RUTHFULLY YOURS

Some wonder how history will treat Barack Obama’s presidency. That depends on who writes the histories.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s account will fist-pump the Iran nuclear deal as the central foreign-policy event of the Obama presidency, a triumph for Western diplomacy.

But news photographs in recent weeks are producing a different history. These photos document the abject humiliation of the West by Iran. Americans who plan to vote in their presidential election should look hard at these photos, because the West’s direction after this will turn on the decisions they make.
The first photo is of a hallway in Rome’s Capitoline Museums, a repository of art dating to Western antiquity. Out of what the government of Italy called “respect” for the sensibilities of visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the museum placed large white boxes over several nude sculptures, including a Venus created in the second century B.C.

Then, because Mr. Rouhani will not attend a meal that serves alcohol to anyone, the nominally Italian government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi declined to serve wine.

They did so for the same reason that beggars grub change in front of Rome’s churches. Freed by the Obama nuclear deal with Iran, Italy’s tin-cup businesses signed about a dozen deals with Mr. Rouhani this week, totaling $18 billion.

WASHINGTON—Libya is emerging as a new destination of choice for extremists, as both Islamic State and al Qaeda have used the chaos since the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi to seize territory and parts of the economy, a report by a security consulting firm said.

Wednesday’s report warned that Libya could become a dangerous new base for terrorist groups because of the country’s ungoverned hinterlands, long, porous borders and huge oil reserves.

Already, the absence of law and proliferation of weapons and violence in Libya “have allowed violent extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al Qaeda to thrive,” said the report by The Soufan Group, founded by a former U.S. government official who investigated the 2001 terror attacks.

Three suicide bombers, all women, killed themselves and 10 other people during an attack on Wednesday in Chibok, the northeast Nigerian town where Boko Haram kidnapped 276 teenage girls from a school in 2014.

The attackers, suspected members of Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency, struck a market, as well as two residential neighborhoods, said eye witness Bitrus Mark.

Residents of the small town helped carry at least 30 injured people to a nearby clinic, according to local bystander Emmanuel Samuel, who helped tally the number of people killed.

At least 219 of the schoolgirls taken from Chibok in April 2014 remain missing, even as Nigeria records successes in the wider war on Boko Haram. This time last year, Islamic State-allied insurgency controlled a section of Nigeria the size of Belgium. Now, Boko Haram has been chased into hiding, although the group continues to lash out by attacking ordinary people in public places.

PARIS—France’s justice minister resigned Wednesday after a clash with President François Hollande over his proposal to adopt a constitutional amendment stripping some homegrown terrorists of their nationality.

Christiane Taubira “agreed on the need to put an end to her mandate as the debate on the constitutional amendment opens in Parliament today,” the president’s office said. The president appointed Jean-Jacques Urvoas, a senior lawmaker, to succeed Ms. Taubira.

Her departure highlights the fault lines within Mr. Hollande’s Socialist Party over his strategy for tackling terrorism. His government has imposed a raft of state-of-emergency measures—permitting police to conduct warrantless raids and detain people without court orders—that critics say contrast with the French Republic’s status as a beacon of civil liberties.

However, it was Mr. Hollande’s recent decision to strip terrorists of their nationality—an idea long supported by France’s right-wing parties—that opened the divide with Ms. Taubira.

“I’m leaving the government over a major political disagreement,” Ms. Taubira said, after tweeting: “Sometimes you resist by staying, sometimes you resist by leaving.”
In December, the French government unveiled a proposal for constitutional amendments that would shield the state-of-emergency measures from legal challenges and strip dual citizens of their French nationality if they are convicted of terrorism.

French law already allows the government to take away citizenship from convicted terrorists if they are born abroad. But Mr. Hollande was under pressure from France’s right-wing parties to go further.