The Fantasy of the Ayatollah’s Anti-Nuclear Fatwa

July 22 2022

In a 2015 speech in the Rose Garden announcing a breakthrough in nuclear negotiations with Iran, then-president Barack Obama stated that “Iran’s supreme leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons.” The same religious ruling has been cited by numerous advocates for compromise with the Islamic Republic for over a decade, and on Wednesday it was mentioned by a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry. Ruthie Blum comments:

The fatwa in question, which Iran yammered about for years until supposedly publishing its text in 2010, is a hoax. The propaganda about it was used by Iranian figures as a tool to prove to the administration of then-U.S. president . . . Barack Obama that Tehran’s intentions were honorable. It was thus music to Washington’s ears, and nobody at the White House or State Department bothered to find out whether or not it was true.

[A]t this stage, even delusional American diplomats appear to have stopped grasping at that particular straw. . . . Naturally, this hasn’t kept Iranian officials from invoking the phony fatwa every time one or another of them brags about Tehran’s military prowess. It’s their default maneuver and one that media outlets can’t resist highlighting.

It’s silly, really, since those who refer to the Islamic decree always say in the same breath that it will be moot the moment that Iran decides to violate it. This is precisely what the former Iranian deputy foreign minister Mohammad-Javad Larijani did on Sunday in an interview on Iranian TV. “Naturally, according to the [supreme] leader’s fatwa, we are religiously forbidden from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and this includes nuclear weapons,” he stated. “Nevertheless, if we ever want to do this, nobody will be able to stop us, of course. They themselves know this.”

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Barack Obama, Iran nuclear program, U.S. Foreign policy

The Mass Expulsion of Palestinians Is No Solution. Neither Are Any of the Usual Plans for Gaza

Examining the Trump administration’s proposals for the people of Gaza, Danielle Pletka writes:

I do not believe that the forced cleansing of Gaza—a repetition of what every Arab country did to the hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews in 1948— is a “solution.” I don’t think Donald Trump views that as a permanent solution either (read his statement), though I could be wrong. My take is that he believes Gaza must be rebuilt under new management, with only those who wish to live there resettling the land.

The time has long since come for us to recognize that the establishment doesn’t have the faintest clue what to do about Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want it. Jordan doesn’t want it. Iran wants it, but only as cannon fodder. The UN wants it, but only to further its anti-Semitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West. Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians blame Palestinians for destroying their countries.

Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the Palestinian Authority have not worked. Rebuilding has not worked. Destruction will not work. A “two-state solution” has not arrived, and will not work.

So what’s to be done? If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it. This time will be different. . . . What could possibly make you believe this other than ideological laziness?

Read more at What the Hell Is Going On?

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Palestinians