Author Archives: eehines

Don’t Forget the Plutonium

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President Donald Trump (R) wants to eliminate Iran’s ability to generate enough fissionable uranium to make nuclear bombs, and he’s correct to want to do so, and to do so. He’s also correct to demand Iran turn over all of its already generated U-235, the uranium isotope used in making those bombs, of whatever purity the isotope has already been spun down to. There can be no peace from terrorism-generating Iran until those goals have been achieved.

However.

John Bolton, in his Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed, reminded us all, and Trump in particular, that we can’t afford to leave behind Iran’s accumulating stockpile of plutonium. Pu-239 is the plutonium isotope used in making nuclear bombs that are even more powerful than U-235 centered bombs.

The terrorists in Iran’s government, and their nuclear scientists are well aware of that fact, and they’re well aware of this, too: Pu-239, aside from being produced in nuclear reactors explicitly designed for the purpose, also is produced, in smaller quantities, as a natural byproduct of U-235-fed nuclear reactors that are built solely for power generation.

Of particular importance here—but not sole importance—is Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear reactor in Bushehr.

It gets worse:

Once Bushehr launched, its accumulating spent fuel amounted to ever larger amounts of accessible plutonium. … Based on current Russian estimates of spent-fuel levels at Bushehr and International Atomic Energy Agency estimates about the reactor’s energy production, nuclear-proliferation expert Henry Sokolski estimates that Iran has enough plutonium to make more than 200 nuclear weapons.

The Bushehr reactor isn’t Iran’s only nuclear reactor; it’s just the one they’re using explicitly to produce Pu-239. It’s necessary to control, or destroy, all of Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear reactors.

In Which I Agree with Michelle Obama and Angel Reese

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But maybe not for their reasons. In an interview on Obama’s podcast, WNBA star Angel Reese said,

The media has not always been great for me. And I’ll take a fine. I’ll catch a fine, especially in a WNBA. I’ll have a fine before I have to go to media and feel like my back is against the wall[.]

Obama repeatedly agreed with Reese over these and similar comments during the interview.

I tend to be hard over on the 1st Amendment and our freedoms of speech and association. It’s wrong that the WNBA and the other professional sports leagues require players and managers/coaches to present themselves to press inquisitions before, during, and after games. Athletes and their coaches and managers shouldn’t lose those basic rights just because of who they are.

Those rights to speak or not and to associate with pressmen formally or informally or not at all are independent of whether the press treats those it summons to their audiences badly or fawningly. Meeting the press should be an entirely voluntary affair. Nobody makes pressmen show up for these; neither should anyone else be required.

That’s the Point of the Escort

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The DC Circuit court has upheld Pentagon press reporter escort restrictions inside the Pentagon while the underlying case works its way through the judicial system.

Judge J Michelle Childs dissented, and in her dissent, she demonstrated her lack of understanding of the problem:

Reporters can hardly verify sources, gather information, or speak candidly with Department personnel with an escort looming over their shoulders.

Nor should those Department personnel be able to speak “candidly.” They’re possessed of too much classified information, and that information is classified for very good reasons. Passing that information to reporters, whether deliberately or accidentally, would do damage to our national security, potentially very severe damage.

Aside from that, we—and she—have no reason to believe the reporters are verifying any sources, since those reporters refuse to identify any of them.

These personnel have no business talking to reporters inside the Pentagon, anyway; they should be referring the reporter to the relevant Public Affairs Officer, who is well-trained in answering reporters’ questions as candidly as classification limits allow, as well as obfuscating and weasel-wording in response to a reporter’s obvious gotcha and trolling questions.

No Question Here

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Federal District Judge Loren AliKhan is the presiding judge in Soffer v George Washington University, a case centered on allegations that antisemitic activity is rampant on the GWU campus. While serving in that capacity, the GWU Law School hired the judge as an adjunct professor.

The overlap has prompted questions about a potential conflict of interest, given federal rules requiring judges to avoid cases in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. AliKhan did not immediately step aside but issued a 10-day stay in late March to consider whether recusal is warranted. Since the April 20 status conference, no final decision has been publicly announced.

??

How is this even a question? Those Federal rules don’t just bar judges’ conflicts of interest, nor is this merely a matter of questions of impartiality. Those rules bar judges from actions that create even the appearance of a conflict of interest, a requirement that, if honored by judges, preempts any questions of impartiality.

It’s more than that, though. While AliKhan was presiding, she should never have even considered the GWU offer of employment, or she should have resigned from the bench altogether: teaching in a law school hews too close to the ethical line and creates that barred appearance of conflict.

That she hasn’t even deigned recuse herself yet (as I write on Sunday) is instructive of her level of ethics. Given that lack, GWU’s Law School should reconsider its hiring of her, and if the Law School can’t figure it out, GWU should act in its subordinate Law School’s stead. Either of those entiities’ decision to do nothing would be instructive, also.

“No New Negotiations”

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That’s the position of Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian, at least until the US lifts its blockade of Iran’s ports and of shipping going to and from Iran.

I’m down with that. The blockade has finally achieved something that years of sanctions have failed to obtain: a serious stranglehold on the money flowing into Iran, which it uses in its nuclear weapons development programs [sic] and to fund its terrorist satraps.

Even this serious grip, though, will take time to produce results, particularly among a collection of despots who believe that they have lost nothing since they have not lost their lives. The US should push the pace. Let the bomb deliveries resume and dismantle the despots’ war-making infrastructure. Destroy Iran’s ports, cut the pipelines to Kharg Island and to Bandar Abbas. Cut the pipelines running from Iran’s oil wells and running to and from Iran’s refineries. Resume the attacks against the now dispersed IRGC leadership. Hunt and destroy Iran’s stored inventory of missiles, drones, and launchers. Destroy Iran’s missile, drone, and launcher production facilities. Hunt and destroy Iran’s (IRGC’s) mosquito boat fleet which it currently uses to attack commercial shipping in the Arabian Gulf.

Keep this up until the despots come to the table with decision-makers and agree the US’ terms. President Donald Trump (R) has acknowledged that the Iran government, having taken casualties already, is fractured and in a power struggle, but this is irrelevant. With the increased pressure and casualties among those in charge or competing to be in charge, the surviving government men will figure out how to stop being fractured and take seriously their fate.

As President Donald Trump (R) said when he called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last week, the Iranian despots know how to call him and can do so when they’re ready to be serious. They also can be given safe passage to any meeting point while kinetic operations continue.