found to overcome Iran’s demand that the IAEA abandon its investigation into the unexplained and apparently illicit uranium it discovered – and it is extremely unlikely that either the agency or Western powers would agree to simply let that go because it makes Tehran uncomfortable – Iran is going to have to be willing to roll back exponentially more enriched material than it did after implementation day in 2016. Moreover, there are indications that Iran might not be willing to transfer enriched uranium over 3.67% to another country – Russia having served that purpose in the past and remaining the most likely destination – and that it might insist on the material remaining inside Iran under some sort of IAEA control. But that, obviously, could easily be recovered in the event of a future breakdown or expiration of the agreement.

Moreover, as Malley noted, Iran’s technical advancements, particularly regarding centrifuges for enrichment, can’t be rolled back. Once a technology has been mastered, the knowledge cannot be unlearned. And if the agreement is effectively a revival of the 2015 agreement essentially on a compliance-for-compliance basis, as both sides have said they want, the 12-to-15-year sunsets now buy the international community far less time than they did when the agreement was implemented in 2016. So even if all the obstacles can be overcome, the prize itself – simply on its own terms – is a lot less valuable than it was 18 months, let alone six years, ago.

What Lies Ahead?

Despite all of that, an agreement to revive the nuclear deal would be a major diplomatic accomplishment. The sunsets are not about to expire immediately, so it would certainly involve another, albeit far shorter, chronological gamble well worth taking. Moreover, any U.S., Western, and even Arab diplomatic progress with Iran is closely linked to, and probably effectively dependent on, success in these negotiations. It’s not just that the level of mistrust is extreme. It is, rather, what a failure to return to the JCPOA would likely mean in the coming months and years.

The IAEA is neither a tool of Washington nor prone to exaggerations. When Grossi says Iran’s nuclear program has been “galloping ahead” at full speed in recent months, and when Tehran’s main antagonist becomes the IAEA instead of the United States, the world can be confident that Iran has indeed been making a major push to get to weapons-threshold status. If, as it claims, Iran has already achieved that landmark, in a post-JCPOA environment Iran will at times likely carefully inch and at other times suddenly sprint toward achieving the various other breakthroughs required before it suddenly and, perhaps inevitably, emerges as a fully fledged nuclear power.

The administration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has made it crystal clear that the United States “is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure” that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, strongly suggesting a willingness to use military force. Yet Washington has been opaque about what metric or set of developments would trigger any such action. Israel, however, has been far more explicit about its own intention to act and has already been involved in a major shadow war with Iran involving attacks against its nuclear program, including sabotage, cyberattacks, assassinations, and other actions designed to impede or degrade Iran’s progress. Israel may not possess the bunker-buster munitions that would be required for some potential actions, meaning that Washington would either have to conduct them directly or would transfer such weapons to Israel, signaling that the two countries were contemplating such an action, even if it were carried out by the Israelis supposedly on their own. And, at the very least, Israel would be heavily dependent on U.S. diplomatic backup given the air spaces it would have to fly over in any such mission.

The consequences of such a drastic action, however, are clear. Therefore, while Iran would most likely inch and sprint at various moments toward nuclear power status, Washington’s most likely response to a final negotiation failure would be an effort, already begun during Biden’s recent Middle East trip, to build a stronger regime of containment and deterrence against Iran, in part by creating more networks of coordination and cooperation among U.S. partners in the Middle East. Key among those would be Gulf Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Yet both countries have their own ongoing dialogues with Iran, and the UAE has been contemplating sending an ambassador to Iran to fully restore diplomatic relations. Saudi Arabia, too, has indicated that it is ready for more intensified and formal talks with Tehran.

Yet if the Gulf Arab countries sense that Washington’s resolve is steadfast and perceive a new commitment to their security and concerns, they are likely to contribute what they can to a new regime of containment and deterrence. Still, the 2019 attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities and the deadly missile and drone attacks against Abu Dhabi in January demonstrate their ongoing vulnerability, hence Washington’s call for more integrated or coordinated air and missile defense systems. Even if it were merely on a bilateral basis, however, the United States could certainly help strengthen such systems, and it may find a more immediate appetite for coordination on maritime security. The path to greater regional coordination and cooperation among U.S. partners against Iran is complicated and tricky. Iran’s trajectory toward nuclear weapons status is dangerous but straightforward.

What this brief overview of the likely scenarios in a post-JCPOA environment demonstrates is how important it is that the EU proposal does not fail. Iran may be trying to use the evident peril of the situation to wriggle out of its imbroglio with the IAEA, and if some method can be found to satisfy both sides – consistent with the agency’s responsibilities – that should be welcomed on all sides. Yet, from the outset of these negotiations with the Biden administration, Iran appears to have been operating from the assumption that it enjoys a position of relative strength. The Biden administration has said that it is ready to “quickly conclude a deal” and agrees that the EU proposal is, in effect, a last chance. The ball is now firmly in the Iranian court.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/08/08/do-democrats-alone-govern-america/

Republicans aren’t yet beyond cooperating, as proven by several important bills passed by the Senate.

After more than a year of false starts, dead ends, frustration and despair, Democrats were finally able to pass the first major piece of US climate change legislation in a generation, bundled with important healthcare and tax innovations. They once again had to rely on their razor-thin 50-50 Senate majority, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie. This pattern of significant, and even strikingly dynamic, legislation and governance by the Democrats – in the face of near-total resistance by Republicans – begs the question: are Democrats fated to try governing the country alone?

This achievement, which has yet to be fully appreciated both in the US and internationally, was only secured after months of torturous internal Democratic negotiations and a marathon “vote-a-rama” session in the Senate on Sunday in which Republicans spent over 15 hours trying to derail the vote with a range of thorny amendments. The left-wing independent Senator Bernie Sanders also, for a time, sought to put his liberal colleagues on the spot. There was last-minute bargaining until the very end, with conservative Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema intervening on behalf of hedge funds and private equity wealth.

Yet the historic package passed, capping off 17 months for US President Joe Biden and this Congress of remarkably intense activity and spectacular achievement. His predecessor, Donald Trump, in his full four years secured just one significant piece of legislation, a giant tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. To that could be added a large amount of deregulation via executive order, but little else. And both of those achievements – scaling back the funding and authority of government – could be fairly described as anti-governance.

Democrats would note that the first thing that happened under the Biden administration was a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill that bailed out the whole economy, saved countless businesses and millions of jobs, and was also passed entirely by Democrats and against unified Republican opposition.

So, do Democrats have a point about governing the country alone? Yes and no.

Mr Trump’s record of success was so dismal, and the Republican Party’s evident disinterest in policy and legislation since he has emerged as its leader, it has certainly been looking that way for several years. The contrast between governance under Mr Trump and Mr Biden could hardly be starker.

However, the actual tally is not quite that one-sided.

Democrats were able to secure at least some Republican support, particularly in the Senate, for several key pieces of legislation. Gun control, the crucial microchip and technology funding bill, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and a forthcoming plan to repair the outmoded and dangerous Electoral Count Act all required at least some Republican co-operation.

Democrats could easily insist they would have supported a serious infrastructure bill during the Trump presidency, but the Republican inability to even craft a proposal lets them entirely off the hook.

The most unified (meaningful) Senate vote under Mr Biden was the 99-1 approval ofNato membership for Finland and Sweden. It was opposed only by the radical right-wing Senator Josh Hawley, whose explanation was so garbled it appears he was simply pandering to anti-Nato sentiments in the party base stoked by Mr Trump.

The overarching reality appears to be that with sufficient Democratic leadership, Republicans, especially in the Senate, are still willing – at times and in a limited way – to engage in meaningful legislation and policy.

Unfortunately, the traditional political ideological spectrum is now only to be found among Democrats. As the prolonged negotiations over the climate, health and tax bill starkly demonstrated, there are at least two genuinely conservative Democratic senators. There are no liberal Republican senators. Indeed, it is hard to think of any liberal Republicans at all.

The fierce ideological struggle in the Republican Party is over personal fealty to Mr Trump. It is not anything to do with policy. The Party is being purged of such hard-right stalwarts as Liz Cheney, because she will not bend the knee to Mr Trump, repeat his lies about the last election or defend his attempted coup and the January 6 insurrection. That is entirely about personalities and not at all about ideas or principles.

It is at the state level one finds Republican interest in policy. Republican-dominated state legislatures are racing to ban abortion, while others are restricting teaching about race, history, gender and sexuality. And in some key states, Republican activists are seeking to seize control of the electoral process while, alarmingly, condemning the 2020 election as rigged. So, unfortunately, there is a distinct dynamism in state Republican parties.

Among the splits emerging within the Republican Party are between those who want to pursue Mr Trump’s agenda of “dismantling the administrative state” through federal deregulation and those, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who are increasingly using the power of state-level government to impose political correctness and ideological narratives, as well as reward friends and punish adversaries, including mega-corporations such as Disney.

It is conceivable that Mr DeSantis or some other post-Trump figure could define and pursue a political and ideological agenda that is genuinely new, taking its radical and authoritarian cue from the former president but breaking with the anti-governance attitudes he shared with traditional conservatives. We shall see.

For now, however, the Democrats can take justifiable pride in having negotiated a difficult and historic piece of legislation among conservatives and liberals, all within their own ranks and without any support from Republicans, and having secured a compromise measure that, particularly on climate change, will have global and momentous significance. The bill goes to the House for final passage, which is all but secured, as early as next Friday.

Democrats clearly have a governing agenda rather than a totemic figurehead and real ideological range. And, most importantly, they have again demonstrated that, if need be, they can and will govern alone.

Though there is little they want to do, and not much they’re willing to support, Republicans – especially in the Senate – are still at times willing to cooperate, especially on national security. Unfortunately, as I explained in these pages last week, most recently they had to be literally tricked into it.

Democrats could plausibly lay claim to at least 80 per cent of the existing impulse to governance in Washington. But that still leaves 15 or 20 per cent for some Republicans, sometimes. So, Democrats cannot quite claim to be governing the country entirely alone. Almost. But not quite.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/08/01/bidens-breakthrough-climate-and-healthcare-bill-could-reverse-his-fortunes/

The pending breakthrough climate, tax and healthcare bill could revive his popularity — or not.

A week ago, conventional wisdom in Washington held that Joe Biden’s presidency was in a profound crisis. A drumbeat intensified for the aging president not to run for a second term. But by the weekend, that narrative was upended as it once again became clear that he is accumulating a remarkable set of legislative achievements in short order and under difficult circumstances.

The sudden jolt was the announcement late last week that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the most conservative Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, agreed to major spending on healthcare, taxation and climate change. If the bill passes – as seems highly likely since Republicans cannot block budgetary measures – Mr Biden will endure the paradox of having passed a vast array of popular legislation while retaining dismal poll numbers.

Republicans are outraged that the agreement was kept completely secret, including from most Democrats and the press. For weeks, Democratic leaders insisted internal negotiations were ongoing, but carefully crafted the impression of an impasse.

Not wanting to allow Mr Biden too many successes, Republicans relied on this misdirection when they supported a $280 billion spending package to bolster American microchip manufacturing and other technological development. Aimed primarily at strengthening the nation’s technological and economic competition with China, it is the largest US industrial policy initiative in decades. It is also so evidently in the national interest that it should have been adopted without controversy or subsequent recriminations.

As soon as it passed, Democratic leaders announced that not only were their internal negotiations successful, Mr Manchin had agreed to a far bigger package than he led people to believe he might. It is the latest chunk of Mr Biden’s fraught Build Back Better program, a transformational agenda so sweeping it could not be passed in its totality, but much of which is instead being implemented piecemeal.

Last year, a huge infrastructure bill was broken away and adopted. When Mr Manchin insisted on a large reduction in overall spending on the rest of the package, and ruled out several key features including childcare, the project was generally given up for dead.

Now Democrats seem poised to pass another major chunk of the original highly ambitious agenda, and it will have a gigantic impact. Most strikingly, it will put the US on track to meet globally crucial climate change goals that had been considered politically unachievable.

Reversing decades of severe underfunding, the package provides major support to the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service, and that should finance the collection of untold billions in unpaid taxes. It imposes a minimum 15 percent tax on the wealthiest corporations, many of which pay nothing at all, and higher taxes on “carried interest” exemptions enjoyed by the likes of private equity and hedge fund managers. Former president Donald Trump will surely be infuriated at the elimination of “pass-through” loopholes that apparently allowed him to often pay virtually no income tax.

Government health providers will finally be allowed to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies, saving billions and greatly reducing drug costs. And the US would inch closer to universal healthcare coverage.

Some Republicans, infuriated at being suckered – although only into supporting obviously necessary legislation – are lashing out by withdrawing support for aid to military veterans exposed to toxic burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for legislation guaranteeing marriage equality. Both bills are overwhelmingly popular, so Republicans are being provoked into irrational and, in all likelihood, self-destructive retaliation.

Democrats not only completely outfoxed and bamboozled the Republicans, by cannily marketing the bill – accurately enough – as the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,” they have emphasised how overwhelmingly popular virtually all its provisions and their impacts are likely to be.

Build Back Better was an ineffective legislative program not because its provisions were largely unpopular – although it originally included regressive forms of student loan relief, and state and local tax benefits that favour the better off. Rather, it was simply too vast and sprawling to be comprehensible and, as a unified bundle, provoked powerful sticker shock regarding its total costs.

But broken into discrete chunks, and with some key elements, both good and bad, jettisoned, much of the original plan seems likely to be eventually enacted. Only Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, another frequently uncooperative Democrat, might prevent passage, but it seems unlikely that she would ultimately thwart Mr Manchin’s breakthrough.

The biggest question is what impact this sprawling legislation and dynamic governance will have in both the November midterms and the next presidential election in 2024.

Inflation, and the economic slowdown now being engineered by the Federal Reserve to control it, will certainly prove a millstone. But Democrats can and should run on this extraordinary record of legislative achievement: $1.9 trillion in pandemic relief, $1.2 trillion for hard infrastructure, $280 billion for industrial investment, and now apparently, $700 billion for healthcare, taxation and climate change.

Add to that the first gun control legislation in decades, an upcoming measure to repair the badly-worded and anachronistic Electoral Count Act (which Mr Trump tried to exploit to retain power despite losing the 2020 election), plus another to protect marriage equality, and the legislative checklist is extremely impressive and, in theory at least, highly popular.

Much of what Democrats want remains undone, of course, but this massively exceeds any rational expectations. However, as I recently noted in these pages, Mr Biden has been downright atrocious at messaging.

In November, Republicans will be running primarily on inflation, and racial and cultural grievances, which are powerful emotional motivators. Yet they have nominated so many extremists, crackpots and charlatans in key Senate races that Democrats may well retain control. But Republicans seem equally poised to regain a majority in the House of Representatives.

Mr Biden’s legislative agenda would then surely be frozen, especially since many Republicans are now so enraged that they claim to regret having supported almost anything he proposed, no matter how basic and reasonable. But the president would still go into a re-election campaign in 2024 with an outstanding list of first-term legislative accomplishments he is already in the process of accumulating.

If Americans want their government to function, provide services and strengthen the country, under current circumstances Democrats – being the only party, at least at the national level, truly interested in policy and governance – have an unassailable case. They can bolster that by stoking reasonable fears that Republicans are stripping citizens of fundamental freedoms, particularly given the sudden and shocking wave of near-total abortion restrictions in many states.

But if voters prefer emotional release and high-octane entertainment, Republicans could regain power through the potent and resonant performative theatrics which has become their disgraceful stock-in-trade.

Americans are going to have to decide if they really want good government or a good show.