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Last week, Politico reported the movement of two Iranian warships apparently on their way to the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. national security officials expressed concern that these ships were bound for Venezuela with cargoes that violate U.S. sanctions on Caracas. Already, Sen. Marco Rubio has called for the United States to prevent the ships arrival. However, any U.S. action against these vessels would be unlawful and undermine a core tenet of the international order: sovereign immunity. The costs of direct action would be severe, exposing the United States to charges of hypocrisy toward the rules-based order and potentially opening U.S. naval vessels to similar treatment by adversaries.

Caracas and Tehran have grown close over the past decade as each has found relief in the other as a safety valve from U.S. sanctions. Trade in oil has been particularly important for the duo, and the United States and its allies have, in recent years, interdicted several cargo vessels under flags of convenience suspected of ferrying Iranian oil in violation of U.S. and European Union sanctions. This time is different. These vessels are part of the Iranian navy. Under international law, Tehran can channel rapper MC Hammer and tell the United States, you cant touch this.

Last week, Politico reported the movement of two Iranian warships apparently on their way to the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. national security officials expressed concern that these ships were bound for Venezuela with cargoes that violate U.S. sanctions on Caracas. Already, Sen. Marco Rubio has called for the United States to prevent the ships arrival. However, any U.S. action against these vessels would be unlawful and undermine a core tenet of the international order: sovereign immunity. The costs of direct action would be severe, exposing the United States to charges of hypocrisy toward the rules-based order and potentially opening U.S. naval vessels to similar treatment by adversaries.

Caracas and Tehran have grown close over the past decade as each has found relief in the other as a safety valve from U.S. sanctions. Trade in oil has been particularly important for the duo, and the United States and its allies have, in recent years, interdicted several cargo vessels under flags of convenience suspected of ferrying Iranian oil in violation of U.S. and European Union sanctions. This time is different. These vessels are part of the Iranian navy. Under international law, Tehran can channel rapper MC Hammer and tell the United States, you cant touch this.

The law of the sea, whether customary or conventional, grants warships and other government ships sovereign immunity. In times of peace, sovereign immunity is a practically all-powerful ward against a foreign states jurisdiction. Exceptions may apply in extreme circumstances involving failed states, fake warships, or weapons of mass destruction.This case, however, is textbook.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) defines warships as vessels belonging to the armed forces under the command of an officer in the service list and manned by a crew in good order.Both Iranian vessels, an unnamed frigate and the IRINS Makran, both clearly meet the definition of a warship under the U.N. convention.

The U.N. Convention, which the United States believes reflects customary international law, explicitly spells out some of sovereign immunitys power. And on the high seas, sovereign immunity is absolute. Article 95 simply reads: Warships on the high seas have complete immunity from the jurisdiction of any State other than the flag State. Article 96 provides the same absolute immunity to government-owned or operated vessels on the high seas. This right also applies in exclusive economic zones (EEZ) since nothing in that section overrules the provisions.

Even in the territorial sea, sovereign immunity remains a powerful protection. Warships enjoy the right of innocent passage in foreign territorial seas. The coastal state may establish rules for navigational safety but has essentially no power to enforce these regulations on foreign warships that flout traffic separation schemes or the like. As long as the warship is engaged in innocent passage, not threatening the coastal state, the coastal state can, at most, order the warship to leave the territorial sea. Interdiction or arrest are out of the question unless the warship threatens the coastal state, at which point self-defense would be permitted.

Internal waters, such as ports, are not substantially different. A warship would, of course, need the coastal states permission to enter internal waters. Yet even here, where the coastal state has its greatest authority, sovereign immunity retains its power under well-accepted, customary international law. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) affirmed this in 2012s ARA Libertad case. The Libertad is an Argentinian naval vessel that called at Tema, a Ghanaian port, in late 2012. As part of enforcing a U.S. court order over unpaid Argentine sovereign debts, Ghanaian courts ordered the vessel to remain in the harbor, and Ghanaian authorities attempted to board the vessel. In December 2012, ITLOSs judges unanimously ordered Ghana to release the vessel immediately. The majority reasoning noted a warship is an expression of the sovereignty of its flag state and in accordance with general international law, a warship enjoys immunity, including in internal waters.

ITLOS judges Rdiger Wolfrum and Jean-Pierre Cot built an even more robust argument in their concurring opinion. There, they took issue with the majoritys summary reasoning and instead closely examined both proposals relating to internal waters and warships prior to UNCLOS and the language of that convention itself. They ultimately concluded that warships in internal waters enjoy immunity from the exercise of coastal state jurisdiction, which includes immunity from judicial proceedings or any enforcement measure, [and] is well established in customary international law. This principle, the judges noted, was recognized not only by the Institut de Droit International as early as 1898 and again in 1928 but also by various national court cases, including the U.S. Supreme Courts Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon and Others.

Nothing changes even if U.S. officials ascertain the vessels are carrying conventional arms that violate U.S. sanctions on Caracas. Consider U.N. Security Council-endorsed sanctions on North Korea. That system includes perhaps the most robust system of sanctions on ship-borne materials and comes with the backing of the five permanent Security Council members (even if Chinas enforcement has been lukewarm). Although silent on sovereign immune vessels, the most recent resolution in 2017 allowed member states to seize, inspect, and freeze any vessel subject to its jurisdiction in its territorial waters. Since customary international law holds that warships during peacetime are never under the jurisdiction of a foreign state, foreign warships are arguably not subject to foreign enforcement actions under these U.N. sanctions.

In this case, so long as the Iranian warships do not threaten use of force, sovereign immunity protects them wherever they arewhether in the high seas, an EEZ, a territorial sea, or internal waters. If conventional arms are aboard, the U.S. enforcement action would merely rest on national sanctions while even the most robust U.N. sanctions may not cover sovereign immune vessels. Likewise, the ARA Libertad precedent clearly demonstrates even if these vessels are forced to request and receive permission to call at a port to replenish their supplies, the United States gains no legal options. The port state remains bound by customary international law.

The United States could ignore the law, as Iran does in the Persian Gulf, but this comes with significant costs. If an attempted enforcement action leads to a U.S. loss before an international court, the United States suffers a humiliating defeat that may embolden Iran. If the enforcement action succeeds both operationally and legally, the United States could put U.S. naval vessels at jeopardy, if, say, China decided U.S. naval vessels supplying arms to Taiwan violated future Chinese sanctions.

A success or failure, U.S. action directly against the Iranian vessels steaming across the Atlantic Ocean will complicate efforts to secure U.S. interests and position the United States as a champion of the international rules-based order. To prevent Irans naval vessels from reaching Venezuela and to advance U.S. interests, the United States should employ diplomacy rather than force and encourage states along the route to deny the Iranian vessels port access if requested. But policymakers and elected officials itching to send in the U.S. Navy or Coast Guard would do well to remember MC Hammers basic rule of sovereign immunity: You cant touch this.

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US Can't Touch Iran's Warships Even If They're Violating Venezuelan Sanctions - Foreign Policy

A money changer holds Iranian rial banknotes as he waits for customers in Tehrans business district in 2012.(Raheb Homavandi/Reuters)

As Iran heads to a presidential election on June 18, its economy is a shambles. Theres a partial solution -- if its rulers are interested.

With Irans upcoming presidential election on June 18, its time to determine whether Iranians are miserable or happy. After all, the publics state of mind always colors public opinion. In the economic sphere, misery tends to flow from high inflation, steep borrowing costs, and unemployment. The surefire way to mitigate that misery is through economic growth. All else being equal, happiness tends to blossom when growth is strong, inflation and interest rates are low, and jobs are plentiful.

Many countries measure and report these economic metrics regularly, and comparing them, nation by nation, can tell quite a bit about the state of important global economic sentiments. Is Iran, for example, more or less miserable than other countries? Hankes Annual Misery Index (HAMI) gives us the answers.

The first misery index was constructed by economist Arthur Okun in the 1960s to provide President Lyndon Johnson with an easily digestible snapshot of the U.S. economy That original misery index was a simple sum of a nations annual inflation rate and its unemployment rate. The index itself has been modified several times, and its coverage has been greatly expanded, first by Robert Barro of Harvard, and then by me.

My modified misery index is the sum of the unemployment, inflation, and banklending rates, minus the percentage change in real GDP per capita. Higher readings on the first three elements are bad and make people more miserable. These bad measurements are offset by a good (real GDP per capita growth), which is subtracted from the sum of the bads. A higher HAMI score reflects a higher level of misery.

Where, then, does Iran rank? Of the worlds 156 countries that I cover in the HAMI, Iran ranks as the eighth-most miserable country in the world, behind Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Lebanon, Suriname, Libya, and Argentina.

The symptoms of Irans misery are as clear as the nose on your face. Since January 2020, the Iranian rial has lost 45 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar. As shown in the table below, there are only seven countries whose currencies have lost more than Irans.

The rials weakness has led to inflation being an endemic problem in Iran. Every day I accurately measure the inflation rate and, today, by my measure, the inflation rate is an intolerable 40 percent per year.

The best option to bring an end to Irans misery is a currency board. A currency board issues notes and coins convertible on demand into a foreign anchor currency at a fixed rate of exchange. It is required to hold anchor-currency reserves equal to 100 percent of its monetary liabilities.

A currency board has no discretionary monetary powers and cannot issue credit. It has an exchange-rate policy but no monetary policy, and its sole function is to exchange the domestic currency it issues for an anchor currency at a fixed rate. A currency boards currency is a clone of its anchor currency.

Whats more, it requires no preconditions and can be installed rapidly. Government finances, state-owned enterprises, and trade need not be reformed before a currency board can issue money. They have existed in some 70 countries since 1849. None have failed.

As the one who designed the currency boards in Estonia (1992), Lithuania (1994), Bulgaria (1997), and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1997), I can attest to the fact that they work perfectly to create stability. And while stability might not be everything, everything is nothing without it.

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Irans Misery and the Miserable State of the Iranian Rial - National Review

Brent futures hit their highest in two years while West Texas Intermediate rose to a level unseen in almost three years.

Oil prices kept climbing on Wednesday on signs of strong fuel demand in some economies, while the possibility of Iranian oil returning to global markets was cast in doubt after the United States secretary of state said sanctions against Tehran were not likely to be lifted.

Global benchmark Brent crude futures were up 44 cents, or 0.6 percent, at $72.66 a barrel at 13:38 GMT, having earlier hit $72.83, the highest since May 2019.

United States benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were 30 cents higher, or 0.4 percent, at $70.35 a barrel. Earlier, they touched $70.62, the highest since October 2018.

The supercharged multi-year oil prices are a reflection of the improved oil demand sentiment, and along with it, the expectation that crude and products inventories will significantly be reduced in the second half of 2021 as a post-pandemic new normal of oil consumption sets in, Rystad Energys Oil Markets Analyst Louise Dickson said in a Wednesday note.

American drivers are hitting the road again as COVID-19 restrictions are rolled back and vaccination campaigns ramp up catalysing crude demand.

In the US, demand for gasoline and diesel is increasing ahead of the summer driving season, which this year is getting an extra boost of momentum as it coincides with the successful vaccination campaign that has allowed the economy to open up and oil demand to tick higher, Dickson added.

On Tuesday, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast fuel consumption growth this year in the US, the worlds biggest oil user, would be 1.49 million barrels per day (bpd), up from a previous forecast of 1.39 million bpd.

In another bullish sign, industry data showed US crude oil inventories fell last week.

Price gains had been capped in recent weeks as oil investors had been assuming that sanctions against Iranian exports would be lifted and oil supply would increase this year as Tehrans talks with the US on reviving the Iran-nuclear pact, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), progressed.

But on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cast doubt over the prospects for imminent relief for Irans oil sector after he told a US Senate committee: I would anticipate that even in the event of a return to compliance with the JCPOA, hundreds of sanctions will remain in place, including sanctions imposed by the [President Donald] Trump administration. If they are not inconsistent with the JCPOA, they will remain unless and until Irans behavior changes.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a grouping known as OPEC+, has not indicated whether it will stick to supply restraints beyond July.

OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo has recently said that OPEC+ foresees inventories falling further in the coming months.

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Oil hits two-year high as doubts gather over Irans market return - Al Jazeera English

opinion/columns/guest

Are you kidding me? We now have the governor of our state Ron D and Richard Corcoran our education commissioner instructing our teachers how to teach history! Rather than tell the truth good, bad, and ugly, we should white wash it and tell our children how perfect we have been for 245 years. The next thing they will tell us is what books they can use to teach, and what books need to be put on the bonfire! Remember the books burned in Nazi Germany in the 30s. I sincerely hope somebody will tell these two goofballs that teachers are protected by the First Amendment. What a tragedy we have come for elected officials to be so diabolical in their right-wing philosophy. David Lee, Fleming Island

As we observe FathersDayJune 20 it will be a good time to consider the following:

This breakdown of the family contributes greatly to todays problems. Any man can be a father a child but there is so much more to the important role of being a dad in a childs life.Fathersare central to the emotional well-being of their children. Studies show that if a childs father is affectionate, supportive and involved he can significantly improve a childs cognitive, language and social development as well as academic achievement.

Children who live in fatherless families are five times more likely to live in poverty, are twice as likely to drop out of school. Ninety percent of male prisoners in America today between the ages of 16 and 30 grew up separated from their biologicalfathers

Go towww.fatherhood.gov. There are valuable tips and resources for Dads in Responsible Fatherhood.

Paul and Marie Schaefer, St. Johns, Florida

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Letters: Teachers are protected by first amendment, despite the governor's take on history - The Florida Times-Union

How much academic freedom do K-12 teachers actually have to teach what they want? How far does the First Amendment go in shielding them? And where would they stand in the face of new state laws taking aim at the use of critical race theory or the teaching of antiracist lessons?

Measures introduced in at least 20 state legislatures to rein in teaching about race and other controversial and divisive topics have thrust teachers into uncertainty over what they can discuss in the classroom and whether they would face discipline or other legal consequences if they overstep.

This would make me hesitate now on some lessons about race, said August Plock, a social studies teacher at Pflugerville High School, near Austin, Texas. It potentially puts a chill over teachers.

Texas is one of five states where legislators have passed proposals so far this year limiting how teachers may address race issues in the classroom, with laws already signed by governors in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

These measures pose a host of legal questions. For example, John Rumel, a law professor at the University of Idaho, said the measure passed in his state raises First Amendment free speech issues.

If Im a K-12 teacher, Im not sure what I can do, said Rumel, a former general counsel to the Idaho Education Association. Can I mention there is a rubric known as critical race theory that exists? Im not espousing it. This measure would give me pause as a teacher and might chill my speech.

While its too early for any of the new laws to have been challenged, the wave of legislation has teachers wondering how much leeway they have to veer from approved curricula or to address issues proscribed by state laws.

The blunt answer: While K-12 teachers retain some protections for their comments on issues of public concern, they dont have much in the way of academic freedom to veer from the curriculum or infuse their own experiences and views into the classroom.

I am reluctant to come to this conclusion, but in the K-12 sector, teachers do not really have any academic freedom, said Richard Fossey, a recently retired professor who taught education law at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and has co-written several journal articles on the topic.

Suzanne Eckes, an education professor at Indiana University-Bloomington who has also written about the issue, said that under a series of decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal courts of appeals, K-12 teachers do not have the type of academic freedom that courts have recognized for college professors.

You dont have a lot of leeway, Eckes said she tells teachers. If a teacher called me and said, I want to teach the 1619 Project or about the Tulsa race massacre but my supervisor has advised me not to, I would sympathize with them, but would add that they could get in trouble for teaching those concepts.

The laws passed or proposed so far generally prohibit schools from teaching that one race or sex is inherently superior, that any individual is consciously or unconsciously racist or sexist because of their race or sex, and that anyone should feel discomfort or guilt because of their race or sex.

Some adopted or pending measures specifically mention critical race theory, a decades-old academic framework that examines how racism has shaped the U.S. legal system and has become the crux of controversies across the country.

Richard Fossey, retired law professor, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

At least two proposals specifically singled out as a prohibited topic for the schools the 1619 Project, a long-term reporting effort by The New York Times that has been turned into a curriculum centered around the year that enslaved Africans were first brought to colonial America.

But it remains unclear to what degree the various pieces of legislation address specifics of whats actually being taught in the nations schools.

Very few school districts will say out loud, Were adopting critical race theory, said Daniel R. Suhr, a lawyer with the Chicago-based Liberty Justice Center, which has sued a Nevada charter school and a Virginia school district over some of their anti-racism curricula or policies. They might say, Were embracing equity.

Critics often cite critical race theory as the basis for many diversity and inclusion efforts, regardless of how much the framework has actually informed those programs.

Many teachers, of course, freely express their opinions in their classrooms and make instructional decisions that veer from the approved curriculum.

I was a high school teacher, and I was always giving my political opinion and nothing ever happened to me, said Eckes, the Indiana University education professor. But that was due more to the grace of school administrators than any legal protections.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized academic freedom for professors and institutions at the higher education level, with a 1967 decision calling the college classroom the marketplace of ideas.

When it comes to K-12 teachers, the high court has made some lofty pronouncements, such as its language in the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District decision on student speech, which declared that neither students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

Education law scholars also can point to a handful of cases in which K-12 teachers did win court rulings in support of their classroom expression. In the 1960s and 1970s, teachers won cases after being fired for uses of the F-word, for using a controversial role-playing method to teach about Reconstruction, and for distributing surveys to students about sex, drugs, and euthanasia.

But in 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in Garcetti v. Ceballos that public employees generally do not have First Amendment protection for their on-the-job speech.

In a friend-of-the-court brief submitted in the Garcetti case, the National Education Association had argued that to teach is to communicateoften on matters of the greatest public importance and controversy. A decision that failed to recognize First Amendment protection for job-related speech would have a devastating impact on teachers, the union said in its brief.

Garcetti involved an employee of a prosecutors office. In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the court was not deciding whether its analysis would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching. The line was perhaps a response to a dissent by Justice David H. Souter, who expressed concerns about the effect of the majoritys principle on academic freedom in public colleges and universities.

Since Garcetti, numerous courts have ruled that the potential exception for scholarship and teaching did not apply to K-12 educators.

In a 2007 case, a federal appeals court upheld the non-renewal of an Indiana middle school teacher who had expressed her opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq to her students, which had led to parent complaints.

Another federal appeals court, in a 2016 decision, upheld the discipline of a Chicago 6th grade teacher whose principal overheard him teaching his students not to use the N-word. The teacher was suspended for five days for using verbally abusive language in front of students, even though the teacher was trying to explain why the word was offensive.

In a 2010 decision, a federal appeals court upheld the non-renewal of an Ohio high school teacher who had centered a lesson around banned books that included some selections parents considered inappropriate. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, analyzed the competing interests at stake in that case, Evans-Marshall v. Tipp City Exempted Village School District.

On the one side, doesnt a teacher have the First Amendment right to choose her own reading assignments, decide how they should be taught and above all be able to teach a unit on censorship without being censored or otherwise retaliated against? the court said. On the other side, doesnt a school board have the final say over what is taught, and how, in the public schools for which it is responsible? Who wins depends on which line of legal authority controls.

The appeals court sided with the school district, holding that Garcetti applied because the teacher was acting pursuant to her job duties and the First Amendment does not extend to the in-class curricular speech of teachers in primary and secondary schools.

Stuart Stuller, Colorado attorney representing school boards

The 6th Circuit court recently appeared to reaffirm the distinction on academic freedom between college professors and K-12 teachers. A 6th Circuit panel ruled in March that an Ohio college professor who refused to use the preferred pronouns of a transgender student because of the professors religious beliefs was protected by academic freedom.

The college had punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue, in violation of the First Amendment, the court held. The court said in a footnote that its 2010 ruling in Evans-Marshall was limited to schoolteachers.

Fossey, the University of Louisiana professor, said the Supreme Courts Garcetti decision has been really hostile to the view that K-12 teachers have any control over the curriculum or even their teaching style.

Stuart Stuller, a veteran Colorado attorney representing school boards, said the rationale for districts supervision of teachers on-the-job speech is that when the teacher is standing in front of the classroom, that teacher is a representative of the state.

The First Amendment doesnt necessarily give subordinate employees the right to do something the supervisor has told him not to do, said Stuller, who is nonetheless sympathetic to academic freedom concerns of teachers and once wrote a law journal article on the subject.

Teachers and other public school personnel still have First Amendment protections for speaking out on matters of public concern outside of their job duties, even when those matters involve the operations of their employer.

That was underscored by another controversy this month in the 82,000-student Loudoun County, Va., district outside Washington, D.C. A state judge ordered the reinstatement of an elementary school teacher who was suspended after speaking up at a school board meeting against a proposed gender-equity policy that would include requiring teachers to address transgender students by names and pronouns used by those students. The district received several complaints about the teachers public comments and placed him on administrative leave because of the disruptive impact his remarks had on his school, court papers say.

The state judge on June 8 issued a temporary injunction in favor of the teacher after analyzing the case under Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205, a 1968 Supreme Court decision that a teachers speech on a matter of public concern is protected under the First Amendment if it outweighs the employers interests in workplace efficiency and lack of disruption.

Alice OBrien, the general counsel of NEA, said the new state laws limiting what teachers and schools may say about racism and other matters are certain to be challenged in court, though likely not on the grounds of teacher academic freedom.

These are situations where the state legislature is prohibiting the instruction of certain concepts in the schools, she said. These laws are aimed at instruction across a state, and that is a different context than that of an individual teacher right.

Such challenges will likely be based on the 14th Amendments equal-protection clause because the measures were enacted with racial animus, OBrien said. And they could be subject to challenge based on the First Amendment right of students to receive information, she said.

OBrien pointed to rulings that resulted in the invalidation of an Arizona law that barred public schools from instituting an ethnic studies curriculum, such as by holding classes or programs that promoted resentment toward a race or class of people, that were designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, or that advocated ethnic solidarity instead of treating students as individuals.

The law was pushed for by a Republican state superintendent of public education and was targeted at a Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson school district and challenged in court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, in 2015 held that the law was not unconstitutional on its face, but allowed the challenge to proceed based on evidence of discriminatory purpose in the enactment and enforcement of the law. A federal district judge in 2017 struck down the Arizona law on equal protection and First Amendment grounds.

These statutes want schools to impart a particular view of America, said OBrien. They are intended, at the very least, to chill speech. And they seem to be having that impact.

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If Critical Race Theory Is Banned, Are Teachers Protected by the First Amendment? - Education Week