Issues of blame pale in comparison to issues of security — Israel’s, the wider Middle East’s, and ultimately our own. If Kerry had a strong case that his deal promotes security, he probably wouldn’t be resorting to thinly veiled threats against Israel.
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Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that if Congress rejects the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, Israel will be blamed. “I fear that what could happen is if Congress were to overturn it, our friends Israel could actually wind up being more isolated and more blamed,” Kerry told the Council of Foreign Relations.
The question is: “more blamed” by whom?
The answer, I think, is “more blamed” by the Obama administration. As Jennifer Rubin says:
Kerry does not “fear” Israel would be blamed; he is threatening to blame Israel if U.S. lawmakers decide that the deal is not in the interests of the United States. Not only is he inciting anti-Israel fervor, but he also is repeating another canard, namely that Israel controls Congress.
In doing all this, the administration echoes ancient tropes against the Jews and not-so-ancient ones against an Israeli government that won’t meekly assent to its death.
Israel will indeed be blamed if Congress rejects the Iran deal. It will be blamed by the usual suspects, among whom the Obama administration features prominently, who blame Israel for a wide range of ills, including the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the break down of peace talks between Israel and Palestine.
As Michael Oren says, “the threat of the Secretary of State who, in the past, warned that Israel was in danger of becoming an apartheid state, cannot deter us from fulfilling our national duty to oppose this dangerous deal.” Nor should it deter Israel’s friends in Congress (and elsewhere).
The Obama administration is on its way out. The other “usual suspects” will continue to blame Israel for whatever, but their utterances have never counted for much.
Issues of blame pale in comparison to issues of security — Israel’s, the wider Middle East’s, and ultimately our own. If Kerry had a strong case that his deal promotes security, he probably wouldn’t be resorting to thinly veiled threats against Israel.
(The very notion that Iran wants to send the Jews of Israel to the ovens is ridiculous. Iran just wants to send the ovens to the Jews of Israel. Since they won’t even have to be transported and shoved in, why make a big deal of it? Hmmmm. — DM)
At first, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless it was finalized. Then, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless we read it all – and simply didn’t disclose all of his side-deals. Now, he says Mike Huckabee’s comparison of shipping the Jews of Israel to the new ovens of the Iranian Auschwitz-Nuke is “ridiculous.”
Perhaps Obama wants to wait until Iran nukes Israel for it to be politically correct to call Iran’s wiping Israel off the map a “Holocaust.” But, make no mistake, Obama knows full well that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the map with its Obama-blessed Nukes.
Come on, does anyone (except the American left-wing cool-aid drinking Jews) really believe that Iran will abide by their “voluntary” protocols under the Vienna announcement? Of course not! Are Obama or any of the European Unionleaders so rank stupid and naïve that they think Iran won’t build a bomb just like North Korea? Does anyone not know that one of Iran’s first targets will be to annihilate Israel?
Of course Obama knows Iran will seek to annihilate Israel, so that must be what Obama wants.
Obviously, Obama doesn’t care if he enables the murder of another 6 million Jews through a Palestinian State’s chemical Sarin-tipped Katyusha rockets, or an Iranian Nuke. It’s simple: Obama wants Israel and its Jews offed. What is so difficult to understand about that? Every move Obama has made from the very first moment of his presidency has been to irreparably harm Israel and Saudi Arabia, and irrevocably empower Iran. It doesn’t matter what Obama’s specific motivation is. Obama may believe in Farrakhan’s and Rev. Wright’s virulent Chicago anti-Semitism; Obama may be merely steeped in anti-British anti-Colonialism; or both. All that matters is Obama is acting in ways that will allow others to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. If Obama walks like a Jew-hater, arms Iran like a Jew-hater, and creates a PA “West Bank” State like a Jew-hater, he’s a Jew-hater.
But, now here come the American Leftist Jewish “Holocaust” speech-police like Debbie Wasserman-Schulz who say one isn’t allowed to invoke the “Holocaust” or “Auschwitz” into a political debate when it is Iran’s highest leaders who have repeatedly, openly, and notoriously injected into the political debate that they intend to wipe Israel off the map. And, in plain sight, Obama is crowning Iran, the greatest openly Holocaust-threatening, terror-state in the world, the nuclear hegemon-state of the Middle East because Iran is “stable.” I guess Obama forgot he helped quash a popular uprising there as his first foreign policy debacle.
And, let’s also not forget that Iran’s “stability” in Syria has murdered over 250,000 Syrian Sunnis. The Hiroshima “Little Boy” Uranium Gun-type Nuke killed about 150,000 Japanese, and the Nagasaki “Fat Man” Plutonium Implosion Nuke killed about 40,000 Japanese. So, Iran has already killed 2 Hiroshima’s worth of Syrian Sunnis or 6 Nagasaki’s worth of Syrian Sunnis. So, the 150 Billion Dollars Obama is giving Iran is actually a weapon of mass destruction in itself. All of the additional hundreds of thousands of dead Sunnis spilt by Iran’s malign use of the 150 Billion dollars is on the hands of Obama, Susan Rice, John Kerry and Samantha Power.
What Is so loathsome, is that every word, every sentence Obama says is a lie tainted with a patina of truth, Take for example Obama’s statement that Iran had enough enriched Uranium for 10 nukes, but it will be cut down under the supposed deal. When exactly did Iran enrich 10 nukes worth of Uranium? Iran enriched the uranium solely in the last 6 years because the CIA’s published declassified number had virtually zero enriched Uranium when Obama became President. And, Iran’s method to cut down its enrichment is a chemical process that can easily be reversed by a chemical process.
And you have to love Obama’s “If Iran’s ‘stable’ give them nukes” foreign policy. Under Obama’s “Stability” theory, Obama would have also armed Hitler with an arsenal of nukes because Hitler’s Nazi Germany was very stable.
In short, Obama knows full well that Iran is building an Auschwitz-Nuke that it wants to use to annihilate Israel; and, Obama is doing everything he can to ensure that it can do so.
Don’t let Jew-haters like Obama and Wasserman-Schultz turn “Never again,” into “Too Late.
[T]he gravest consequence of Obama’s Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic’s radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi’a Islamism.
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Obama’s Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President’s fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.
Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make. By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, Obama has bound the U.S. under international law without Senate consent.
The gravest consequence of Obama’s Iran deal is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic’s radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Shi’a Islamism.
A total reversal of the Iranian regime’s behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program. An end to Iran’s financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.
There is still time for a better deal that can be had.
As President Obama and Secretary Kerry dominated the airwaves with rounds of media interviews to defend the Iran deal last week, German Vice Chancellor and Economic Minister Sigmar Gabriel flew straight to Tehran for the first of what are certain to be countless meetings by P5+1 leaders to capitalize on new business opportunities in Iran.
In Europe, it seems, there is no debate to be had over the Iran deal; rather, it is a fait accompli.
But in the United States, the domestic debate is heating up, fueled by a Presidential primary campaign and increasingly justified bipartisan anxiety over the bill.
Independent of these political realities, however, the immediacy and tenacity of the White House’s defense of the Iran deal (which now has its own @TheIranDeal Twitter account, no less), betrays an acute unspoken discomfort by many Democrats with the practical flaws and global security dangers that the deal presents.
Obama’s Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President’s fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.
Haunted by his electorally-motivated premature withdrawal from Iraq in 2011; his refusal in 2013 to confront Syria’s Bashar Assad when he used chemical weapons on his own people; his betrayal by Russia’s Vladimir Putin to whom he had offered a reset button, and his impotence in failing to respond to the aggressive expansionist moves of Russia, ISIS, Iran and China, the President and Democrat Party, in signing the Iran deal, seem to be trying to absolve the United States of its role at the forefront of the global fight against Islamic radicalism and other threats.
Citing the failed EU-led negotiations with Iran in 2005, which resulted in Iran’s massive expansion of centrifuge production, defenders of the deal, such as Fareed Zakaria, have painted a bleak and zero-sum counterfactual argument. It is claimed that the result of Congress’s opposition will be an international community that forges ahead on renewed trade relations with Iran, while leaving the United States outside the prevailing global reconciliation and supposed love-in with the Islamic Republic.
There are several serious problems with this defense, and similarly with the White House’s blitzkrieg public relations campaign to fend off detractors of the Iran deal, with Secretary of State John Kerry commanding the preemptive, and often totally inaccurate, strikes against Congress. In consideration of the colossal failure represented by the North Korea nuclear precedent, let us consider the issues unique to Iran.
Foremost, opponents of the Iran deal are not universally suggesting the Iran deal be killed outright or immediately resort to “war.” This is simply disingenuous. Instead, the opponents’ fundamental premise is that a better deal was left on the table, and thus remains available. The very fact that the Iranian regime was at the negotiating table was indeed a sign of Iran’s weakness; any timelines for the P5+1 to “close” the deal were artificial constraints that surely erased further achievable concessions.
Second, much ink has already been spilled about the technical weaknesses of the Iran deal. Namely: that Iran’s vast nuclear infrastructure remains in place; that the most important restrictions expire in 10 years (a mere blip for humanity); that Iran’s uncivilized domestic and regional behavior was a naughty unmentionable; and finally, that the deal undoubtedly initiated a regional nuclear arms race while supercharging the Iranian regime’s finances.
Third, the gravest consequence of Obama’s Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic’s radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi’a Islamism.
This capitulation occurred precisely at a time when the West and the broader Middle East are facing off against the Islamic State — a terrorist force which, when stripped of its social media allure, is ultimately a Sunni-branded spin-off of the extremist Shi’a Islamism that has ruled in Iran since 1979.
The Iranians may be convenient allies as enemies of our enemies today, but not for one second have Iran’s rulers suggested their ultimate intent is anything other than the all too familiar “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” propaganda seen for the past 36 years. In what is objectively and wholly a strange deadly obsession, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been rousing crowds with calls for the destruction of two nation-states both during and after nuclear negotiations.
In spite of this public malice, defenders of the deal suggest that “the [Obama] administration is making a calculated bet that Iran will be constrained by international pressure.” Why exactly then is Khamenei making clear the opposite?
President Obama’s willingness to concede Iran’s new-found normalized membership in the community of nations on the basis of this nuclear deal is an affront to the liberal, free, democratic principles that have stood against the forces of tyranny throughout American history.
It is also an affront the American political system and to the members of both parties who are now being cornered by the President into supporting, or not supporting, such an intrinsically dangerous and needlessly flawed bargain with an avowed enemy.
Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As a number of critics have pointed out, the Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make.
By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, President Obama has bound the United States under international law without Senate consent.
If the United States is to remain the vanguard of human liberty, President Obama must distinguish between the vain pursuit of his legacy, and the civilized world’s deepest need at this consequential hour for the American President to defend comprehensively the fundamental principles that underpin the modern order. Unless his desired legacy is actually to destroy it.
As opponents of the Iran deal have noted, there is still time for a better deal that can be had.
To start, a total reversal of the Iranian regime’s behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program. Congress can lobby for this change, and should maintain American sanctions and applicable provisions in the U.S. Treasury Department’s SWIFT terrorist tracking finance program.
Next, while Iran’s regional malignancy may run deep in the regime’s veins (through the many twisted arms of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), an end to Iran’s financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.
Third, those who argue that Iran’s human rights record was not “on the table” in Geneva have needlessly abdicated the West’s moral and intellectual high ground to the forces of barbarism and hate that are now waging war across the region. Respect for international humanitarian norms should never be discarded in such negotiations.
At the end of the day, the deeper questions for Obama and the entire P5+1 are this: By whose standards were negotiations conducted? And whose worldview will rule the 21st century?
In defense of Obama’s approach, the deal’s supporters point out that the Iranians are a “proud, nationalistic people,” which is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant, just as it was for the leadership of Germany’s Third Reich.
The Iranian regime, by virtue of its radical religious nature, weak economy and political experiment with theocracy, should have borne the burden of coming to the negotiating table with the most to lose. Instead, President Obama, on behalf of the free world, is allowing this pariah state to guarantee its place among the nations, lavishly rewarded for having violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in all its about-to-be-well-funded lethality.
No wonder Iran’s Supreme Leader sent around a tweet of Obama pointing a pistol at his own head. Iran’s forcing itself on the rest of the world is a central part of Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution.
The Ayatollahs’ wish has long been finally to defeat the divided Arabs, and then to move on to defeat Israel, and then the grandest prize of all — the “Great Satan,” the United States.
Worse, apparently a “side deal” — classified for the Americans but not for Iran — enables Iran to provide its own soil samples to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to which it has been lying for decades. Even still worse, the parties to the agreement are required to help Iran protect its nuclear facilities should anyone try to attack them or sabotage them — including, presumably, any disenchanted signatories.
Iran will have been rewarded for having violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and been given a red carpeted fast track to complete its nuclear bomb.
If Obama and the others who signed the catastrophic nuclear agreement with Iran on the eve of Laylat al-Qadr, the Eve of Destiny, a few days before the end of the Ramadan fast, had studied a little history, they would know that the Battle of Qadisiyyah in 636, in which the Persians suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Arabs, has not yet ended. They would know that Islam had, in fact, been imposed on the Sassanid Empire by force, and that, in protest, the Persians adopted Shi’a Islam, a form of the religion that deviated from and changed the Islam of the Arabs, as a way of rebelling and continuing the fight.
If the West had studied that important event in Islamic history, they would understand they were enabling Iran to achieve a nuclear bomb and accelerate the national religious war between us, the Arabs, and the Shi’ite Iranians. For Iran’s mullahs, the showdown is meant to be apocalyptic.
In that respect, the agreement signed by the American-led powers with Iran’s rulers is a milestone along the path they have been praying for. The Ayatollahs’ wish has long been finally to defeat the divided Arabs, currently at their weakest point since the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring, and then to move on to defeat Israel, and then grandest prize of all: the “Great Satan,” the United States.
The Shi’ite regime of the Ayatollahs in Iran and their proxies are united. And, since the fall of the Shah, they are, sadly, also radical. Between their terrorist wings and influence in the Middle East and abroad, the Ayatollahs are refreshingly open about their determination to defeat the Arabs and achieve religious and national hegemony. Iran’s forcing itself on the rest of the world is a central part of Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution.
U.S. President Barack Obama has harmed us Arabs by abandoning his own red lines — against the emphatic advice of his own military advisors — to accept an agreement that in reality gives the Shi’ites open permission to build nuclear weapons at our expense and, more insanely, to allow Iran intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could reach America.
Worse, apparently a “side deal” — classified for Americans but not for Iran — allows Iran to provide its own soil samples to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to which it has been lying for decades. In other words, having the cat guard the milk.
Still worse, the parties to the agreement are required to help Iran protect its nuclear facilities should anyone try to attack them or sabotage them — including, presumably, any disenchanted signatories. No wonder Iran’s Supreme Leader sent a tweet of Obama pointing a pistol at his own head.
On July 25, 2015, Iran’s Supreme Leader (right) sent a tweet of Obama pointing a pistol at his own head.
If we try to look at the positive side of the agreement, it is just possible that Obama looked at the Sunni Islamic states, fractured and at each other’s throats, and at the ruthless terrorist groups and all the other battle zones gaining ground, and decided that we were too fractious for the U.S. to protect.
Now, one minute before the Iranians would have collapsed under the weight of the economic sanctions, the U.S. has given them a new lease on life, and, supported by the arrival of billions of dollars, is enabling them to return to their broad international terrorist activities and continue developing their nuclear weapons and the ICBMs on which to mount them.
Not only Iran will profit, but also the Turks, the Chinese and the Russians, who have already jumped at the chance to shore up Iran and themselves, both economically and militarily.
America will be now marginalized, as will its allies. What is in store for America is obvious to anyone listening to the hate speech of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He keeps promising that he will continue fighting against America and Israel, and that Iran will neither stop its nuclear development nor surrender.
Instead of lifting the sanctions, the United States should be increasing them.
When Iran joins the global energy market and strengthens its control of the Gulf maritime route, we, the Arabs, will quickly collapse. The recent visits of the Saudi Arabia foreign minister to American and the American Secretary of Defense to Israel did not help. As the arms embargo and sanctions are lifted, money will begin pouring into Iran. Missiles will be developed that will be capable of reaching first Israel and the Sunni Arab states, then Europe and then the United States. Global terrorism will mushroom. Iran will secretly complete its nuclear project ahead of schedule.
Since the agreement forbids agencies affiliated with America, and now apparently “foreigners,” from visiting Iran’s nuclear installations, the arms industry of Islamic Republic will flourish, and Iran will have been rewarded for having violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and will be given a red carpeted fast track to build a nuclear bomb.
Not exactly by chance, the security zone bisects Kurdish territory and holds back Kurdish forces in their assaults on ISIS.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a glance at the map betrays an all-out US-Turkish effort not put up backs in Tehran by interfering with Syrian, Hizballah and pro-Iranian militia operations in critical northern Syrian war zones such as Aleppo or give the Syrian rebels a helping hand in the Idlib province.
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After the second successive night of Turkish cross-border bombing attacks on the Islamic State in northern Syria, Ankara and Washington agreed Saturday, July 25, to name the “security zone” covered by a “partial no fly zone” they had declared in northern Syria the “Islamic State free zone.” Click HERE for full-size map!
This name represents a significant US-Turkish concession to Iran of immunity for its allies, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizballah, in order to gain Tehran’s cooperation in the campaign Turkey launched against ISIS Friday. Integral to the deal is also a promise to abstain from using the campaign to grant anti-Assad rebel groups any advantages.
This immunity did not extend to the Kurdish Workers Movement (PKK), which were targeted in the course of Turkish air and ground action in and over the new “security zone.” Those warplanes also flew missions Friday night over the PKK bases and logistical facilities in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. The PKK responded Saturday with an announcement that their armistice with Ankara was over. Turkey may consequently expect a recurrence of Kurdish terrorist violence in its cities,DEBKAfile notes.
High-placed sources in Ankara disclosed details of the US-Turkish deal with Iran. US warplanes will have the use of Turkish air bases, and not just the big Incirlik facility, for staging air strikes against ISIS, so long as Syrian targets are avoided. Washington agreed to Ankara using its air and ground operations against ISIS in Syria to drive into the new “security zone” and push toward the east to continue those attacks – eve if they run up against Kurdish forces which are also fighting ISIS.
The security zone’s area covered by a no-fly zone is 90 km wide and 40km deep, running between Mere, a small town 25 km north o Aleppo in the west, to the northwestern town of Jarabulus, which is situated on the west bank of the Euphrates.
Not exactly by chance, the security zone bisects Kurdish territory and holds back Kurdish forces in their assaults on ISIS.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a glance at the map betrays an all-out US-Turkish effort not put up backs in Tehran by interfering with Syrian, Hizballah and pro-Iranian militia operations in critical northern Syrian war zones such as Aleppo or give the Syrian rebels a helping hand in the Idlib province.
The combined US-Turkish action moreover greatly supports the Assad-Hizballah war against ISIS gains in Syria and enhances Iranian and Russian influence in Damascus.
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, in Irbil Friday, July 24, assured leaders of the semiautonomous Kurdish Republic of Iraq. “We are trying to build a force through the territory of Iraq, and someday in Syria, that can do what the peshmerga have achieved.”
At the same time, in Syria, the Kurds and their national aspirations look like losing out dramatically in the fallout from the complex US-Turkish partnership for beating ISIS back.
The Iran deal is President Obama’s most important “legacy” achievement. He sees it as the key to his vision of a “new equilibrium” in the region. In the past, he has “preempted” Israel’s preemptive capacity by leaking Israeli attack plans. He may do worse in future–unless Congress defeats the Iran deal and denies him that mandate.
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On his visit to Israel in March 2013, President Barack Obama backed Israel’s right to use force to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb.
At a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama said: “…each country has to make its own decisions when it comes to the awesome decision to engage in any kind of military action, and Israel is differently situated than the United States. And I would not expect that the Prime Minister would make a decision about his country’s security and defer that to any other country…”.
Now, in the wake of the Iran deal, the Obama administration is sending dramatically different signals.On the Today show Friday, Secretary of State Kerry said of a pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iran: “That’d be an enormous mistake, a huge mistake with grave consequences for Israel and for the region, and I don’t think it’s necessary.”
Kerry later tried to deflect concerns that the Iran deal requires world powers to secure Iran’s nuclear facilities, downplaying the chance those clauses could be interpreted as requiring the U.S. to defend Iran against Israel.
Yet faced with a choice between defending Israel and defending the Iran deal, it is become clear that under some circumstances, the Obama administration would choose the latter. That is a radically different position from the one Obama took in public just a short time before formal negotiations began.
True, if Israel were to attack Iran preemptively, it would not be the first time it had done so without U.S. backing. President Ronald Reagan condemned Israel’s attack against Iraq in 1981; George W. Bush said “no” to Israel’s 2007 strike against Syria.
But Obama’s new stance suggests something stronger than mere disapproval.
The Iran deal is President Obama’s most important “legacy” achievement. He sees it as the key to his vision of a “new equilibrium” in the region. In the past, he has “preempted” Israel’s preemptive capacity by leaking Israeli attack plans. He may do worse in future–unless Congress defeats the Iran deal and denies him that mandate.
If the deal holds, Israel may soon face the impossible choice of whether to risk America’s new interests for the sake of its own survival.
American weakness has brought us to this difficult moment. While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore its duress with pride. It was never an even match. We now have to rely on a tiny ally to do the job for us. But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern states), get ready. The easy ways out disappeared long ago.
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President Obama has made an art form of attacking his opponents rather than substantively defending his own policies, most recently regarding the Vienna agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Essentially, Obama argues that we must either accept his wretched deal or go to war to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
As is typical, Obama posits the wrong choice, apparently to distract from the unpleasant reality that the agreement won’t work. It will not prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. So the real choice we are faced with is dealing with the consequences of military action or the consequences of a nuclear Iran. Neither is palatable, but the latter is far worse. If the real objective is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, preemptive military action is now inescapable.
This rock-and-hard-place outcome has long been foreseeable. Iran’s dogged determination to become a nuclear-weapons state was fiercer and stronger than the West’s frail response. Assuming Iran scrupulously complies with every provision agreed to in Vienna — an absurdly unlikely scenario given the ayatollahs’ objectives and history — its ambitions for nuclear weapons will simply have been delayed eight to 10 years.
In all likelihood, the ayatollahs are already at work violating the accords. After all, Iran has systematically breached its voluntarily-assumed obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for more than 30 years. Now the president’s deal will allow Iran to keep the fruits of its violations. Yes, the deal includes restrictions on uranium enrichment, but Tehran can retain its enrichment program, with guaranteed international assistance in improving it. These concessions are fatal mistakes.
Moreover, Iran’s ballistic missile efforts — its development of the means to deliver nuclear weapons all over the world — will barely be touched. Nor does the deal in any way address Iran’s clandestine weaponization efforts, which it has denied and hidden from the International Atomic Energy Agency with great skill.
Last week, the news that the administration has not even seen the texts of two agreements between the energy agency and Iran, both crucial to implementation of the Vienna accords, only raises further doubts. President Obama must provide the texts of these “side deals” to Congress before any serious consideration of the overall agreement is possible.
Some critics of Obama’s plan advocate scuttling the deal and increasing economic sanctions against Iran instead. They are dreaming. Iran and the United States’ negotiating partners have already signed the accords and are straining at their leashes to implement them. There will be no other “better deal.” Arguments about what Obama squandered or surrendered along the way are therefore fruitless. As for sanctions, they were already too weak to prevent Iran’s progress toward the bomb, and they will not be reset now. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, “These sanctions are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.”
Patrick Clawson, the director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, provided the most recent thumbs-down assessment of sanctions: “Iran has muddled through the shock of the sanctions imposed in 2012, and its structural [economic] problems are not particularly severe compared to those of other countries.” He estimates Iran’s nuclear and terrorism-support programs to cost only about $10 billion annually. No wonder administration officials have testified that sanctions (including those imposed piecemeal before 2012) did not slow Iran’s nuclear efforts.
Nor will the deal’s “snapback” mechanism (intended to coerce Iran back into compliance if it breaches its obligations) change that reality. Tehran’s belligerent response is expressly stated in the agreement’s text: “If sanctions are reinstated in whole or in part, Iran will treat that as grounds to cease performing its commitments … in whole or in part.” Tehran does risk losing some future economic benefits should sanctions snap back, but by then it will have already cashed in the assets the deal unfreezes and signed new lucrative trade and investment contracts.
Once those benefits begin flowing all around, the pressure on world governments will only increase to ignore Iranian violations, or to treat them as minor or inadvertent, certainly not warranting the reimposition of major sanctions. The ayatollahs have dusted off Lenin’s barb that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” and applied it to the age of nuclear proliferation.
If diplomacy and sanctions have failed to stop Iran, diplomacy alone will fail worse. Like it or not, we now face this unpleasant reality: Iran probably will violate the deal; it may not be detected doing so and if detected, it will not be deterred by “snapback” sanctions. So we return to the hard question: Are we prepared to do what will be necessary to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons?
Obama most certainly is not, which means the spotlight today is on Israel.
If Israel strikes, there will be no general Middle East war, despite fears to the contrary. We know this because no general war broke out when Israel attacked Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1981, or when it attacked the North Korean-built Syrian reactor in 2007. Neither Saudi Arabia nor other oil-producing monarchies wanted those regimes to have nuclear weapons, and they certainly do not want Iran to have them today.
However, Iran may well retaliate. At that point, Washington must be ready to immediately resupply Israel for losses incurred by its armed forces in the initial attack, so that Israel will still be able to effectively counter Tehran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, which will be its vehicles for retaliation. The United States must also provide muscular political support, explaining that Israel legitimately exercised its inherent right of self-defense. Whatever Obama’s view, public and congressional support for Israel will be overwhelming.
American weakness has brought us to this difficult moment. While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore its duress with pride. It was never an even match. We now have to rely on a tiny ally to do the job for us. But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern states), get ready. The easy ways out disappeared long ago.
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Iran scam Part III
Kerry says that although he has neither read nor even seen the”classified” side deals between Iran and the IAEA about the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program, he has been fully briefed, knows “exactly” what they say and will brief Congress in closed session.
Parts I and II of this series deal with the bases for and absurdities of the January 14th U.S. approval of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. From a national security perspective, the published “deal” was absurd even without recently discovered but secret and “classified” side deals about the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. With them, the “deal” has gone from merely absurd to insane.
negotiate separately with Iran about the inspection of a facility long-suspected of being used to research long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
amends the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to direct the President, within five days after reaching an agreement with Iran regarding Iran’s nuclear program, to transmit to Congress:
the text of the agreement and all related materials and annexes; . . . [Emphasis added.]
It does not exclude any related materials, “classified” or not such as “side deals,” from those required to be provided to the Congress. However, they have been “classified” and cloaked in secrecy to achieve that end.
The side deals
We do not know precisely what the side deals say; only the signatories, Iran and the IAEA, know. However, according to an article titled Iran Bombshell: It Will Inspect Itself,
This week brought the stunning news that Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) had discovered, during a meeting with IAEA officials, the existence of secret side deal between the IAEA and Tehran— a side deal that will not, like the main nuclear agreement, be shared with Congress. So critics of the agreement were understandably eager to hear an explanation from Secretary of State John Kerry when he and other senior administration officials testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. [Emphasis added.]
The hearing produced a new bombshell: In its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear-weapons-related work, the IAEA will rely on Iran to collect samples at its Parchin military base and other locations. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
In his questioning of administration witnesses, Risch said:
Parchin stays in place. Now, does that sound like it’s for peaceful purposes? Let me tell you the worst thing about Parchin. What you guys agreed to was [that] we can’t even take samples there. The IAEA can’t take samples there. [Iranians are] going to be able to test by themselves! Even the NFL wouldn’t go along with this. How in the world can you have a nation like Iran doing their own testing? [Emphasis added.]
. . . Are we going to trust Iran to do this? This is a good deal? This is what we were told we were going to get when we were told, “Don’t worry, we’re going to be watching over their shoulder and we’re going to put in place verification[s] that are absolutely bullet proof”? We’re going to trust Iran to do their own testing? This is absolutely ludicrous.
The issue became even more interesting when Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), who learned about the side deal from Risch’s question, had the following exchange with Kerry:
Menendez: “Is it true that the Iranians are going to be able to take the samples, as Senator Risch said? Because chain of custody means nothing if at the very beginning what you’re given is chosen and derived by the perpetrator.”
Kerry: “As you know, senator, that is a classified component of this that is supposed to be discussed in a classified session. We’re perfectly prepared to fully brief you in a classified session with respect to what will happen. Secretary Moniz has had his team red-team that effort and he has made some additional add-ons to where we are. But it’s part of a confidential agreement between the IAEA and Iran as to how they do it. The IAEA has said they are satisfied that they will be able to do this in a way that does not compromise their needs and that adequately gives them answers that they need. We’ve been briefed on it, and I’d be happy to brief you.” [Emphasis added.]
Menendez: “My time is up. If that is true, it would be the equivalent of the fox guarding the chicken coop.”
Here’s a video of Sen. Menendez questioning Kerry. The interesting part begins at about 10:00 into the video.
Kerry acknowledged that he had neither read nor even seen the side deals but that he and his scientific expert, Secretary Moniz — who leads the effort to uncover the non-existence extent of any “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of Iran’s nuke activities — have been fully briefed and know “exactly” what the side deals say. They promised to tell members of Congress in closed session.
A blast from the past
Kerry and Moniz, like others in the Obama administration, are committed to the “deal” and to having the Congress accept rather than reject it. Kerry would be very “embarrassed” if the “deal” were killed. So would Obama. It is reasonable to expect that any briefings they provide will be conducted with those goals firmly in mind — just as it is reasonable to expect that Iranian inspections of, and collection of samples from, Parchin and other military sites will be conducted with the goal of negating the existence of any “possible military dimensions.”
Are there additional side deals that have yet to be discovered and reported? At this point, probably only Iran and the IAEA know.
It’s “Déjà vu all over again”
In a “blast from the past,” the UN agency charged with ensuring that all of Syria’s chemical weapons were disposed of properly did not do so:
International inspectors failed to stop Syria from stockpiling chemical weapons, in spite of an international agreement in 2013, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal on Friday. International inspectors were skeptical of Syria’s claims to have disposed of its stockpiles, but were afraid that reporting violations would destroy the overall deal: “Members of the inspection team didn’t push for answers, worried that it would compromise their primary objective of getting the regime to surrender the 1,300 tons of chemicals it admitted to having.” [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
The Syrian guards assigned to inspections convoys also drove slowly, failed to destroy chemical weapons when asked to do so, and appeared to be intermingled with Iranian soldiers who were guarding Syrian chemical weapons sites. As a result, Syria remains unaccountable.
The IAEA faces comparable difficulties in evaluating Iran’s “possible military dimensions” and, if reports about the side deals are even partially accurate, will continue to bow to Iranian interests in denying the existence of those dimensions.
Conclusions
The “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program are why a “deal” was deemed necessary. Aside from its military dimensions, there would have been few objections to a peaceful Iranian nuclear program devoted to electrical generation, medical research and the like. Iran’s conduct over the years and continuing through the present has belied its claims about the exclusively peaceful nature of its actions.
The Obama administration seeks to keep the members of Congress — and the “little people” who elect them — ignorant of gaping holes in the P5+1 “deal,” particularly those relevant to Iran’s militarization of nukes, the most important of all gaping holes thus far discovered. It is now obfuscating, and will continue to obfuscate, the IAEA – Iran side deals.
As a signatory to the side deals with the IAEA, Iran has the texts. The Iranian parliament will approve or reject the “deal,” apparently after the sixty day period granted to the U.S. Congress to review it. The Iranian parliament will be subject to pressures and obfuscations by the Khamenei regime, their nature depending on whether it wants the deal to be approved or rejected. Between shouts of “death to America” and “death to Israel,” Khamenei has given mixed signals about his desires. The Iranian parliament, unlike the U.S. Congress, will likely see the texts of the side deals if, as is also likely, they drastically limit IAEA investigations of Iran’s nuke militarization activities and hence enhance the “deal’s” appeal.
By whom have the texts of the side deals been “classified?” The Obama administration? Treating the texts as “classified” is very likely a ploy to avoid Congressional and public scrutiny. Kerry and Moniz claim to know “exactly” what the unread side deals say, and contend that they will tell members of Congress, in closed session, what they know. They will do so with the goal of making the “deal” appear to be as good for Obama as they can. They may very well persuade many if not most Democrats to approve the “deal.”
If the Obama administration even approached being as transparent as Obama has often claimed, He would waive all relevant classifications and allow the briefings to be in open, rather than closed, session, with the full texts of all side deals before the members of the Congress and available to the public at large. He won’t. He could (but won’t) be threatened with impeachment for blocking legislative action by the Congress. Even if Obama were threatened, He would know it to be an empty gesture; the Senate would reject any bill of impeachment adopted by House.
At least until Obama has left office (hopefully, in January of 2017), we are stuck. Like Obama’s America, Israel, perhaps in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, has the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear weaponization facilities which threaten them. Whether they, unlike Obama’s America, have the will to do it is a different matter.
House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted in a letter to President Obama that the administration hand over any side agreements between Iran and the IAEA as well, saying that’s what’s required by a law passed earlier this year giving Congress a chance to review the deal.
Come on guys, don’t embarrass John Kerry in front of his cool Ayatollah friends.
As a bonus, if the Iran nuclear sellout deal dies, John Kerry will be too embarrassed to show his long face in Vienna again. Or Havana or Tehran.
If you won’t think of the Ayatollahs, won’t you think of John Kerry forced to retire back to his windsurfing tax-free Elba with his rich wife, too humiliated to negotiate with any more terrorists?
A congressional vote to undermine the Obama administration’s diplomatic negotiations with Iran would be a major setback for the United States on the world stage and personally humiliating Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday.
“I would be embarrassed to try to go out,” Kerry said during remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations. “What am I going to say to people after this? ‘Come negotiate with us.’ ‘Can you deliver?'”
“Do you think the ayatollah is going to come back to the table if Congress refuses this and negotiate this again?” he added.
Come on guys, don’t embarrass John Kerry in front of his cool Ayatollah friends.
John Kerry really wants Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah to like him so he can get invited to all his cool “Death to America” parties. He’s still haunted by memories of the time Russia wouldn’t return his phone calls for a week or ask him to the prom.
Kerry’s slip acknowledges that the entire facade of the “moderate” president is meaningless and it’s the Ayatollah that matters. Also the Ayatollah hasn’t actually approved the deal. But there’s another angle.
John Kerry is whining that America will look bad if it pulls back from the deal now. But Obama had no problem violating agreements with Israel, Poland and Libya. Here’s an example.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is denying that there were understandings between the Bush Administration and the Sharon and Olmert governments that limited natural growth of settlements but permitted some construction within agreed constraints.
Today, Elliott Abrams, who headed the Mideast team at the Bush White House and participated in the key discussions with Israeli officials about the settlements freeze issue, weighed in with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal stating forcefully that, “There were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank…principles that would permit some continuing growth….They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003….The prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation — the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank…For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.”
Nobody in Obama Inc. was embarrassed to violate a deal with Israel. And that was a deal in which Israel did its part by withdrawing from Gaza.
Kerry whines that he would be embarrassed in front of the Ayatollah if Congress rejects a deal that wasn’t even finalized and in which Iran has yet to do its part.
But that’s just where the priorities of this administration are.
The Ayatollah is a “cool” enemy of the United States whom Kerry wants to impress. Just like he wanted to impress the Viet Cong in Paris and the Sandanistas and Assad. But he could care less what allies like Israel or Poland think.
They like America. So they’re not cool. There’s no need for the administration’s manchildren to impress them or win their approval.
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