by Michael Ledeen

The Iranian people hate the regime

Iran is on the march all over the world, from Syria and Iraq to Venezuela and Cuba (where they have a Hezbollah base). Except when they unceremoniously retreat, as in recent days when their flotilla to Yemen turned around when they saw the U.S. Navy.

There’s a lesson there: If you want the Iranian regime to be less bellicose, aim a gun at its temple. Better yet, threaten the survival of the regime itself. You don’t need aircraft carriers or airplanes or even special forces. All you need is the will to support a free Iran.

Of all the many worries that torment the dreams of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, the greatest is the menace represented by the Iranian people, who detest the regime. In a remarkable open letter to President Barack Obama, Khamenei’s nephew, Mahmoud Moradkhani, carefully made the point:

There are powerful and pro-active forces in the Iranian opposition and if the censorship of the media that are supporting the Islamic regime of Iran were to be removed, the opposition can easily organize and assist the powerful civil disobedience of Iranian people.

We can see the regime’s recognition of the threat to its power in the behavior of the Islamic Republic’s leaders. On the one hand, the record level of repression, even more brutal under the false reformer Hassan Rouhani than it was under the monster Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which bespeaks Khamenei’s fear that he is losing control. On the other hand, the refusal of Khamenei and his henchmen to bring formal charges against the now-iconic leaders of the antiregime, Green Movement chiefs Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and the Ayatollah Hossein-Kazamani Boroujerdi. The first two are under house arrest, while the dissident clergyman suffers under pitiable conditions in prison. All three are too popular for prosecution, as various regime leaders have admitted on several occasions.

This is a particularly fractious moment for the regime, as the factions jockey for position in post-Khamenei Iran. A senior figure in the Revolutionary Guard Corps had to arrange an interview in which he denied that he and his henchmen were organizing a coup. General Hassan Rastegarpnah said the IRGC wasn’t tempted to take drastic action to consolidate its power, since “it has its own place in the government and does not need to overthrow [it].”

That a senior military officer should be required to issue such a statement says a lot about the internal turmoil. And there’s lots more. The country is a shambles.

The fear of popular anger is catalyzed by abundant evidence of regime incompetence and corruption. Food is in increasingly short supply, primarily because there is no money to pay for imports (for all practical intents, Iranian banks are broke; insofar as money is available, it is controlled by Khamenei personally and by the IRGC), and government subsidies have been thrown into question for the new fiscal year. Those funds go mostly for war, not the people’s well being.

There’s little hope that Iranian agriculture will improve, as the country is in the grips of a critical water shortage, and the regime’s response has made it worse. Iran is an arid country, and the regime has built dams all over the place, with disastrous results, according to an Australian report that cites an Iranian government document:

The impact of these dams in Iran has been significant and negative; they have produced significant shrinkage in water bodies and reductions in downstream access to water. Three of Iran’s lakes, Lake Maharlu, Lake Bakhtegan and Lake Parishan, have dried and turned to desert. . . . Once the second largest lake in Iran, Lake Bakhtegan has dried completely. . . . Lake Urmia meanwhile is following a similar path, with a 70 percent surface water reduction over the last 20 years.

Students of the Soviet Union’s ecological policies will recognize this as a replay of the destruction of the Aral Sea. Tyranny is deadly for freshwater lakes, it seems.

The impending doom of Lake Urmia, the biggest fresh-water lake in the region, has provoked periodic demonstrations by the locals, and they join other protesters in industry and education who are enraged at being stiffed by the government.

A few weeks ago, the national teachers’ organization went on strike, demanding to be paid and protesting the relentless Islamization of the official textbooks. The government responded with the usual method—throwing the head of the group into prison—but the intimidation doesn’t seem to be working: The teachers have announced a national strike for the end of the first week in May.

No wonder, then, that the regime’s key security forces, the IRGC and the Basij, have stepped up preparations for urban conflict. In March, 5,000 Basijis held training exercises throughout the country, and this month a mixed force of 12,000 Basijis and IRGC troops held exercises in Tehran.

If you made a list of social, economic, and political conditions that undermine the legitimacy of a regime, you’d likely conclude that Iran is in what we used to call a “prerevolutionary situation.”

Khamenei and Rouhani certainly agree. I don’t read the analyses of our intelligence community, but I doubt those worthies would be inclined to paint such an explosive picture of Iran, even if they believed it. Which they probably don’t. Remember that Reagan was told that Gorbachev was firmly in control on the eve of the Soviet Union’s implosion, and the CIA scoffed at the very idea of an organized uprising in Iran before the massive demonstrations of 2009. In any event, they know that Obama doesn’t want to hear that his would-be partner is going wobbly.

Nonetheless, wobbly it is, and Western support for regime change—which has long been the most sensible and honorable Iran policy—once again beckons to anyone who wants to take a giant step toward a rational policy. Those millions of angry Iranians about whom Khamenei’s nephew writes are ready to go, waiting for a bit of support from us and the rest of the free world. It would be nice to hear some of the presidential candidates say so.

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.

Ilan Berman

To hear the Obama administration tell it, the framework nuclear accord agreed to between the P5+1 powers and Iran earlier this month in Lausanne, Switzerland is a good deal. The White House has pledged that the final agreement to be concluded in coming weeks, backed up by a robust monitoring and verification regime, will block Iran’s pathways to a bomb for at least a decade—and perhaps considerably longer.

But is this feasible? The Iranians, at least, appear to have other ideas. Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has declared that he will not sign off on a final nuclear agreement unless the country’s military facilities are declared off limits to Western oversight. Similarly, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, publicly equated the idea of opening up the Islamic Republic’s military facilities to outside inspectors to a “national humiliation.”

That’s significant, given that a number of key Iranian nuclear sites—including Parchin in northwest Iran and the controversial uranium enrichment facility at Fordo—are known to be co-located with the regime’s military installations. Any inspection and verification regime that fails to gain access to these facilities would by definition be woefully inadequate. Yet, given the track record of the nuclear talks so far, there’s little reason to believe that the Western powers will stand firm on this demand in the face of continued Iranian intransigence.

Nor should we feel comfortable relying on traditional intelligence methods to gain an adequate picture of the scope and breadth of Iran’s nuclear activities. For more than half a century, the U.S. intelligence community has failed repeatedly to predict the emergence of nuclear capabilities among our adversaries.

The failures date all the way back to August of 1949, when the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Reports and Estimates was caught by surprise by the Soviet Union’s maiden test of a nuclear device, code-named “RDS-1,” on the territory of what is today the Republic of Kazakhstan. The situation was repeated a decade-and-a-half later, when, in October of 1964, the People’s Republic of China carried out its first atomic trial at the Lop Nur test range in Inner Mongolia, demonstrating a capability that conventional wisdom in Washington held Beijing did not yet possess.

The pattern repeated itself again and again in the decades that followed. India’s May 1974 nuclear test at Pokhran was not accurately predicted by the U.S. intelligence community, despite extensive American monitoring of India’s nuclear-related activities in preceding years. Neither was its testing of five nuclear weapons in May of 1998, a misstep that irate lawmakers on Capitol Hill termed at the time to be the greatest failure of U.S. intelligence “in a decade.” (U.S. intelligence agencies, having been put on notice, did a better job of tracking the subsequent tit-for-tat detonations of five nuclear carried out by India’s regional rival, Pakistan). And in October of 2006, when North Korea detonated its first nuclear device at its Punggye-ri Test Site, near southern China, it came as a shock to many in Washington, who—as a result of flawed intelligence estimates—lacked clarity about the DPRK’s true nuclear potential.

There is no reason to believe that things will be any different in the case of Iran. If the past experiences of the nuclear age are any indication, the Obama administration’s declarations of faith in our ability to accurately forecast Iran’s nuclear status—and to do so, in all likelihood, without complete and unfettered access to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities—aren’t just bad policy. They are also a dangerous misreading of history.

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.

by Clifford D. May

FDD President Clifford May discusses Iran’s naval confrontation and nuclear negotiations.

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.

by The Editors

The interim agreement supposedly reached at the beginning of April gave the Iranians a great deal of concessions the U.S. had suggested were off the table. But it left a number of issues still unresolved. There was no public agreed-upon text, just fact sheets released by the respective sides, and the gaps between them are substantial.

It was unclear, for instance, whether the signing of a final deal will trigger immediate, and maybe even complete, sanctions relief. Iran said that was the plan, while the White House said sanctions should be phased out. But then, last Friday, President Obama suggested the U.S. would allow substantial immediate sanctions relief — some $50 billion worth, potentially — on the day a final deal is signed. In return, he insisted, the sanctions will be “snapped back” if Iran is caught cheating. Yet that is hardly sufficient: Russia and China are known to be wary of a snapback policy, and a punishing sanctions regime can’t be reconstructed quickly or unilaterally.

Meanwhile, the White House has said that inspectors will have unrestricted access to any sites where there is suspicious activity, but an Iranian general remarked this past weekend that no inspections will be allowed at any military base.

President Obama has a proven track record of resolving such disputes — he just gives the Iranians what they want. It is still no sure thing that the remaining gaps between our negotiators and the Iranians can be bridged, but it falls to Congress to ensure that President Obama can’t resolve them as he is accustomed. Congressmen of both parties remain skeptical of the outlined deal. The confusion over what the interim outline meant has only strengthened the case that the White House cannot be trusted with reaching a final deal, and more concessions should further worry hawkish Democrats.

So what can be done? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has unanimously passed a bill sponsored by Senator Bob Corker that would give Congress a period in which to approve or disapprove of a final deal.

It is a weak measure — the president retains plenty of flexibility and rejecting a deal will require two-thirds of both houses — but it is better than nothing. President Obama had clearly hoped never to have to send the text of an agreement to Congress. Now, even though it looks unlikely that 13 Democrat senators will vote against a final deal, Obama does have to send it to Congress, making the terms public. That is something.

But Congress should do more — indeed, all it can to signal its disapproval of the ongoing Obama concessions and to destabilize the agreement before it can be finalized. Opponents of the drift of the negotiations should push, again, for a measure along the lines of the Kirk-Menendez legislation, which would reinstate sanctions if talks drag on. They should pass resolutions making it clear that a congressional majority disapproves of a deal that lifts sanctions immediately, or a deal that doesn’t allow for any-time, anywhere inspections, or a deal that doesn’t guarantee that enriched uranium is shipped out of Iran (which is yet another point of confusion). The time for all of this is now.

If the negotiations with Iran were not all along a dangerous farce, President Obama’s desperation for a deal has made them so. Only an agreement that dismantles Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, pushing it back from being a threshold nuclear state, is worth making. That hasn’t been on the table for months now. Congress should make clear its opposition to a deal where the terms are far, far worse, and do all it can to keep it from happening.

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.

by Adelle Nazarian

Breitbart’s Adelle Nazarian had the opportunity to speak with renowned Middle East expert and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Dr. Michael Rubin recently. Dr. Rubin provided his analysis on U.S.-Iran relations under the Obama Administration and provided a look into the future through the periscope of the past.

He is the author of Dancing With the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes and a former Pentagon official. With a June 30 deadline for a final nuclear deal swiftly approaching, Rubin draws upon heightened concerns surrounding President Obama’s destructive handling of this most pivotal moment in international relations and national security with regard to U.S.-Iranian relations.

BREITBART NEWS: Do you think President Obama, John Kerry and the American team of negotiators were aware of how the Iranians operated?

RUBIN: No. I honestly think they were in a bubble and they were also blinded by their own personal ambition. Obama is arrogant. He thinks that all the problems with diplomacy were because of his predecessors rather than with his adversaries. Therefore, he has repeatedly gotten us into trouble with dictators and rogue regimes like Russia ad now Iran. They play the United States.

Obama is willfully naive and he doesn’t understand that evil exists in the world and that it wants to destroy the United States.

BREITBART: Considering he has former NIAC employee Sahar Nowrouzzadeh and Valerie Jarrett advising him, wouldn’t you think he would be better prepared to deal with the Iranians?

RUBIN: He surrounds himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear. But a low-level and a c-staffer is hardly someone that you could say advises the president accurately.

BREITBART: Many in the media and on the left have suggested that the conservatives see war and bombing Iran as the only option should the nuclear deal fail. What viable alternatives could you offer?

RUBIN: That’s just such nonsense and what we see is that, when it comes to diplomacy, the only people who you can trust are the conservatives. President Obama likes to credit sanctions — both United Nations sanctions and otherwise — despite the fact that he was consistently against sanctions whenever he had the chance. He’s too busy making John Bolton into a straw cartoon to recognize that John Bolton was the man who crafted the Untied Nations sanctions.

And whether it was John Bolton as under secretary of state or ambassador to the United Nations, it was Bolton who rallied the international community and gave us unanimous or near-unanimous U.N. security council resolutions that ultimately brought Iran to its knees.

BREITBART: So what do we do with Iran?

RUBIN: Economic coercion. When Hillary Clinton came into office as secretary or state she almost lectured Republicans and said, if you’re not going to talk to your enemies, who are you going to talk to? And she cited Ronald Reagan who sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. But she didn’t understand the importance of leverage to Reagan.

Reagan had prefaced his diplomacy with Gorbachev with a military buildup in order to negotiate from a position of strength. In order to bring Iran to the table and have them adhere to their international agreements, you have to maximize your leverage. Obama agreed to give Iran $11.9 billion in sanctions relief in unfrozen assets just to sit at the table and talk to the American team.

To put this in perspective, the annual, official budget of the Revolutionary Guard is about $5.6 billion. In order to get the Iranians to sit at the table, Obama gave Iran enough money to pay the salaries of a group responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans for two years.

BREITBART: It has been suggested that up to $150 billion in frozen Iranian assets could be released to the Iranian regime. Would this guarantee the regime’s longevity?

RUBIN: Yes. The Soviet Union ultimately fell due to an unstable economy. The analogy would be that, instead of bankrupting the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan decided to flood them with cash. What Obama is doing with the potential release of those funds, is taking a hateful, racist regime and throwing it a lifeline.

The IRGC dominates the Iranian economy. The revolutionary foundation and what’s called Khatam al-Andia control perhaps 40% of Iran’s economy, including anything involved with import and export. So rather than allowing reformism to flourish inside of Iran, the net impact of the rush to do business inside Iran and to bring Iranian oil into the market will be to empower the Revolutionary Guard even further. It would allow them to consolidate control.

The IRGC is involved with the military aspects of the nuclear program, which of course aren’t included in this framework yet. And they are also in charge of export of revolution. And we see that this isn’t mere rhetoric when we look at what is happening in Gaza and Yemen. Simply put, if Obama and his national security team were to sit down and ask themselves what a strategy to enable Iran’s destabilizing influence in the Middle East would look like– I hate to say it, but it would not look any different from the strategy they are now pursuing.

BREITBART: What are the Iranian mullah’s plans in the region? Now that not only Tehran but Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and even Sanaa are under their control, what is their ultimate goal?

RUBIN: This is something else Obama simply doesn’t understand or he ignores. Iran is not a status quo state. It is an ideological revisionist state. Its goal is to export revolution. Ordinary Iranians may not subscribe to this, but in any dictatorship it’s the guys with the guns that matter. And in this case, the Iranians used to describe themselves as a regional power. Then about four years ago, they began describing themselves as a pan-regional power, meaning the Persian Gulf and the North Indian Ocean.

Well, this past November they started talking about themselves in terms of having strategic boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aden. And again, we see that this wasn’t mere rhetoric when we look at the weapons shipments to Syria and to Hamas. And when we look at Iranian activities in Yemen.

BREITBART: Is it then safe to say that Iran’s goal is not very different from the goal of ISIS, which is to establish an Islamic Caliphate and regional hegemony, except that they have two different fundamental Islamic ideologies?

RUBIN: Correct.

BREITBART: What do you think will happen when Khamenei passes away?

RUBIN: We only have one example of this happening before and that was when Khomeini died. On paper, you have an 86-member particle body called the Assembly of Experts which decides who replaces him. In reality, from 1989 we know thats not the case. What happened in 1989 with Khomeini’s death was that all the power centers got together and basically came to a consensus. That consensus was Khamenei.

Now who that consensus figure will be, I don’t know. But it is possible to have a council. And that is the Iranian way of kicking the can down the road. But this is what concerns me; and this is also where Obama’s outreach is so short-sighted. Any strategy which empowers the Revolutionary Guard gives the Revolutionary Guard additional powers to impose its will as the next choice. After all, if they’re powerful, they’re not going to subordinate themselves to someone with whom they disagree.

The important thing about this is you have a cycle of radicalization in which the supreme leader picks the most radical, ideologically pure officers to staff the highest levels of the Revolutionary Guard. Those same officers then have predominant influence in choosing the next supreme leader. And so President Obama is not only pursuing a deal which is bad for the United States and Iranians in the short term. He is pursuing a deal which is going to perpetuate this radicalization for at least another generation or two.

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.

by Clifford May

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s call for a “Muslim Reformation”

By now, you should be familiar with the name Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You should know at least this much about her: She is brilliant, beautiful, black and she has been banned near Boston.

You might also have learned that she was born in Somali and raised as a devout Muslim in Africa and Saudi Arabia. While a teenager, she joined the Muslim Brotherhood, “believed in jihad” and was “ready for holy war.” But in 1992, to avoid an arranged marriage, she sought asylum in the Netherlands where she eked out a living cleaning factories, learned Dutch, went to college, entered politics and won a seat in the Dutch Parliament.

And then: She wrote a documentary about the plight of women under Islam. Soon after, the producer, Theo van Gogh, was murdered in the street by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim who considered it his duty to punish those who criticize his religion. He left a note – pinned with a knife to his victim’s body – threatening Ms. Hirsi Ali’s life as well.

She moved to the United States where, one hopes, she is in less danger. Nevertheless, those who believe freedom of speech does not apply when it comes to Islam are determined to silence her. One example: A year ago this month, officials as Brandeis University, in suburban Boston, withdrew their offer of an honorary degree and an invitation to address their graduating class. They were pressured by an on-line petition — organized by CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and circulated by some students and faculty — accusing her of “hate speech” and “Islamophobia.” She responded: “What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming.”

Nevertheless, she has refused to be intimidated or muzzled. In her new book, “Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now,” she argues that Muslims fall into three categories: a small but significant number who believe they are divinely commanded to wage war against non-Muslims; a large majority who are peaceable but unwilling to stand up to the extremists or repudiate “the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts;” and the dissidents, a small group of individuals who risk everything by denouncing extremists and advocating an interpretation of Islam that unequivocally embraces freedom and peaceful coexistence.

She goes on to propose “five theses” that, she says, Muslims must adopt if there is to be a “Muslim Reformation;”  if Islam is to become compatible with modernity, rather than the antidote for modernity; if Muslims are to live in and be productive members of liberal democratic societies, rather than helping to destroy those societies.

Among her theses: that sharia, Islamic law, be regarded as “subordinate to the laws of the nation-states where Muslims live,” and that “the concept of jihad as a literal call to arms against non-Muslims and those Muslims they deem apostates or heretics” be disavowed. A Muslim who rejects those formulations, she argues, must be seen as contributing to the problem, not the solution.

Mr. Hirsi Ali believes “the Muslim Reformation has begun.” I hope she’s right but I don’t see much evidence.  Such a movement requires a leader, a Martin Luther, if you will. She cannot be that leader, as she understands, because she is no longer among the believers.

Here in North America, such courageous reformers as Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, and Irshad Manji, author of “The Trouble with Islam Today,” refuse to be suppressed by threats and fatwas. But the audiences most receptive to their messages are not comprised of Muslims.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has long promoted a reading of Islam that eschews belligerence. The same is true of Moroccan King Mohammed VI. But beyond the borders of the lands they rule their followers are few.

In January, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for reform, telling clerics at Al-Azhar University, the great center of Islamic scholarship: “We have reached the point that Muslims have antagonized the entire world. Is it conceivable that 1.6 billion [Muslims] want to kill the rest of the world’s population of 7 billion, so that Muslims prosper?” But as a tough authoritarian, Gen. Sisi is an unlikely champion of a kinder, gentle Islam.

For now, it is the jihadis who are on the march — literally, in such lands as Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya and Gaza. And then there is the Islamic Republic of Iran which is ruled by followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic Revolution of 1979. For him, the idea of Islam as “a religion of peace” was ludicrous. “Those who study jihad,” he proclaimed, “will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.”

If President Obama and Secretary Kerry were to read Ms. Hirsi Ali’s book, they might begin to understand what those committed to revolutionary, supremacist Islam believe, and to what lengths they will go in pursuit of their beliefs. Lacking such understanding, they are bound to be unrealistic about what diplomacy, “outreach” and invitations to join the “international community” can achieve.  Lacking such understanding, the American side will continue to be bested in negotiations, seeking common ground while the Iranian side wages war by other means.

The West, Ms. Hirsi Ali writes, is enmeshed in “an ideological conflict” that cannot be won “until the concept of jihad has itself been decommissioned.” By now, perhaps you have perceived this: If American and Western leaders continue to refuse to comprehend who is fighting us and why, the consequences will be dire.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Find him on Twitter @CliffordDMay

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.

Center for Secure Policy

Secure Freedom President Frank Gaffney joins Judge Jeanine Pirro to discuss electromagnetic pulse threats to our infrastructure, especially in light of U.S. Aerospace Command’s return to a Cold War-era mountain bunker

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by Bill Hoffmann

Russia’s lifting its ban on supplying Iran with S-300 air defense missile systems is a direct result of the Obama administration’s nuclear arms deal with the Middle East nation, says Pete Hoekstra, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

“This was a deal originally Russia had made back in 2007 with Iran to provide them with sophisticated anti-aircraft equipment,” Hoekstra said Monday on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

“But Russia, because of pressure from the United States and Israel, backed off and really, for almost seven years now, has put that deal on ice.
“Now that they sense a vacuum and a lack of American leadership and they sense that America wants a deal so badly they’re moving into that vacuum and have now announced they’re going to finalize this agreement with Iran and ship this equipment.”

Russia is also dealing with other Middle East nations as a result of the U.S.-Iran deal, said Hoekstra, a former Michigan congressman.

“They’re also moving into a vacuum in Egypt, where the U.S. has been very reluctant to ship military equipment to Egypt, and Russia has negotiated and continues to negotiate more arms deals with Egypt,” he said.

Hoekstra complimented the growing list of Republicans who have declared their candidacies for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination: Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas.

“The Republicans are actually developing a very exciting feel with Rubio, Paul, Cruz and the other dozen or so other candidates that are going to come in, all of whom have a track record of success,” he said.

“They have an impressive set of credentials individually, and what we have to do and what I hope happens is that they focus on a positive message, an alternative to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.”

He warned Republican candidates against spending the next year bashing each other.

“They do have differences, but the bottom line is they have a lot more in common than what separates them. That’s what we have to remember and that’s what we need to focus on,” Hoekstra said.

All views are attributable only to the author. We encourage discussion of the viewpoints expressed by the author.