“A major expansion underway inside Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facility could soon triple the site’s production of enriched uranium,” the Washington Post reports. That expansion “could allow Iran to accumulate several bombs’ worth of nuclear fuel every month.”

Even if the reportage is accurate, two questions loom large.

First: Do the Iranians want to join the nuclear weapons club?

The answer seems to be “no.”

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — whose orders constitute the regime’s policy — has long held that “the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons.”

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirms that position, reporting that “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities that would be necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”

Second: Why is the US regime’s policy clearly oriented toward changing Iran’s mind on the acquisition of nuclear weapons?

For all its panic-mongering over the prospect of a nuclear Iran, there’s only been a short period over the last quarter century when the panic actually got addressed — the period of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the “Iran nuclear deal.”

As a Non-Proliferation Treaty member state, Iran has seemingly kept its nuclear activities within the limits required by that treaty, as verified by International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

But for a decade or so leading up to the JCPOA, the US wanted more restrictions on those activities, as a condition of lifting sanctions. Every time the Iranians agreed, the US backed out, demanding even more.

Then came the JCPOA in 2015. The Iranians  finally offered enough in the way of concessions above and beyond the NPT guidelines that Barack Obama couldn’t find credible way to kick out. And so it went — even more inspections, even more compliance with US demands, and minimal sanctions relief.

Until Donald Trump claimed, in 2018, to have “withdrawn” the US from the JCPOA (something he had no power to do without also withdrawing from the United Nations, as the JCPOA is a UN Security Council resolution binding on all UN member states).

Joe Biden ran for president on a promise to bring the US back into compliance with the JCPOA, then broke that promise and continued piling sanctions back on.

So the Iranians went back to expanding refinement of uranium — remaining within NPT limits and proposing to return to JCPOA limits any time the US decides to stop messing around and keep up its end of the deal.

QED, it is the US regime, not the Iranian regime, which wants the Iranian regime to withdraw from the NPT and build The Bomb.

That might not be such a bad thing. An Iranian nuclear deterrent could match Israel’s rogue nuclear threat, creating a more stable, less war-prone balance of power in the region.

But why not just say so instead of playing the “we don’t REALLY want what we’re CLEARLY pursuing” game?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms,” Vivek Murthy writes in a New York Times op-ed, “stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.”

An incredibly dumb idea, but it enjoys a certain amount of public attention because Vivek Murthy’s day job is with the federal government  as (checks notes) surgeon general.

If Murthy wants a “warning label” on something, why not just order it instead of whining about it in the Times? Two reasons:

The first is that he can’t just order it. The office of surgeon general doesn’t come with a label maker. He only gets one if Congress gives him one.

The other is that his op-ed isn’t about “protecting children” or “the public health.” It’s about grandstanding on a current moral panic so as to associate the name “Vivek Murthy,” in the public consciousness, with “protecting children” and “the public health.”

As his second surgeon general stint likely nears its end, Murthy’s obviously trying to burnish his “public intellectual” credentials for a more successful return to the not-so-private sector. Instead of reprising his previous four years in the TV talking head / non-fiction book authorship (Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World) wilderness between the Obama and Biden administrations, he’s presumably hoping for a steadier gig with a larger paycheck — at MSNBC, perhaps, or CNN.

“Protecting children” and “the public health” are to political demagoguery as Gallagher’s tricycle or Steve Martin’s “arrow through the head” are to stand-up comedy.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you one looks at it, “warning labels” do little to discourage, and may even encourage, the behaviors they “warn” about.

I started smoking as a teen, a couple of decades after Congress let the surgeon general Luther Terry borrow its label maker for use on cigarettes in 1964. The next person I meet who’s my age and claims to have never taken up smoking because of those warning labels will be the first. Ineffectual.

As for encouragement, anyone paying attention knows that kids actively seek out music, movies, etc. with “mature content” warning labels. Those labels essentially serve as “this is the good stuff” advertising for the products they appear on.

The only valuable prospective use for “warning labels” on social media platforms is as an “I made that happen” item on Murthy’s resume. Kids looking for an “I’m edgy” thrill would treat the “warning labels” as endorsements; parents inclined to panic over their kids’ use of TikTok or Instagram would do so with or without Murthy’s assistance.

In the meantime, there’s that pesky constitutional prohibition on compelled speech. Congress shouldn’t ignore it, but probably will.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On June 14, the US Supreme Court overturned former US president Donald Trump’s 2018 “bump stock ban.”

Like many SCOTUS rulings, this outcome turned on neither the plain text and meaning of the US Constitution (under which the ban was clearly illegal) nor common sense (under which the ban was clearly idiotic — everyday objects as mundane as belt loops and rubber bands can be used as “bump stocks”).

Instead, the court ruled (in the negative) on the question of whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has the power to magically change the definition of the term “machine gun” on the whim of the president.

I’d rather SCOTUS had just upheld the plain text and unambiguous meaning of the Second Amendment (under which laws against “machine guns” are void whether the term includes “bump stocks” or not), but close enough for government work, I guess.

Perhaps the most useful outcome of the ruling is its tendency to highlight Donald Trump’s actual record on gun rights as he seeks a second term in the White House.

In February, Trump  assured National Rifle Association members that he was “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House. … During my four years … there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield. … Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president.”

In the wake of the SCOTUS ruling, his campaign’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt asserted that “[t]he Court has spoken and their decision should be respected,” assuring the public that Trump “has been and always will be a fierce defender of Americans’ Second Amendment rights.”

But back in 2018, when he was still actually the president, Trump told the public at a news conference: “We’re knocking out bump stocks. I’ve told the NRA … bump stocks are gone.”

And back in 2018, then-president Trump, addressing lawmakers in support of “red flag” laws, came out against not just the Second Amendment but the Fifth Amendment as well: “I like taking the guns early …. Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

His 2018 actions speak louder than his 2024 words — and highlight the larger problem the Republican Party ran into when it gave its 2016 presidential nomination to a life-long progressive Democrat for president in an (unsuccessful) attempt to out-authoritarian the Democratic Party on immigration.

For all his self-promoting “outsider” guff, Trump’s a typical politician: On the campaign trail, he pretends to be whoever and whatever he thinks his supporters want him to be; once in office, he tends to revert to his true form.

Never trust a politician (any politician) to protect your rights (any of your rights). Thus endeth the lesson.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY