Saturday Politics : Trump Fleshes Out Cabinet, Talks to Foreign Leaders, and Iran Decisions Loom

Saturday Politics is sometimes about transition. • The Trump transition rolls on, despite all the Progressive MSM noise about its 'chaos." • • • The Independnet Journal Review reported on Wednesday that Donald Trump held a "Surprise Private Meeting With Ted Cruz" at Trump Tower on Tuesday. There was much speculation following news of the meeting. Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told Independent Journal Review in a statement that Trump and Cruz “discussed how he can best help the new administration advance conservative policies through the Senate. Senator Cruz is pleased to have the opportunity to meet with President-Elect Trump in New York today. The American people issued a clear mandate to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington, repeal Obamacare and start over with cost-effective, patient-centered health care reform, appoint constitutionalist judges to the Supreme Court, secure our southern border and enforce immigration laws, and enact policies that will create more good-paying jobs for the American people. On behalf of the 27 million Texans he represents, the Senator looks forward to assisting the Trump Administration in achieving these objectives.” • New reports surfaced later suggesting that Trump is considering nominating Cruz for Attorney General, the top law enforcement official in the United States -- that didn't work out because Friday, Trump offered the Attorney General post to Senator Jeff Sessions. But, despite Trump and Cruz's battles during the primaries and at the GOP National Convention, Cruz has since vowed to fight for policy victories for conservatives under a Trump administration. • One can only hope that Trump nominates Cruz for the Supreme Court opening. Clearly, Ted Cruz is the best qualified conservative to replace the simply irreplaceable Justice Antonin Scalia. • • • TRUMP HAS IRAN DECISIONS TO MAKE. • Reuters reported on Thursday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran is repeatedly violating the 130-ton limit of heavy water it uses to moderate nuclear fission in its reactors and has not made the excess available on the open market as the Iran nuclear deal calls for. American Thinker's Rick Moran explains that the limit on heavy water is designed : "to make it difficult for Iran to use its nuclear reactors to manufacture plutonium -- a material used in nuclear weapons. With limits placed on Iran's ability to enrich uranium, it is critical to keeping Iran from making a plutonium bomb that there be strict controls on how much heavy water they can manufacture. That Iran is repeatedly violating these limits is worrying. With Donald Trump's election victory, Iran can see the writing on the wall. Trump has promised to strictly enforce the deal or scrap it. Under President Obama, Iran has been used to getting its way with interpreting some of the finer points of the nuclear deal in their favor. They have also been successful in forcing the US and western powers in keeping secret several 'side deals' that also favor Iran." • According to Reuters, officials from the five other countries that signed the deal, in addition to the United States, have expressed frustration over the breach and said the limit should be seen as firm. Iran's ignoring the 130-ton threshold also raises questions about how Trump -- who has strongly criticized the deal and said he will "police that contract so tough they (the Iranians) don't have a chance" -- would handle any similar case once he takes office. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in the text of a speech to his agency's Board of Governors : "It is important that such situations should be avoided in future in order to maintain international confidence in the implementation of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]." Amano has expressed "concerns" to Iran over its stock of heavy water, a material used as a moderator in reactors like Iran's unfinished one at Arak, which had its core removed and made unusable under the deal. Rather than setting a strict limit on heavy water as it does for enriched uranium, the deal estimates Iran's needs to be 130 tonnes and says any amount beyond its needs "will be made available for export to the international market." • What is Trump's possible action? -- a laborious many-month process by which the US could challenge Iran for its cheating by convening a panel to examine whether Iran is in compliance or not -- a peocess that would almost surely end with Russia, China, and even the European powers refusing to cause the sanctions to "snap back" as President Obama ridiculously claimed in selling the deal to the US Congress. So, says Reuters : "Trump has a decision to make and he will probably have to make it very early in his term; scuttle the deal unilaterally or go through the motions of convening a compliance panel. Iran may be setting up the US to take the blame for the collapse of the deal -- an agreement most of their government opposed from the start. But Iran has been taking advantage of President Obama's desperate desire to maintain his biggest foreign policy triumph at any cost -- a reality that will probably be lost or deliberately ignored by the UN who no doubt would heavily criticize Trump for abrogating a deal that Iran has repeatedly violated." • In an indication that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is lining up his chamber to support President-Elect Trump, TheHill reports that McConnell said Wednesday the Senate will vote to extend sanctions on Iran in the lameduck session before the end of the year. McConnell told reporters : "Yes, we are going to pass that [the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA)]. We're going to take up the House bill. I think it's already held at the desk. And we're going to pass it." The House voted Tuesday 419-1 to extend the ISA, currently set to expire at the end of 2016, for 10 years. Senate Republicans had initially hoped to pass an ISA extension as part of a broader bill of new sanctions on Iran amid lingering fallout over the Iran nuclear agreement and a string of Iranian ballistic missile tests. A proposal backed by Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as GOP Senators Tom Cotton, Dan Sullivan, and Marco Rubio, and Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Bob Menendez -- who both opposed the nuclear agreement --would extend the sanctions for 10 years. It would also include mandatory new sanctions and limitations on a President's ability to use national security waivers. But that proposal had pushback from some Democrats, and Corker acknowledged on Wednesday that the Senate would pass a "clean" 10-year extension. Top Democrats, including outgoing Minority Leader Harry Reid and incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, backed a 10-year extension of the law earlier this year. The White House has tussled with lawmakers over the timing of an extension, but has not made a veto threat. Asked about the law last month, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said : "I won’t prejudge at this point about whether or not the President would sign that bill. I would just make the point that the kind of authority that Congress is saying the executive branch should have to confront Iran is the kind of executive authority that we already have and have already used to confront Iran for their support for terrorism, for their ballistic missile program, and for frequent and repeated violations of basic human rights." • Question : if the WH already has such authority to constrain Iran, why has President Obama not used it to stop Iran's heavy water violations? The Iran ball is now in the Trump court. • • • THE TRANSITION TEAM MOVES FORWARD AS TRUMP MEETS JAPANESE PM ABE. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first foreign head of state to meet personally with President-Elect Donald Trump, although Trump has spoken by phone with more than 30 other heads of state. Abe and Trump met for 90 minutes Thursday at Trump Tower in New York City. Afterward, Abe told reporters that Donald Trump is a leader he has "great confidence" in : "I do believe that without confidence between the two nations, the alliance would never function in the future. At the outcome of today's discussion, I am confident that Mr. Trump is a leader with whom I can have great confidence in." Trump spent the day in Trump Tower in meetings with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, among others. • All this went on while President Obama was lecturing Europe on the "harsh" times ahead under a Trump presidency, telling German reporters that he hopes Trump would not engage in "realpolitik" and in taking easy decisions. Even for the vindictive and selfish Barack Obama, it was a display of unpresidential spite against the man who will follow him as President in two months, raising once again the question whether Obama really has America's best interests at heart when giving a very wrong impression of Donald Trump to Europeans. But, we Americans have become used to Obama's self-serving and narrowminded views on everyone but himself. • • • Dear readers, while the MSM whines about not being invited to dinner, and President Obama does his worst to undermine the future of US-European relations, President-Elect Trump is wrestling with the serious matter of the catastrophic Iran nuclear deal that Obama left behind as his disastrous presidency comes to a close. Many other pressing issues that need a Trump policy are being discussed and decisions made, since many executive departments have now been contacted so that the various Trump transition groups can begin discussions inside departments in order to complete the transition before January 20. Even to the lackadaisical observer of President Obama and his lackeys in the mainsteam media, the most obvious conclusion is that while Obama tries to be a one-man wrecking ball for the nascent Trump presidency, "journalists" are not providing either in-depth reporting about the great issues confronting Trump and the world or offering any suggestions about solutions. They are not journalists in any meaningful sense, but cheerleaders for the Democrat-Progressive opinion that the only thing that matters is to bring down Donald Trump.