Last week, Iran declared that, unless Europe provides it with a $15 billion line of credit to make up for the damage supposedly done to its economy by U.S. sanctions, it will cease to abide by the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement. On September 8—two days after the threat supposedly went into effect—officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that they had discovered traces of uranium at what Israeli intelligence had already revealed was a secret military nuclear facility, only recently destroyed by the regime. The discovery is further evidence that Tehran had been in violation of both the non-proliferation treaty that it signed in 1970 and the 2015 nuclear deal long before its recent threats. Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the IAEA, and Tzvi Kahn write:

The United States and Europe would be making a mistake of historic proportions if they surrender to this latest Iranian threat. Instead, they should stand firm and make clear that Iran will receive sanctions relief only if it negotiates a comprehensive new nuclear deal . . . ensuring, in a verifiable manner, that it has abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Premature concessions would merely incentivize Iran to engage in further nuclear blackmail, thereby undermining the IAEA’s ability to verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
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In the face of Iran’s defiance, France is negotiating with Tehran—in coordination with other parties to the 2015 agreement—on a $15 billion letter of credit that would enable Iran to receive hard currency, thereby compensating it for the loss of oil sales resulting from U.S. sanctions. At the root of this proposal lies the apparent assumption that Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal—and the consequent economic crisis Iran faces—has spurred an Iranian decision to achieve a nuclear breakout in retaliation.

Thus, by mitigating Iran’s economic woes, the world could supposedly incentivize Iran to return to compliance with the nuclear deal. The truth is more complicated. In reality, Iran’s incremental nuclear violations aim not to start a war, but to project resolve and to weaken U.S. deterrence.

To Peter Berkowitz, the rot in American institutions of higher learning exposed by Tuesday’s hearings resembles a disease that in its early stages was easy to cure but difficult to diagnose, and now is so advanced that it is easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. Recent analyses of these problems have now at last made it to the pages of the New York Times but are, he writes, “tardy by several decades,” and their suggested remedies woefully inadequate:

They fail to identify the chief problem. They ignore the principal obstacles to reform. They propose reforms that provide the equivalent of band-aids for gaping wounds and shattered limbs. And they overlook the mainstream media’s complicity in largely ignoring, downplaying, or dismissing repeated warnings extending back a quarter century and more—largely, but not exclusively, from conservatives—that our universities undermine the public interest by attacking free speech, eviscerating due process, and hollowing out and politicizing the curriculum.

The remedy, Berkowitz argues, would be turning universities into places that cultivate, encourage, and teach freedom of thought and speech. But doing so seems unlikely:

Having undermined respect for others and the art of listening by presiding over—or silently acquiescing in—the curtailment of dissenting speech for more than a generation, the current crop of administrators and professors seems ill-suited to fashion and implement free-speech training. Moreover, free speech is best learned not by didactic lectures and seminars but by practicing it in the reasoned consideration of competing ideas with those capable of challenging one’s assumptions and arguments. But where are the professors who can lead such conversations? Which faculty members remain capable of understanding their side of the argument because they understand the other side?