For the past sev­eral weeks, the Ira­nian re­gime’s cat­a­strophic mis­han­dling of the cor­o­navi­rus cri­sis and the im­me­di­ate dan­ger this poses to neigh­bor­ing coun­tries have dis­tracted at­ten­tion from the more tra­di­tional ways in which the Islamic Re­pub­lic men­aces the world. But a pair of alarm­ing re­ports on Iran’s nu­clear ac­tiv­i­ties by the In­ter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency have just come as a brac­ing re­minder.

These re­ports should shock the Euro­pean sig­na­to­ries of the 2015 nu­clear deal out of their com­pla­cency over the re­gime’s in­ten­tions, and end their foot-drag­ging on pe­nal­iz­ing Iran for vi­o­lat­ing the agree­ment.

The U.N.’s nu­clear watch­dog says its in­spec­tors have been barred ac­cess to some lo­ca­tions where nu­clear-re­lated ac­tiv­i­ties are known to have taken place. “The agency iden­ti­fied a num­ber of ques­tions re­lated to pos­si­ble un­de­clared nu­clear ma­terial and nu­clear-re­lated ac­tiv­i­ties at three lo­ca­tions in Iran that had not been de­clared by Iran,” the IAEA said in a re­port.

A sec­ond re­port, seen by Bloomberg, con­firms that Iran has con­tin­ued to ex­pand its nu­clear stock­pile, vi­o­lat­ing the Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Ac­tion it agreed with the ma­jor world pow­ers. It now has more than 1,020 ki­lo­grams of low-en­riched ura­nium, ma­terial enough to be turned, with ad­di­tional pro­cess­ing, into a nu­clear weapon if the re­gime

wants one.

That’s not a very big “if.” When you add to these re­ports Iran’s long his­tory of se­cret nu­clear de­vel­op­ment — sus­pended only when it was caught in the act — and the re­gime’s more re­cent threats, the in­es­cap­able con­clu­sion is that the re­gime cov­ets the Bomb. After all, there is no other ra­tio­nal rea­son for its nu­clear pro­gram.

Yet for Euro­pean vo­ta­ries of the nu­clear deal, the sec­ond IAEA re­port is just an­other op­por­tu­nity to lament the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s 2018 de­ci­sion to pull the United States out of the deal and im­pose sanc­tions on the Islamic Re­pub­lic. They ar­gue that Iran had no op­tion but to break its end of the bar­gain and build up its en­riched-ura­nium stock­pile. Never mind that, in so do­ing, the re­gime in Te­hran is in­creas­ing the pros­pect of war, the very thing the Euro­pe­ans claim they wish to fore­stall.

Ev­ery­one who ben­e­fits from use of our streets and roads bears re­spon­si­bil­ity for fi­nanc­ing their main­te­nance. And us­ers should con­trib­ute pro­por­tion­ally to the ex­tent that they use the roads. This us­age man­i­fests it­self in both the weight of the ve­hi­cle and miles driven. Heavier ve­hi­cles dam­age pave­ments much more than lighter ones.

Since heavier ve­hi­cles use more fuel than lighter ones, and more miles driven con­sumes more fuel, it makes sense to to pay for road main­te­nance with a per-gal­lon tax on ve­hi­cle fuel. But elec­tric ve­hi­cles (both all-elec­tric and plug-in hy­brids) use no or very lit­tle fuel, mean­ing a tax only on fuel for road main­te­nance would let these own­ers off with­out pay­ing their fair share.

While there is logic be­hind Ohio’s sur­charges for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, they are too high.

I drive 10,000 miles an­nu­ally in a Honda Clar­ity plug-in hy­brid, and I cal­cu­late that the $200 an­nual sur­charge equates to about 19.3 miles per gal­lon, at the up­com­ing 38.5 cents per gal­lon Ohio gas tax. This is worse than a large pickup. I am pun­ished for driv­ing an EV.

My wife pays a $100 sur­charge on her Toy­ota Prius, which runs on bat­tery only dur­ing speeds of 10 miles per hour or less. Thus all driv­ing on pub­lic roads uses the gas­o­line en­gine. It av­er­ages 40 to 45 mpg. Small gas­o­line-only ve­hi­cles that get sim­i­lar gas mile­age are not re­quired to pay the ex­tra $100 sur­charge.

The $100 sur­charge for non-plug-in hy­brid ve­hi­cles is in­ap­pro­pri­ate and should be dis­con­tin­ued, and the $200 sur­charge for plug-in EVs is ex­ces­sive and should be low­ered.

PHILLIP KLUNK

Ot­tawa Hills

Spend­ing off tar­get

Here is some­thing to pon­der be­fore the next elec­tion. Sup­pose 50 per­cent of the money spent on the space pro­gram was spent on can­cer re­search. Would you rather pre­vent your wife hav­ing her breast re­moved, or find out we can grow corn on the moon?

Sup­pose we closed the mil­i­tary bases we have in for­eign coun­tries. What real good do they do? But we pay other coun­tries to keep them there.

Why don’t we give money that is go­ing to for­eign coun­tries to our se­nior cit­i­zens who have paid taxes for 65 years?

Why can Can­ada have health care that is free or low

cost and we all pay?

Some­thing is not right.

JACK GULVAS

Hol­land

BMV a breeze

I was sur­prised when I read Dr. Am­jad Hus­sain’s col­umn (“Yes, you can smile for the BMV,” March 4) crit­i­ciz­ing his re­cent per­ceived un­pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence at the Bureau of Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle of­fice.

My ex­pe­ri­ence at an of­fice in Syl­va­nia couldn’t have been more pleas­ant. Yes, I had to wait. But I did so sit­ting in one of the many com­fort­able avail­able chairs. I spent that time read­ing and when my num­ber was called I was ef­fi­ciently con­ducted through the reg­is­tra­tion pro­cess to get my new, fed­er­ally com­pli­ant driver ID. I might add that I was pre­pared, hav­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate doc­u­ments in hand.

Thank you, work­ers at BMV.

GORDON MATHER

Syl­va­nia Town­ship

Smart cit­ies can ef­fec­tively use tax breaks and other in­cen­tives to en­cour­age de­vel­op­ment that cre­ates jobs, im­proves neigh­bor­hoods, and helps grow their com­mu­ni­ties in de­lib­er­ate, stra­te­gic ways.

Toledo needs to re­double its ef­forts to be­come that kind of city.

Look no fur­ther than the re­cent de­bate over whether Toledo should grant about $978,000 in tax breaks to a de­vel­oper who bought the va­cant Elder-Beer­man store along Se­cor Road.

Niki Toledo I, LLC, would have used the in­cen­tive — re­cently voted down 11-1 by Toledo City Coun­cil — to help cover $1.2 mil­lion in as­bes­tos re­moval that would be nec­es­sary be­fore de­mol­ish­ing the 154,000-square-foot de­part­ment store. Niki Toledo has con­tracts with T.J. Maxx and Bob’s Dis­count Fur­ni­ture to oc­cupy 50,000 square feet of re­tail space on the site of the old build­ing.

City eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cials rec­om­mended Niki Toledo get a 50 per­cent tax ex­emp­tion for 15 years of the prop­erty’s as­sessed value be­fore re­me­di­a­tion, and a 100 per­cent ex­emp­tion for 15 years af­ter re­me­di­a­tion.

But crit­ics, in­clud­ing many West Toledo res­i­dents, com­plained that the deal traded away tax rev­e­nue for too lit­tle in re­turn — rel­a­tively low-pay­ing re­tail jobs at es­tab­lish­ments un­likely to do much to spur the city’s econ­omy.

Tax breaks and other de­vel­op­ment pack­ages should be used to en­cour­age de­vel­op­ers to take on proj­ects they wouldn’t oth­er­wise. That stretch of Se­cor Road is one of the city’s bus­i­est and big­gest re­tail hubs. It’s not an un­likely place for de­vel­op­ers to con-

sider, and re­plac­ing the for­mer Elder-Beer­man build­ing with new, smaller re­tail space is not an un­likely proj­ect to imag­ine there.

Don’t blame de­vel­op­ers for seek­ing an in­cen­tive. That’s what smart prop­erty de­vel­op­ers do.

But the re­quest high­lighted a prob­lem with Toledo’s de­vel­op­ment strat­egy. In­stead of wait­ing for de­vel­op­ers to show up with a re­quest and then de­cid­ing the mat­ter in iso­la­tion of a larger plan, the city should have been pre­pared with a well-thought-out set of stan­dards for the type of de­vel­op­ment it would like to in­cen­tivize along Se­cor Road. Based on the op­po­si­tion to the Niki Toledo deal, city of­fi­cials should ex­plore the of­ten ex­pressed de­sire of the greater West­gate com­mu­nity for a com­mer­cial dis­trict that is friend­lier to pe­des­tri­ans and pub­lic trans­por­ta­tion.

The city has not had an eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment di­rec­tor since mid-2019. The Kaps­zuk­ie­w­icz ad­min­is­tra­tion should hire a di­rec­tor and make him or her the point per­son for proj­ects like this.

Ef­fec­tive eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment uses in­cen­tives and tax breaks that en­cour­age the de­vel­op­ment of proj­ects the com­mu­nity pre­fers rather than set­tling for proj­ects de­vel­op­ers pre­fer and the com­mu­nity op­poses.