The guy who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair, John Kerry, said [emphasis added],

Now I want to be very clear. Nothing in our deliberations is decided until everything is decided. And the purpose of these negotiations is not just to get any deal; it is to get the right deal. President Obama means it when he says, again and again, that Iran will not be permitted to get a nuclear weapon. As you all know, Iran says it doesn’t want a nuclear weapon, and that is a very welcome statement that the Supreme Leader has, in fact, incorporated into a fatwa. And we have great respect—great respect—for the religious importance of a fatwa. And what we are effectively trying to do is translate that into legal language, into everyday language within the framework of a negotiated agreement that everybody can understand, which requires everybody to have certain obligations and ultimately be able to guarantee that Iran’s program, its nuclear program, will be peaceful now and peaceful forever.

But [emphasis and links in the original]:

The Obama administration…exhibits cloying reverence for a fatwa—a sharia law edict—issued by a jurist who runs a regime that is the world’s leading state sponsor of jihadist terror.

Even when the fatwa is a patent hoax.

The invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has done extensive research into compilations of Khamenei’s published fatwas. (See here and here, and citations therein.) No such fatwa has ever been published.

And

[D]espite repeated requests, Iran has never produced the purported anti-nuclear weapons fatwa from Khamenei.

And (via the PJ Media above)

Indeed, as MEMRI elaborates, Khamenei was directly asked about the purported fatwa in a 2012 Facebook exchange:

[I]s it also forbidden to obtain nuclear weapons, as per your ruling that their use is prohibited?

He refused to answer the question:

Your question has no jurisprudential aspect. When it has a jurisprudent [sic] position, then it will be possible to answer it.

Motorboat skippers and community organizers are so easily bamboozled.

That’s President Barack Obama to Congress on his “negotiations” with Iran concerning the latter’s nuclear weapons program.

President Obama’s chief of staff Dennis McDonough told Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker in a letter that legislation sponsored by Corker would go beyond ensuring a role for Congress in a deal with Iran.

“Instead, the legislation would potentially prevent any deal from succeeding by suggesting that Congress must vote to ‘approve’ any deal,” McDonough said. He criticized a provision that would eliminate Obama’s authority to lift some sanctions on Iran as part of any agreement.

Never mind that that’s the point of Congressional oversight, and of the separate Constitutional obligation of the Senate to agree (by supermajority, mind you) to a treaty—that whole by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate bit.

That’s why Obama is working on his finally admitted-to Executive Agreement: that does not require Senate approval (and as a result, it’s wholly unbinding on anything or anyone). It can have no effect on the Iranian drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

Never mind, too, that the legislation under consideration would strengthen Obama’s hand in those negotiations. A strengthening he apparently does not want.

So: sit down, and shut up, Republican Congress. Your Betters are speaking.

The People’s Republic of China Foreign Minister Wang Yi had this to say, according to The Wall Street Journal:

This construction does not target or affect anyone.

We are not like some countries who engage in illegal construction in another person’s house, and we do not accept criticism from others when we are merely building facilities in our own yard. We have every right to do things that are lawful and justified.

The satellite imagery at the WSJ link is remarkable.

Of course, Wang is lying. What the PRC is doing affects all the nations on the South China Sea rim: being international waters, the Sea is theirs as much as it is the PRC’s, which is to say it’s owned by no one.

As far as construction in another person’s house is concerned, the Spratly Islands (the site of the present construction), if not in anyone’s house, most assuredly are in the jointly held front yards of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. These islands are nowhere near the PRC, and like the South China Sea in general, they are not at all PRC territory.