WarSclerotic

We truly have entered never-never land when it comes to Israel and Iran. Consider that for the last week President Obama has been accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of racism for telling his supporters to turn out because the left was driving Arab turnout sky-high — a proposition that was true and yet for which Netanyahu apologized for giving offense. The apology was deemed insufficient by a White House bent on creating a rift. Moreover, the president has refused to accept Netanyahu’s clarification and reaffirmation that he has not abandoned the two-state solution. His chief of staff, Denis McDonough, thundered to the anti-Israel J Street crowd that some words just can’t be ignored. But then right on cue, the administration dismissed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s chant of “death to America” as merely for “domestic” consumption. Pause. Face palm. The contrast is striking:

But we don’t stop there. The New York Times tells us that the administration has given away so much that even the hard-liners in Iran are pleased. (Many of us reject the notion of hard-liners and moderates, but for those who buy that narrative, the report is stunning.) The report tells us:

The restraint by the hard-liners also reflects a general satisfaction, analysts say, with the direction of the talks and the successes Iran is enjoying, extending and deepening its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. . . .

“We will have no letters or other nonsense that we are witnessing in the United States,” Hamid Reza Taraghi, a political strategist with close ties to Ayatollah Khamenei, said, referring to a letter 47 Republican senators sent to Iran’s leaders warning them that any deal on their nuclear program could be reversed by Mr. Obama’s successor. “Iran speaks with one voice.”

Mr. Taraghi said the muzzle would remain in place as long as the negotiations seemed to be progressing. “Fact of the matter is that we are seeing positive changes in the U.S. position in the nuclear talks,” he said. “We are steadfast and the U.S. is compromising. We are not complaining.”

So much for the argument that the Republican co-signers of an open letter were helping the hard-liners. No, that is Obama’s job. After all, a deal that requires so little of Iran, frees Iran from sanctions and allows the Iranian regime bragging rights for subduing “Great Satan” while gaining international legitimacy is more than Iranian officials could have hoped for.

But wait, there is more. The White House is now attacking Israel, not so much for “spying” on negotiations (after all, who are they to complain after ‘fessing up to monitoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel?), but for sharing the information with Congress, whom the administration was doing its level best to keep in the dark. The Wall Street Journal reports: “The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.” Of course, there would be no upset and no need to quietly tell Congress what was going on if the administration were not trying to hide from lawmakers and the country its negotiating posture and parade of concessions.

And in case you think the worry about an impending Iran deal is simply an Israeli concern, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal went public with his misgivings, saying, “It is impossible that Iran should get undeserved deals.”  The Times of Israel noted, “The statements came after Israel sent envoys to France — among them Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz — to prevent what Israel considers a ‘bad deal.’ France has been more hawkish than the United States at the negotiating table, reportedly demanding more stringent restrictions than other Western delegations. Paris, which raised last-minute objections to an interim agreement reached with Iran in 2013, could threaten a deal again.”

Reportedly, French concerns about the negotiations caused talks to break last week, but experts say an agreement of some type seems virtually inevitable at this point. One Iran watcher observed via e-mail, “In my view we are now on an irreversible trajectory toward a deal. Both sides are too far in and too far invested to walk away. Whatever details and gaps remain will be somehow worked out.” He added, “And no, the French are not going to stand in front of this train. Don’t know if there will be a deal by month’s end, but there will be a deal.”

To recap, the president distorts the remarks of our democratic ally’s elected leader to paint him as a racist and an enemy of peace and refuses to accept his attempts to clarify and step away from them, while making excuses for Iran’s leader’s expression that it wants to destroy the United States. (We are supposed to take seriously that the Iranians will adhere scrupulously to a deal?) But Iran has little to fear, since even its hardest hard-liners are tickled about the deal, which is so favorable to Iran that the administration was trying to keep it from lawmakers and which the Saudis are forced to complain publicly about.

You do wonder what it will take for Democrats to become a wee bit upset about all this, stop adhering to the administration’s pleas for delays, step forward before more harm is done, lay down some markers for a deal and make clear there will be no lasting deal without Congress’s stamp of approval — which is becoming more improbable with each administration collapse.

One must be intentionally blind or quite naive to believe that the president is doing anything but betraying our allies and harming our national security for the sake of a deal that should come with a warning label: Bad Deal — Show Extreme Caution. For Democrats to continue to hold up congressional efforts to interpose lawmakers between Obama and a horrible deal is nothing less than enabling the president. And Hillary Clinton’s silence while this three-ring circus is going on must be taken as assent.