About 40 Jews who left Iran in secret arrived in Israel yesterday - one of the largest such defections - and got a Christmas present of $10,000 per person from U.S. evangelicals, the Washington Times reports.

A Jewish Agency spokesman credited the increase to a stipend program financed by donations to the Christian Zionist group International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).

“The money is a major consideration” to come to Israel, said Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the agency. “These people come with the clothes on their back and their suitcase. Iranian money has no value.”

Accoring to one quasi-governmental group, the number of Iranian-Jewish emigrants to Israel more than tripled to 200 in 2007.

On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency presented a long-anticipated report on Iran’s nuclear program. Among its disclosures: Tehran is stalling instead of cooperating, and it is prohibiting, à la former neighbor dictator Saddam Hussein, U.N. inspectors from visiting sites — some with hundreds of centrifuges used in building WMD — that could feasibly produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

The mullahs are spinning the report as vindication, though, since it allows, somewhat oxymoronically, that Iran has indeed been helpful in providing “timely” new information on a once-secret program exposed in 2002 — five years ago. The report admits there’s “no concrete information” that Iran is pursuing weapons instead of power plants.

But ignored is the meat of the report and the indubitable point of the current controversy: impatience with the paucity on Iran’s current program where, according to The Washington Post, “knowledge about Iran’s current nuclear program is diminishing.” As The Wall Street Journal puts it, Iranians “seem to have done little more than tell the IAEA what it already knew.” The report also confirms that Iran “has 3,000 centrifuges in operation, which . . . represents a tenfold increase over last year.” (And flies in the face of two U.N. Security Council demands, here and here.)

Spinning centrifuges “is by no means proof of bad intent,” says Gordon Chang, author of several books on nuclear proliferation. It can generate electricity or produce enriched uranium for weapon cores. So which is it? “In my view, that’s irrelevant because the United Nations has previously demanded that Iran halt enrichment.”

Critics wince at Iraq déjà vu, saying the Bush administration is edging towards a solution by force, intentionally speeding through what are — so far — less effective forms of diplomacy. Three weeks ago, it officially blacklisted the Revolutionary Guards (the Star Wars-sounding arm of Iran’s military) in an effort to cripple the state financially until it complies with the U.N. — the first such designation for a foreign military.

Saddam Hussein similarly barred inspectors from Iraqi facilities in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion. A book released Tuesday, Ronald Kessler’s The Terrorist Watch, explains why, given the fact that no WMD were ever found; Saddam, it says, bluffed about possessing them to ward off a potential attack from Iran.

Vexing the critics, Chang says somewhat ominously that this reminder should punctuate diplomatic lessons vis-à-vis the Iran mess: “Nuclear weapons are so inherently dangerous that merely violating the mandates of the United Nations with regard to them should, by itself, be considered grounds for the use of force.”

Baptists in North Carolina may call on homosexuals to repent, but in Iran …

Homosexuals deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, The Times has learnt.

Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay youths were being hanged.

HT: Hugh Hewitt

For Iranian Jews wanting to move to Israel, it’s not easy to get out. Government-imposed travel restrictions prohibit them from taking furniture, most possessions, and large amounts of cash, making it impossible to take anything more than a few suitcases out of the country.

That’s where the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews comes in. Based in Chicago and Jerusalem, the organization works closely with the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and the Israeli government, offering $10,000 grants to repatriating Jews.

Since Jews are allowed to take so little from Iran, the money often goes toward renting an apartment and purchasing furniture or appliances. Arriving in Israel, Jewish immigrants go through an absorption center where they receive services such as language training and, for the children, basic education. The government also provides food aid and job training, so that incoming Jews have whatever help they need in finding their feet again.

Do Iranian Jews want to leave Iran? It depends on circumstances, according to the IFCJ. Some who are older and economically well-off prefer to stay and weather the storm. Many, however, dislike living in a hostile country. They are concerned about the presence of a secret police, the heavily-stacked conditions in Parliament (the Jewish community is represented by one of 290 seats), and the intensifying radicalism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Israel.

IFCJ works to bring Jews from other volatile areas of the world as well. Ethiopia is one of its current projects. Argentina and the former Soviet Union have received its services in the past. The goal of these operations, according to the IFCJ , is not to coax Jews to return to Israel, but to help those who wish to return safely to their homeland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin drew an historical parallel today, comparing the U.S. missile shield of today with the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s, when the world came its closest to nuclear war: “For us, technologically, the situation is very similar. On our borders such threats to our country are being created.”

Did Syria raze a bombed building to conceal a nuclear reactor site? David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, analyzed new commercial satellite images of the Israeli-bombed building. He said Syria “took down this facility so quickly it looks like they are trying to hide something.”

President Bush visited a fire-ravaged California on Thursday, promising to do everything in his power to help. Some 30,000 people have been evacuated from the South Bernardino Mountain area.

CNN says Iran is becoming a hot campaign issue. The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman dismisses U.S. sanctions of Iran are “worthless and ineffective” and “doomed to fail.” Condoleeza Rice defends the sanctions: “The international community cannot just sit idly by until we face unpalatable choices.” Experts say they may upset the oil market.

Barack Obama is running as a uniter, but an analyst said he might need to change his tone: “Democrats are tired of being bullied. They want a candidate who will punch bullies in the nose.”

GOP candidates aren’t pulling punches. In the last GOP presidential debate, Rudy Giuliani quoted Hillary Clinton: “’I have a million ideas. America can’t afford them all.’ No kidding, Hillary — America can’t afford you.” Mitt Romney had his say, too: “She hasn’t run a corner store. She hasn’t run a state. She hasn’t run a city. She has never run anything.” (Listen to WoW’s audio pick for Townhall commentary.)

Congress decides to keep the Internet tax-free for another seven years. Bush says it’s time for Congress to “stop wasting time” on some other issues: appropriations bills and emergency war funding.

This is a striking photo. It has haunted me since I saw it two days ago. These are two allegedly homosexual teenaged boys being hanged in Iran. I am left wondering what the nature and extent of their transgression was. Were they caught in an ill-considered moment of curiosity and moral weakness? Did haunting menaces escape from the basement of their hearts at a time that turned suddenly and terribly public?

They could not have been open and flagrant homosexuals. There is obviously no allowance for open self-disclosure of that sort in the Islamic Republic. Iran does not have a homosexual activist network that identifies young people who betray aberrant tendencies, misleads them with foolish counsel, and emboldens them in shameless behavior.

Perhaps that is all that Ahmadinejad meant when he said, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon, I don’t know who told you we had it.” They do not have homosexuals of the sort that we have. They do not have “gays.” Homosexual is an orientation of the heart sexually. Gay is a lifestyle. Not all homosexuals are gay. Or perhaps he was just telling a Big Lie.

All the same, the reason I think that this photo caught people’s attention is not horror over the fact that Iran hangs criminals, nor even that they hang homosexuals. It is the tender age of these convicts that takes us aback and shocks our western moral sensibilities. Surely these boys were not hardened in their ways. Surely they were just confused, or perhaps themselves victims of some gross indecency. Surely all that they needed was some gracious and discreet intervention which, along with rigid Middle Eastern social conventions, should be sufficient to prevent the slide of Iranian society into the swamp of Western moral dissolution. Hanging in this case seems particularly brutal, unnecessary and…ungracious.

For one who is supposedly merciful, it seems that Mohammed’s God is not anything of the sort when his religion takes charge politically, at least in Iran…and Afghanistan, and Iraq’s Anbar province.

Praise God that his message of salvation in Christ is one of grace, and that he is making his people gracious because he is making them Christ. “In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight…” (Ephesians 1:7-8).

Rudy Giuliani has beaten Mitt Romney in the race for campaign cash, raising $11 million in the third quarter of the election season. Romney criticizes Giuliani’s management of taxpayer money, saying that Giuliani opposed both a line-item veto and the repeal of a New York City commuter tax.

Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke opposes Giuliani’s pro-abortion beliefs. In 2004, Burke said he would refuse communion to pro-abortion Catholic John Kerry. This year, he said he’d deny communion to Giuliani, too.

The nation’s largest abortion clinic opened today in Illinois. About 100 pro-life protesters gathered across the street to pray, read the Bible, and sing.

Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” remark continues to stir up controversy as pundits and soldiers take sides. Democratic candidate Bill Richardson would end the debate by immediately pulling troops from Iraq: “The foundation of my Iraq plan is this: Get out now. Get all our troops out now.”

The New York Times reports a secret Justice Department document that is “an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques every used by the Central Intelligence Agency.” The White House and Justice Department deny that they allowed torture.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran has “passed the difficult points” on its path to a nuclear energy industry: “No power can stop this nation from making more and more (atomic) achievements,” he said.