AND IN THE REAL WORLD – AT 10:15 A.M. ET:   When we focus on the great game of American politics, we tend to take our eyes off the world of danger that awaits us.  From Fox: 

Iran’s regime has not stopped its drive to secure technology and scientific knowledge to produce weapons of mass destruction, the intelligence agency of the German state of Baden-Württemberg disclosed in a report last week.

“Iran continued to undertake, as did Pakistan and Syria, efforts to obtain goods and know-how to be used for the development of weapons of mass destruction and to optimize corresponding missile delivery systems,” said the intelligence document, reviewed by FoxNews.com.

The intelligence agency — the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution — monitors threats to Germany’s democratic, constitutional order and is the equivalent of the FBI, operating at the state level. The counterespionage officials wrote that Iran’s illicit activities in Germany are concentrated in the classic sectors for espionage: politics, the economy, science, the military and the armaments industry.

“The observation and combating of proliferation efforts of ... Iran was also an important task of counterintelligence" in 2017 in Baden-Württemberg, said the report.

Scores of specialized technology and engineering companies are located in the southwestern state.

FoxNews.com reported in February that Iranian businessmen purchased material from the Krempel firm in Baden-Württemberg that later turned up in chemical rockets used to gas Syrian civilians in January and February.

COMMENT:  Leave it to the modern, multicultural Europeans to sell to the Iranians the technology that will later be used against Europe itself.  It reminds me of how we, in America, sold scrap iron to Japan just before the outbreak of World War II.  It came back to us as bullets and shells.

It also reminds us of Churchill's warning against those who will feed the alligator, in the hope that they'll be eaten last.

President Trump, unlike the last president, takes the threat seriously.  His great task in dealing with Iran will be in trying to convince the Europeans, who are doing great business in Tehran, to go along with his efforts.  I can only be marginally hopeful.  Europe is Europe, and too many Europeans would rather see their civilization die than miss the next contract.

June 5, 2018