The World and Everything in It: April 24, 2025

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

As states move to safeguard access to IVF, Christians ask: Is there an ethical way to do in vitro fertilization?

ANDERSON: I think they have heightened responsibility, because they know that … some number of embryos are going to be dead at the end of this process.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And, the meaning of the decision in the UK defining the word “woman.”

Also, we’ll hear from two rabbis who celebrate Passover very differently. One is calling on Christians to rediscover the Jewishness of Jesus.

BORTZ: The church is following Yeshua. But they don't know Him as Yeshua, they know Him as Jesus. And they always refer to those terms. They don't want to use the real word.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says a nuclear deal with Iran, is no deal at all.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, April 24th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Russia-Ukraine update » President Trump says ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine aren't moving fast enough. And he again showed frustration with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

TRUMP: I think we have a deal with Russia. We have to get a deal with Zelenskyy. And I hope that Zelenskyy — I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelenskyy, but so far it's been harder. But that's okay. That's alright.

The latest U.S.-drafted ceasefire proposal would reportedly … allow Russia to keep much of the Ukrainian land it currently occupies. It is also said to suggest that the United States would recognize Russia's long-contested claim to Crimea.

Zelenskyy reportedly called those terms unacceptable.

President Trump responded with a social media post … accusing Zelenskyy of holding up the peace process.

China trade war » Meantime, President Trump says he’s confident that the U.S. will reach a new trade deal with China. But the White House says it has no plans to reduce tariffs on Chinese goods unilaterally, without concessions from Beijing. As to whether he would lower the tariffs, Trump said last night …

TRUMP: That’s up to them.

That followed a Wall Street Journal report … stating that the administration was considering lowering tariffs on Chinese imports … which now add up to almost 150% … by as much as half.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the tariffs give the president bargaining power.

LEAVITT:  Many on both sides of the aisle have pledge to do what's right for the American worker and our manufacturing industry. But this is the first president to actually use the leverage of the United States to bring people to the table.

She adds that many countries are coming to the table. But so far … not China.

NYC migrant gang members » New York Mayor Eric Adams and U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan this week announced that 27 alleged members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua … are facing new federal charges.

Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino:

PALADINO:  This is something that, uh, Eric Adams has wanted to do for the last two years, but he's felt somewhat imprisoned and handcuffed by the Democratic party.

Mayor Adams was elected as a Democrat … but is running for reelection as an independent.

The mayor's administration also announced it would allow ICE inside the Rikers Island jail complex. But a judge temporarily paused the plan Monday after the New York City Council sued to block the move.

New Jersey wildfire » A fast-moving wildfire engulfing part of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens is expected to continue growing before forecast rain later this week.

Division Forest Fire Warden Trevor Raynor said the fire could burn for days … potentially spawning new fires.

RAYNOR: These fires, with the dryness and the winds, they throw spot first and embers, little tiny firebrands up to mile out in front of that main fire, so even if we’re successful in stopping the fire on this barrier, control line, there are still embers that rain down.

As of last night, the blaze was 40% contained.

The fire has forced some 5,000 residents to evacuate … though many have been able to return home.

Baby bonus » The White House is considering ways to persuade women … to have more babies.

The CDC this week reported that roughly 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. last year. That’s less than 1% increase from 2023 in the number of babies born … when the rate hit an all-time low.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says the Republicans support the effort to bring more babies into the world

JOHNSON:  We support all children. We love all life. That's what we've always been about. It's actually in our platform.

Among the proposals: Giving mothers a $5,000 cash gift when they give birth.

President Trump said this week that that “sounds like a good idea” to him.

Birth rates in the U.S. are well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.

Pope latest » Catholics are paying tribute to the late Pope Francis this week. His body lies in state at St. Peter’s Basilica today … for the second of three days of public mourning.

VISITOR:  He taught us a lesson and we'll just be very grateful for what he did for the church, for us, for the poor people. He’s just one of us and may he rest in peace.

The viewing is largely for ordinary Catholics to grieve the 88-year-old pope. Francis died on Monday after suffering a stroke … on the heels of a long hospitalization for double pneumonia.

The public mourning period will end at 7 p.m. tomorrow local time.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: considering one part of the IVF debate often overlooked by politicians. Plus, a victory for women in the United Kingdom.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 24th of April.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up on The World and Everything in It: the ethics of IVF.

This spring, lawmakers in Georgia and Tennessee passed bills to protect in vitro fertilization in law with overwhelming support. Even the few dissenters focused mostly on embryo selection and disposal.

BROWN: But even the conservative legislators seemed to overlook the deeper debate, especially among Christians: can IVF be done in a way that honors the sanctity of life from the very beginning?

WORLD’s Leah Savas introduces some of the arguments in this debate.

LEAH SAVAS: Dr. John Gordon is a Christian IVF provider in Knoxville, Tennessee. His colleagues in the industry tell him patients aren’t worried about ending up with more embryos than they can use. But Gordon regularly hears those concerns. 

JOHN GORDON: I see so many patients who’ve asked their doctor, ‘Hey, I just don’t want to fertilize every egg. Can we limit how many eggs we fertilize?’ And they’re told, ‘No, you can’t.’

Gordon tells them they can.

For many IVF patients and providers, the more embryos the better. Each one increases the chances of bringing home a newborn. But Gordon and many of his patients are against discarding extra embryos because they see them as human life. He offers IVF protocols that stimulate the woman’s body to produce fewer eggs than in standard IVF, limiting the number of possible embryos.

One of the protocols is called natural cycle IVF. 

GORDON: For a lot of the patients who do natural cycle, their concern is they don't want to do any embryo freezing at all. 

Others are concerned about ending up with more embryos than they can realistically give a chance at birth.

But even Gordon’s careful approach can’t eliminate the loss of life inherent to IVF. On average, 50-70% of IVF-inseminated eggs stop growing in the days following successful fertilization. Gordon doesn’t see these losses the same as intentionally destroying an embryo.

GORDON: If you have a blastula-stage embryo, and you decide that you're not going to use it anymore, and you take it out and discard it from the freezer. Well, you've killed that embryo. But in this case, just because an egg fertilizes and doesn't continue to grow, I don't think that counts as embryos that are destroyed or lives that are lost through IVF.

Even in natural conception, an unknown number of embryos fail to implant or miscarry. Gordon sees natural IVF losses as comparable.

Christian IVF mother Sheila Brannan has a similar view. The two IVF cycles that resulted in her two daughters produced seven and five eggs each. She and her husband had them all fertilized. Both times, all but one stopped growing.

SHEILA BRANNAN: Even to this day, I cry for them. And I still think about them every day. Those embryos, to me, are life, and if they didn't grow or whatever the case may be, they still mean something to God and to me.

But Brannan doesn’t blame IVF for those lost lives. 

BRANNAN: Why don't we look at it that God had a plan for those eggs that he didn't want them to grow. And yes I think believe they should be considered embryos, but I don't think that they are a victim of IVF. I just believe that that's God's plan.

But can we draw a one-to-one comparison between the losses of embryos in vivo—meaning, in the human body—and embryos in vitro—meaning, in glass? 

PETRA WALE: We know that it's just no comparison between in vivo and in vitro.

That’s Petra Wale, president of the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand. She described the conditions tiny embryonic humans experience within their mothers’ bodies. It’s dark. The temperature is just right. So are the oxygen levels. 

WALE: The embryo keeps moving. It gets released from the from the ovary and into the fallopian tube, and it keeps moving down and then settles in in the uterus. So it's moving into new nutrients and new environments and it’s moving away from what was there before it.

Meanwhile, new embryos in a lab mostly stay put in a petri dish. Atmospheric oxygen levels, light, the wrong temperature, certain compounds in the laboratory dishes, and the presence of perfumes and deodorants in the lab can all harm their growth. Even the act of transferring the microscopic embryos in pipettes can put physical stress on them when done too vigorously or too frequently.

Wale said the industry has gotten good at replicating the conditions in vivo. But there are still limits to what the industry knows and how closely science can copy the natural process. When an embryo stops growing, she says.

WALE: There's really no way of knowing if that particular embryo was exposed to unnecessary stress and that's what was the contributing factor.

Another factor causing embryo loss could be the low quality of many eggs harvested through IVF. Except in natural cycle IVF, providers use hormones to stimulate the female body to mature more eggs than it would naturally. 

WALE: IVF brings along a large cohort of eggs, some of which probably would never have even got there in the first place. And then when they do become embryos, it's not surprising that they aren't, aren't able to continue to develop. 

To Wale, these realities aren’t an ethical concern. But IVF opponents I talked to say the providers who fertilize these eggs—and the people who pay them to do it—are morally responsible for the resulting lives since they wouldn’t exist apart from IVF. They say that these lab-grown embryos don’t have the same chance at flourishing as naturally conceived embryos.

Matthew Lee Anderson is an ethics professor at Baylor University. 

MATTHEW ANDERSON: I think they have heightened responsibility, because they know that … some number of embryos are going to be dead at the end of this process.

He adds that any improvements to IVF technology come at the expense of countless embryos that have died in the process.

Knoxville’s Dr. Gordon agrees that the IVF industry has its share of moral problems—many that he’s worked hard to avoid. He just doesn’t see the embryos that stop growing on their own as one of them. But he also understands that people must follow their conscience. If they believe IVF is a sin, they shouldn’t do it. 

GORDON: I would say, for every believer, he has to decide, wrestling with their own conscience as to what they are called to do. I would never fault somebody who says I feel like these issues are just issues that I can't come to peace with.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Defining “woman.”

Last week, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the word “sex” in its Equality Act refers to biological sex. That 2010 law was meant to curb discrimination, but in recent years, it’s clashed with newer efforts to accommodate gender identity.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: The ruling is narrow, only referring to one piece of UK law, but it could reshape policies around single-sex spaces in that country.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: Last week, campaigners gathered outside of the UK Supreme Court… celebrating a win for women’s rights.

SUSAN SMITH: This is not about prejudice or bigotry.

Susan Smith… is a campaigner with For Women Scotland, or FWS… the plaintiff and victor in the case.

SMITH: It's just about saying that there are differences and biology is one of those differences. And we just need protections based on that.

The Equality Act of 2010 is a piece of British legislation that aimed to protect people from discrimination. It outlines rights to separate spaces for women in vulnerable places… like changing rooms, prisons, and sports.

I talked to Smith before the ruling came down.

SMITH: So this started with a piece of legislation that the Scottish Government passed in 2018 and it wasn't really very well remarked upon at the time.

It was supposed to balance the number of men and women on public boards. But they defined “woman” as anyone identifying as such.

SMITH: They decided to define women on the basis of self identification.

So FWS took them to court, and won… but the Scottish legislators weren’t done.

SMITH: The complication arises when you throw in the issue of a GRC.

That’s a Gender Recognition Certificate. Anyone over 18 in the UK can get one if they have a gender dysphoria diagnosis, have said they are the opposite gender for at least two years… and plan to do so permanently.

After For Women Scotland won their first case, the Scottish legislators said they should count anyone with a GRC as a woman… and FWS took them back to court.

SMITH: The Gender Recognition Act was passed before the Equality Act, and it spoke about that a person with a GRC, their Sex is changed.

Meaning any mention of “woman” in the Equality Act could apply to a man with a GRC identifying him as a woman and vice versa… for all purposes… including accessing single-sex spaces and using government pregnancy resources.

Practically, the Gender Recognition Act meant anyone saying they were a woman would be viewed as such… because whether or not someone has a GRC is private under UK law.

… and that had some confusing implications.

SMITH: One of the things that struck us was that this would mean that trans men who had fallen pregnant would not be covered by protections for maternity, and that seemed ridiculous.

Not only that, but men who identify as women would have to be allowed into women’s breastfeeding services and lesbian groups.

SMITH: If you read through the entire equality act as saying that this, this piece of paper, changes a person's sex for all purposes, then it makes a mockery of some of those services.

And interpreting it any other way would create a two-tier system.

SMITH: Because it means that people with a GRC are entitled to use services and spaces for the opposite sex, but people without are not.

Inside the courtroom, the lords agreed.

JUDGEMENT READING, LORD PATRICK STEWART HODGE: As a matter of ordinary language, the provisions relating to sex discrimination, and especially those relating to pregnancy and maternity and to protection from risks specifically affecting women, can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex.

They made a point to say they were interpreting what the legislators had written… not trying to protect one group over another.

HODGE: Incoherence and impracticability arise in the operation of provisions relating to single sex characteristic associations and charities, women's fair participation in sport, the operation of the public sector, equality duty, and the armed forces.

There are several cases currently moving through the UK’s court system that may be affected by the ruling.

One of them is a case of a nurse who didn’t want to share a changing room with a man who said he was a woman.

FIONA MCANENA: She eventually had to leave her job.

Fiona McAnena works with a charity handling the nurse’s case called Sex Matters.

MCANENA: Her behavior was regarded as transphobic. Her privacy was not regarded as important.

The Equality Act clarification might mean she wins her case… but it won’t solve every dispute.

LYNNE PINCHES: I think that's going to help a lot of sports, but unfortunately, it's not going to help in our legal case.

Lynne Pinches is a professional pool player in the UK. Two years ago, she walked out of a pool match against a man identifying as a woman… Now she’s suing the league based on fairness.

She says the ruling doesn’t apply to her case… because the Equality Act only applies to sports where physical strength and stamina are major factors.

PINCHES: Things like pool darts and various other sports are classed as precision sports. They're still going to have to prove that their sport, to lawfully exclude, is gender affected.

Right now, she’s arguing that there are physical factors in pool. She says a player can win off a good break.

PINCHES: My 10-year-old son's break speed is currently eight—His highest is 18.82 miles per hour, and my highest is 16.02 and he's a 10-year-old boy.

Pinches says walking out of the match two years ago was one of the hardest things she’s done… She had just qualified to play as a professional… but turned down a tour because she says she would concede again if she came up against a man.

PINCHES: Seeing those, the young ones, the young girls lose to the to the transgender players, and just be watching that. It was heartbreaking. So I couldn't carry on doing it anymore.

Smith, McAnena, and Pinches say they’re not advocating for discrimination against people struggling with gender dysphoria… but they do believe men and women are different and that women need male-free spaces.

PINCHES: People say, ‘Oh, it's just a game of pool.’ But when you meet so many people over a period of 37 years, you suddenly remove yourself from that, or you're removed from that, you lose all your friends and like a big family to you. So it's part of my life, part of my heart, and I'll fight— that was a hill I'm prepared to die on—to not see that ruined.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Talk about small-town charm in Chelsea, Michigan hundreds of people showed up to move a bookstore— one book at a time.

Sunday before last, neighbors formed a human chain down Main Street. They passed all 9,100 titles from Serendipity Books to its new storefront a block away. Audio from WXYZ-TV:

AUDIO: Woo! Make it go!

They laughed, they shared their favorite reads, and they sang:

AUDIO: 38,000 books on the shelf! 38,000 books! Take one down…

And they did it ALL in under two hours! Bookstore owner Michelle Tuplin:

TUPLIN: It was accessible for everybody and people could enjoy that feeling of togetherness and that was really special.

Special… and proof that in a good community, even moving books can turn into a block party!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 24th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a tale of two Seders.

As Christians celebrated Easter, many in the Jewish faith marked the close of Passover. That’s a weeklong festival that includes the Seder meal.

REICHARD: WORLD spoke with two rabbis. One celebrated Passover looking forward to a new Jewish Messiah. The other says the Messiah has already come. Here’s WORLD’s Travis Kircher.

TRAVIS KIRCHER: The week before the Jewish Passover officially began, Rabbi Shlomo Litvin was on a seek-and-destroy mission. The target? Leaven: Not just yeast, but any substance that would cause dough to rise. 

RABBI SHLOMO LITVIN: My house, the couches are flipped over right now. My kids are scrubbing under the bottom of the fridge, anywhere that a contaminant might meet there might be a little bit of leaven, we clear out.

Litvin is the director of eastern Kentucky's branch of Chabad Lubavitch, a form of Orthodox Judaism. Litvin strives to live by the Mosaic law outlined in the Torah. It commands the leaven purge before Passover begins. Litvin and his family take the search seriously. 

LITVIN: So Cheerios, pretzels, of course, cake and bread and pies. And there's so much...I have, thank God, seven kids. There is leaven everywhere in my house when we start cleaning for Passover.

Litvin says the purge is important, because the Passover festival—particularly the Seder meal—is central to Jewish history. It’s when Jews remember how Yahweh delivered them from slavery in the land of Egypt and taught them how to as a free people.

LITVIN: Freedom means freedom to worship God. So that's what we're celebrating, freedom from an earthly master, in order to dedicate ourselves entirely to the creator of Heaven and Earth, our Father in heaven.

Litvin’s Seder meal will include matzah bread, bitter herbs, salt water and traditional readings. But he admits one key element won’t be on his table: the Passover lamb. It never has been. He says Jews haven’t been able to eat the lamb since the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. Litvin says he’s hoping someday a Jewish Messiah will change all that.

LITVIN: One of the 13 national beliefs of Judaism that every Jew has believed in for the last 3300 years is that there will eventually be an everlasting Temple in Jerusalem, that there will be yet another anointed king from the house of David who will redeem those who long for God's salvation, bring them back to the land and there rebuild the temple.

And Litvin is watching. He says he knows the requirements for the Messiah.

LITVIN: To be a scholar of God's law, to fight the battles of God, to be son after son from David…

But while Litvin believes the Messiah may show all people the way to God, he says the Seder meal is only for the Jews. He compares a Gentile celebrating Seder to a boy who celebrates his brother’s birthday by blowing out candles on his own birthday cake.

LITVIN: To me, someone who is not bound by the covenant, ...it feels more performative than earnest.

But not every Jew celebrates the same.

On Saturday, the night before Easter, a very different Seder celebration takes place at St. John’s Community Church, about 15 miles northeast of Louisville. Roughly 70 people are gathered in the church gym. They include people of all ages—both Jews and Gentiles. A team leads Jewish worship songs, while some of those in attendance join hands and dance.

They're led by Rabbi Aaron Bortz. Bortz is a Messianic Jew—a believer in Christ. And he’s making a controversial claim. He believes Judaism—true Judaism—and Christianity are one and the same. 

RABBI AARON BORTZ: Christianity is what Judaism was to grow into…

Bortz says true Judaism recognizes Jesus Christ as the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament. And tonight he’s hosting a Seder meal to celebrate both the Jews’ deliverance from Egypt and deliverance from sin, through Christ.

BORTZ: and we see him as the Ha'av, Havan Veruch Hakodsh. That means the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit..

Bortz says a conversation with a Sunday School teacher got him thinking about putting on the Seder.

BORTZ: He said to me, "I've been a believer and a teacher for over 40 years of children, and I never knew that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder." Well, that's a shame

Scholars differ on whether the Last Supper was an actual Seder meal—as the Gospel of John indicates that it occured before the day of preparation. Additionally, many of the Seder rituals celebrated today developed after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But the last supper’s proximity to Passover means it’s full of similar imagery.

Bortz admits that as New Covenant believers, Christians don’t have to keep the Passover. But he says the Christian church has had a bad habit of shying away from its Jewish roots since the days of Constantine. And events like this help unite Christians and Messianic Jews.

BORTZ: The church is following Yeshua, but they don't know him as Yeshua. They know him as Jesus. They don't know him as the Messiah. They know him as Christ, and they always refer to those terms. They don't want to use the real word.

SOUND: [Crowd at Messianic Seder]

Each part of the Seder meal has a different purpose. Bitter herbs—typically horseradish—remind attendees of the bitterness of slavery to Egypt, and of their own sin. Parsley dipped in saltwater recalls the saltiness of the Red Sea when God parted it to save his people. A sweet mixture of nuts and apples called Charoset represents the bricks and mortar the Israelites made while in slavery. But at this Seder as well, there is no Passover lamb. That’s because Bortz says Messiah Jesus, the Lamb of God, has already been offered.

BORTZ: If you’re here and you believe in Messiah, you have been redeemed. You have been bought back. That’s what redeemed means!

Jews often end Passover with the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem.” For many Jews,  it’s the hope that the Messiah will be revealed. But for Seder attendee Joseph Schult, it’s not about the hope that a Messiah will come. It’s the expectation that the Messiah…will return. 

JOSEPH SCHULT: Even Jesus says in the New Testament, "I will not drink of this cup. I will not eat of this meal until I eat it new with you in My Father's Kingdom." This is an eternal feast. This will be happening when we get to Heaven.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher…in Louisville and Prospect, Kentucky.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Previously, this story misidentified the Seder element charoset as maror. We regret the error and have corrected the story.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas has a warning for the White House: when it comes to Iran, any deal is likely to be a bad one.

CAL THOMAS: Before basketball’s 24-second rule, there was a tactic called freezing the ball. The team that was ahead would attempt to run out the clock by holding onto the ball as long as it could to deny the opposing team an opportunity to score.

That looks like what Iran is doing…again. “Freezing” negotiations while finishing the final stages of nuclear enrichment—on the way to building a deliverable nuclear weapon.

It is important for the U.S. to take Iranian leaders at their word. Failing to do so guarantees the world will be faced with the greatest threat since the beginning of the Cold War with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Except the Soviets were atheists. The Iranian mullahs think doing what they claim to be Allah’s will. Especially if it leads to martyrdom as they believe that guarantees them a ticket to Heaven.

The West has a history of not taking seriously the announced intentions of its enemies. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publicly stated their economic and political goals. Those were fulfilled in the Bolshevik Revolution and the imposition of communism and socialism in Russia.

Adolf Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf”—or “My Struggle”—in which he stated his hatred of Jews. A hatred incorporated in the Third Reich, which led to the Holocaust.

In each instance there were Western academics, journalists, even clergy, who excused, denied or rationalized these objectives. And in each instance millions of lives were lost. Many in forced famine and gulags under Stalin. Still more in World War II launched by Hitler.

Past deals with Iran have been violated—including initially agreed inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN. Why does anyone believe the Iranians will abide by a new agreement?

Writing for the publication JNS.org, New York attorney Eric Levine criticizes an April 14th op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. In it, Levine describes what Kerry’s so-called “good deal” looks like between the US and Iran. Levine underscores that any deal with Iran must not bear—in his words—any “resemblance to the disaster that [John Kerry] and then-President Barack Obama forced down the throats of Americans in 2015, despite overwhelming bipartisan opposition.”

President Trump has long criticized the ten-year old deal. Yet Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has no experience dealing with people who claim a religious motivation for their actions. He is no more likely to succeed with Iran than Kerry and Obama who got rolled by the mullahs.

President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton wrote this for the publication Independent Arabia: “Washington has every justification to take military action against Tehran’s proliferation efforts. Iran’s nuclear threat is not a problem merely for Israel, but for the entire world. For thirty years, the ayatollahs have sought to become a nuclear power, to the detriment of everyone else. America has the wherewithal to eliminate this proliferation threat, and would be politically and morally justified in doing so. Helping Israel de-fang Iran follows quite logically.”

Iran is in a weak position, domestically and internationally. Regime change would be the best option, but the rulers are unlikely to willingly relinquish power. The time to strike Iranian nuclear facilities is now. Delay means we will likely have to face a nuclear armed Iran with the ability to launch ICBMs at Israel and American cities. That’s not a risk worth taking.

I’m Cal Thomas

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday. And WORLD Arts and Culture editor Collin Garbarino reviews the second season of Andor, the gritty prequel to Star Wars. And, your listener feedback. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “No unbelief made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” —Romans 4:20-21

Go now in grace and peace.

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