The Suicide of the West

AUSTRIA-IRAN-EU-US-CHINA-NUCLEAR-POLITICSThe Iran negotiator waving goodbye to western civilization.

Obama has gotten his Iran deal. He announced the deal with great fanfare.

In each case, the country’s top official decided to reverse a long-standing policy, taking significant risk to open space for negotiations. In gambling that the time had come to seek a deal, President Obama and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke a stalemate that had made the years of on-and-off negotiations an exercise in frustration.

Yes, Iran has agreed to all our concessions.

It begins when Obama came to office in 2009 and signaled his interest in reviving negotiations, sending a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei, and Nowruz holiday greetings to the Iranian public. Although Obama insisted that he did not trust Iran’s mullahs, the first principle of his foreign policy was that contact — “engagement,” as he refers to it — was better than past administrations’ efforts to isolate adversary governments.

That might have been because they considered them adversaries. “Death to America” is not exactly the expression of friendship.

Ross has since become a skeptic about the emerging deal with Iran, his proposal [of increased sanctions.] became the framework for the approach Obama followed.

The political left is ecstatic.

Kerry stated that while the deal is historic, the implementation is what matters. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you every is going to work without a bump,” he said. Kerry added that the deal contains ample mechanisms for ensuring the terms are met, however, and that the agreement makes evident the consequences of non-compliance.

Kerry is an expert at negotiating with our enemies. He is actually well known for siding with them.

The rest of us are appalled. Even Dennis Ross is concerned about this deal.

Ross said the deal basically amounted to lifting international sanctions on Iran, which have crippled the country’s economy, in exchange for full transparency, though Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared recently that inspectors would not have access to all of Iran’s military sites, even if the International Atomic Energy Agency had substantiated suspicions.

Roger L. Simon is not happy

Somewhere Frank Marshall Davis must be smiling. Barack Obama toasted what he always wanted, the decline of the West, as our president finally rolled over and made a big nuclear deal with Iran, giving the ayatollah virtually everything he could have dreamed of, let alone needed — including control over nuclear inspections, making them meaningless — and getting nothing in return.

Yes, he and Kerry have surrendered all attempts at restraint. The anti-Semitism of the left is on proud display at HuffPo. They think this is a clever blow at Israel, our only Democratic ally in the Middle East.

Conservatives feel free to catch the vapors right now. Bibi drop dëad.

And many more like that one.

What now ? Iran has been cheating all along so why should they obey the weak rules now ?

Richard Fernandez has a few thoughts on this and on Greece as related.

It shows unequivocally that Obama values a rapprochement with the Iran above most anything else. Why the agreement should be so desirable to him is unclear.

Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of on-off negotiations with an agreement that could potentially transform the Middle East, and which Israel called an “historic surrender”.

Under the deal, sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations would be lifted in return for Iran agreeing long-term curbs on a nuclear program that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.

Iran agrees. That’s a relief. Why ?

There was never any real chance that Obama would stop Iran. He was interested in attaining something which for want of a better term can be called his “legacy”. That to him meant this agreement and all it implies. Like the Germans who wanted an EU above all, it is apparent Obama wanted that legacy so much that he would throw everything aside to get it.

Events force politicians to show their hand, revealing which policies they pay mere lip service to and those they mean in earnest.

Why does Obama want this agreement in spite of all the risk ?

The president is apparently willing to pay a helluva price for something. Never mind for the moment what that is. Rather than cudgel one’s brains to identify where this piece falls in the puzzle, it is far more important to understand that in the president’s world, if you’re not at the table you’re on the menu. Despite the upbeat announcements that the Iran nuclear deal means “war is off the table” it actually means the opposite.

It should broadcast to the Sunni states and Israel in no uncertain terms that they are on the menu. By contrast, Hezbollah and Assad will be buoyed up, as they are soon to have the backing of a regional nuclear power. Russia and China are probably even now recalculating their positions.

Everybody knows that we have become unreliable as an ally and weak as an enemy.

Almost no one in the foreign policy establishment can articulate a reason for this deal other than to assert that a “bad agreement is worse than no agreement” without shedding the slightest light on what this doohickey actually does. The president’s ultimate goal, his secret strategic objective remain as obscure and impenetrable as ever. The president’s admirers, balked at an explanation, are likely to seek refuge in political faith, in the belief that Obama is so much smarter than the rest of us and especially them, that we unlike him, cannot see so many moves ahead.

“It’s going to be wonderful!” they assert. Somehow.

China seems to be going to school of this deal, as well. Watch the South China Sea.

Comments are closed.