Thomas Wictor

Big news for the Iranian mullahs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Overcoming ferocious opposition, President Barack Obama secured a legacy-defining foreign policy victory Wednesday as Senate Democrats clinched the necessary votes to ensure the Iran nuclear agreement survives in Congress.

The decisive 34th commitment came from Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski, who is retiring next year after three decades in the Senate. In a statement she said “no deal is perfect, especially one negotiated with the Iranian regime.” But she called the pact “the best option available to block Iran from having a nuclear bomb.”

Supporters now have the votes in hand to uphold Obama’s veto, if one becomes necessary, of a resolution of disapproval Republicans are trying to pass this month. GOP lawmakers who control the House and Senate ardently oppose the agreement, which curbs Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for hundreds of billions of dollars in relief from international sanctions.

Shortly after Mikulski’s announcement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., grudgingly acknowledged that his side would not be able to block the deal after Obama, in his words, secured “the tepid, restricted and partisan support of one-third of one house of Congress.”

I’m very happy. If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) had been killed by the Republicans, it would’ve meant that I’d misinterpreted the mountain of circumstantial evidence that the Iranian nuclear deal is the greatest deception operation in history. My happiness isn’t relief that I—the Venerable Oracle of Small Potatoes—was correct after all. I’m excited that the new Middle East will become a reality. There’s no longer any doubt.

It’s funny to see idiots gloating.

Gwen Ifill works for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), a network that hires only anchors and reporters who have bizarre, off-putting mannerisms. The usual PBS style is to speak in hushed, reverent tones to convey the gentle enlightenment of the progressive mind. Gwen Ifill has a kind of low-key, metallic bark that she combines with strange facial expressions, erratic head movements, shoulder twitches, and the constant shifting of her large rump in her chair.

The glee that people are expressing is genuinely insane. Even if you want Iran to have nuclear weapons so that Israel will finally be wiped off the map, the odds that the mullahs will then become responsible global citizens are zero. They’ll do what North Korea did after it acquired nukes.

On March 26, 2010, for no reason whatsoever, a North Korean midget submarine sank the South Korean corvette ROKS Cheonan, killing 46 of the 104 crew members. The ship was raised from the bottom of the Yellow Sea and put on display.

Then on November 23, 2010, North Korea shelled the island of Yeonpyong.

Four were killed and nineteen were wounded. The North Koreans fired 108 shells, a huge number. Only incompetence prevented more deaths.

When reckless, irrational, absolutist governments acquire nuclear weapons, they become far more dangerous. This is a concept that’s now too complicated for most people to grasp. Luckily the Israelis and Saudis are clear thinkers. They’re not going to wait for the mullahs to get their mitts on nuclear weapons.

Don’t kid yourself: Before North Korea acquired nukes, the South had a war plan that would’ve spared most of the nation. Now, the only option that South Korea has is the preemptive use of nuclear weapons itself. As a result of the world lacking the fortitude and common sense to do everything in its power to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of North Korean maniacs, the end result is that South Korea and its allies will have to completely destroy the North Korean military in order to survive.

The only way to make sure that North Korea doesn’t use its nuclear weapons is to use nuclear weapons on them first. Now many more Norks will die. So be it.

This won’t happen in the Middle East. Statements that the Israelis and Saudis have made over the past year indicate that this is the war plan.

First, Israel will attack Lebanon and eliminate Hezbollah in a ferocious air and land campaign.

Then Israel and multiple nations will destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and the offensive military capabilities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), allowing the Iranian armed forces to overthrow the mullahs. The attack on Iran will consist of a bombing campaign using the high-velocity penetrating weapon (HVPW), the hypersonic, rocket-powered bunker buster tested in Yemen on April 20, 2015. This will be followed by a gigantic air assault of special operators flown in by helicopter. They’ll make sure that all the right things have been blown to bits, and they’ll kill remaining IRGC terrorists and Basij paramilitary thugs who still want to fight.

Finally, the Gulf Cooperation Council will destroy the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

A word about the power of the HVPW. This Yemeni cameraman was 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from the explosion.

The shock wave broke his camera and knocked him down.

Here’s a video of the Operation Crossroads Baker Event, the detonation of an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll on July 25, 1946.

At 0:56 in the video above, you can see the shock wave hit the trees, which were 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) away. The atomic bomb used in the Baker Event—”Helen of Bikini”—had a yield of 23 kilotons. In comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki—”Fat Man”—August 9, 1945, had a yield of 21 kilotons.

So here’s the size of an explosion created by a 23-kiloton atomic bomb.

The explosion of the HVPW is much smaller, but the shock wave it produces is far more violent than that of a similarly sized atomic bomb. Also, since the April 20, 2024 explosion in Yemen took place underground, most of the force was directed downward, in the direction that the munition was fired.

This is a weapon of almost incomprehensible destructive power. And you can bet that the HVPW can be fitted with a contact fuse so that it explodes when it hits a target on the surface. I’m guessing that the shock wave that knocked down the Yemeni cameraman was maybe 25 percent of the total yield, the rest of the weapon’s energy having gone into the earth.

Imagine 200 of those fiendish devices hitting the Iranian nuclear facilities, as well the depots and barracks of the IRGC.

I spent the day looking, but I can find no evidence that the Saudi-led ground operations in Yemen have been thwarted in any way. Tanks, artillery, mechanized Yemeni infantry, Saudi special operators, and helicopter gunships have assembled at Marib in preparation for the taking of Sana’a.

The Coalition says that the goal is to reinstate the Yemeni government in Aden first.

But if the Iranian-allied Houthis did not eventually agree to quit Sanaa, the government would have the right to “get them out” by force, Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri said in an interview.

Houthiwood videos have been made, showing members of Ansar Allah (“Supporters of God”) pretending to take out Saudi tanks and other armored vehicles. Today—after over five months of fighting—the Houthis finally produced their first dead-baby video, to which I won’t link. The child was obviously not killed in an air strike. From the footage, it’s clear that the house was being used as an arms cache or IED factory, and it exploded. The Houthis are all high on the stimulant khat, which they cram into their cheeks.

In their stupid videos, they screech, “Death to America! Death to Israel!” Their delusions are enabled by the press and “human rights” groups, which are coming up with more and more demented descriptions of what’s happening.

GENEVA (AP) — “Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” the head of the international Red Cross says, describing the devastation from a conflict that has left more than 1,900 people dead since March.

Peter Maurer, fresh off a trip to the war-torn country in the Arabian Peninsula, said entrenched poverty, months of intensified warfare and limits on imports because of an international embargo have contributed to “catastrophic” conditions in Yemen.

“The firepower with which this war is fought on the ground and in the air is causing more suffering than in other societies which are stronger and where infrastructures are better off and people are wealthier and have reserves and can escape,” Maurer told The Associated Press at his office in the headquarters of the International Committee for the Red Cross.

“The images I have from Sanaa and Aden remind me of what I have seen in Syria,” the Swiss-born ICRC president said. “So Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years.”

Ah. So Yemen doesn’t look like Syria. It simply reminds Maurer of Syria. From photos, it appears that Maurer visited only one site.

That was a precision air strike that destroyed one building. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is bombing entire cities flat. As many as 300,000 have been killed. According to the Associated Press, after over 20,000 Coalition air strikes and two enormous ground invasions by thousands of Emirati and Saudi armored vehicles, 1900 Yemenis are dead. News stories show that over 90 percent of the people in the hospitals are military-aged males.

I’m glad that the Saudis have decided that the opinions of the press and “human rights” groups don’t matter, since reporters and aid workers are now all profoundly mentally ill. Or corrupt. Or both.

At any rate, have faith. By this time next year, the Iranian mullahs will be a memory.