Poison Free Montecito and Letters to the Editor

I have a pair of nesting kestrels in my yard. Because the kestrels need lots of mice and voles to feed their young, I realize how easily they can be harmed if my neighbors put out rodent poison. On my walk yesterday a woman asked me if I had seen the sick coyote which is close to hairless because of poisons.

All poisons, whether it is herbicide, pesticide, or rodenticide, move through the food chain harming creatures. A single treated lawn or poisoned mouse can silently wipe out an entire nest of young birds.

Please, let’s protect wildlife by avoiding the use of toxic chemicals, so we can all thrive in a cleaner, safer environment.

Nancy Hill,
Summerland

In Agreeance

Jeffrey Harding’s articles about Iran are spot on, while a recent “L to E” accepts the mythology that Barack Obama contained Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions until Donald Trump screwed it up. But he is not the only one. Iranian deception was naïvely trusted by our past leaders and by international inspectors.

Before being exposed in 2002, Iran’s secret nuclear sites at Natanz and Arak were pursuing a bomb via uranium and plutonium, and testing its design for a nuclear implosion device, all in violation of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations. Iran denied all this, espousing their pursuit of clean nuclear energy. Adding to the naivety & confusion, in 2007 a U.S. national intelligence estimate reported, with high confidence, that Iran had ceased its organized effort to develop nuclear bombs. This report was a gift to the Ayatollah, ceasing any interference from Israel or U.S. Only later did we learn this report was erroneous. The Iranians had removed secret nuclear documents while dispersing its nuclear bomb ambitions out of Tehran, concealing archives and using university dual purpose research to create civilian plausibility.

In 2009 the U.S. learned Iran had been building a facility deep under a mountain near Qom, designed to enrich uranium to weapons-grade. Again, Iran claimed its purpose was peaceful, but then why bury it and not tell inspectors until the U.S. was onto it? (This became the Fordow facility that the U.S. bombed in June 2025 with special earth-penetrating bombs.) Enter Mr. Obama, who made a nuclear deal with Iran a top priority. The talks dragged on for years, as Iran pressed forward with enrichment. Iran finally agreed to a deal in late 2015 after a series of U.S. concessions. The Obama team allowed enrichment and let Iran keep the infrastructure that could be used to reach weapons-grade when Iran felt the time was right. In the deal’s first week, Iran received $30 billion in sanctions relief helping fund their missile program.

Mr. Trump quit the deal in 2018 and escalated sanctions on Iran. Then President Biden made it his goal to redo the Obama deal and stopped enforcing oil sanctions. Iran only accelerated its uranium enrichment to the doorstep of weapons-grade. It also hid nuclear material and missile development and repeatedly lied to inspectors.

On October 7, 2023, Iran’s proxies started a regional war by massacring Israelis, taking hostages, raining down rockets, and attacking global shipping. Israel fought back, and Iran for the first time attacked Israel directly with missiles. The U.S. first joined in defense, and then under Mr. Trump joined to attack the nuclear facilities last June.

Mr. Trump gave Iran every chance to dismantle its nuclear program and reach a deal. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted on keeping the capabilities to pursue a bomb. He put that above everything. Critics of Mr. Trump’s bombing campaign now say it will motivate Iran to pursue nuclear weapons in earnest. But that’s what it has been doing for years.

No one knows how this war will evolve. But one thing is certain; since June 2025, the nuclear designs of a fanatical, anti-American, anti-Israel regime have been set back years and that is a service to the world.

J.W. Burk