Obama Served In The Marines With Brian Williams and Therefore Might Send Legs Instead of Arms! Will Obama Back Us Into A War?

Actually the true reason Obama would rather talk than fight is because of the blood and gore he observed when he served in the Marines with Brian Williams, in the battle of Guadalcanal

Consequently instead of sending arms to Syria, Jordan and the Ukraine as requested, Obama might send legs instead  but, of course,  no boots on their feet.

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Planning visit to Savannah Classical Academy now on Friday, April 17 at 11am.  Had to change the date because students still on  Spring Break  April 10.  If you are interested in a visit to this outstanding Charter School that is offering a classical education please let me know.  Thanks.
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Germany and its E.U, Greece and Ukraine conundrum as well as its problem with America. (See 1 below.)
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Netanyahu will give speech. (See 2 and 2a below.)

Israeli voters sour on Netanyahu but are not willing to embrace Herzog.
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Can Iraqi forces win an urban fight in order to defeat embedded ISIS forces?  Obama is using American forces to train Iraqis to win back what Obama lost by his precipitous withdrawal.  G.W must be shaking his head and has every right to feel vindicated for his gutsy "Surge.".  (See 3 below.)

Is Obama about to flub again?  This time with Iran. (See 3a and 3b below.)

Will a narcissus, ideologue, incompetent pretense of a president back us into a war ?
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Dick
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Germany Emerges
By George Friedman

Stratfor

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, accompanied by French President Francois Hollande, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 6. Then she met with U.S. President Barack Obama on Feb. 9. The primary subject was Ukraine, but the first issue discussed at the news conference following the meeting with Obama was Greece. Greece and Ukraine are not linked in the American mind. They are linked in the German mind, because both are indicators of Germany's new role in the world and of Germany's discomfort with it.

It is interesting to consider how far Germany has come in a rather short time. When Merkel took office in 2005, she became chancellor of a Germany that was at peace, in a European Union that was united. Germany had put its demands behind it, embedding itself in a Europe where it could be both prosperous and free of the geopolitical burdens that had led it into such dark places. If not the memory, then the fear of Germany had subsided in Europe. The Soviet Union was gone, and Russia was in the process of trying to recover from the worst consequences of that collapse. The primary issue in the European Union was what hurdles nations, clamoring to enter the union, would have to overcome in order to become members. Germany was in a rare position, given its history. It was in a place of comfort, safety and international collegiality.

The world that Merkel faces today is startlingly different. The European Union is in a deep crisis. Many blame Germany for that crisis, arguing that its aggressive export policies and demands for austerity were self-serving and planted the seeds of the crisis. It is charged with having used the euro to serve its interests and with shaping EU policy to protect its own corporations. The vision of a benign Germany has evaporated in much of Europe, fairly or unfairly. In many places, old images of Germany have re-emerged, if not in the center of many countries then certainly on the growing margins. In a real if limited way, Germany has become the country that other Europeans fear. Few countries are clamoring for membership in the European Union, and current members have little appetite for expanding the bloc's boundaries.

At the same time, the peace that Germany had craved is in jeopardy. Events in Ukraine have aroused Russian fears of the West, and Russia has annexed Crimea and supported an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Russia's actions have sparked the United States' fears of the re-emergence of a Russian hegemon, and the United States is discussing arming the Ukrainians and pre-positioning weapons for American troops in the Baltics, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. The Russians are predicting dire consequences, and some U.S. senators are wanting to arm the Ukrainians.

If it is too much to say that Merkel's world is collapsing, it is not too much to say that her world and Germany's have been reshaped in ways that would have been inconceivable in 2005. The confluence of a financial crisis in Europe that has led to dramatic increases in nationalism — both in the way nations act and in the way citizens think — with the threat of war in Ukraine has transformed Germany's world. Germany's goal has been to avoid taking a leading political or military role in Europe.

The current situation has made this impossible. The European financial crisis, now seven years old, has long ceased being primarily an economic problem and is now a political one. The Ukrainian crisis places Germany in the extraordinarily uncomfortable position of playing a leading role in keeping a political problem from turning into a military one.

The German Conundrum

It is important to understand the twin problems confronting Germany. On the one hand, Germany is trying to hold the European Union together. On the other, it wants to make certain that Germany will not bear the burden of maintaining that unity. In Ukraine, Germany was an early supporter of the demonstrations that gave rise to the current government. I don't think the Germans expected the Russian or U.S. responses, and they do not want to partake in any military reaction to Russia. At the same time, Germany does not want to back away from support for the government in Ukraine.

There is a common contradiction inherent in German strategy. The Germans do not want to come across as assertive or threatening, yet they are taking positions that are both. In the European crisis, it is Germany that is most rigid not only on the Greek question but also on the general question of Southern Europe and its catastrophic unemployment situation. In Ukraine, Berlin supports Kiev and thus opposes the Russians but does not want to draw any obvious conclusions. The European crisis and the Ukrainian crisis are mirror images. In Europe, Germany is playing a leading but aggressive role. In Ukraine, it is playing a leading but conciliatory role. What is most important is that in both cases, Germany has been forced — more by circumstance than by policy — to play leading roles. This is not comfortable for Germany and certainly not for the rest of Europe.

Germany's Role in Ukraine

The Germans did play a significant part in the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's government. Germany had been instrumental in trying to negotiate an agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, but Yanukovich rejected it. The Germans supported anti-Yanukovich demonstrators and had very close ties to one of the demonstration leaders, current Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who received training in a program for rising leaders sponsored by the Christian Democratic Union — Merkel's party. The Germans condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea and Moscow's support for the Ukrainian secessionists in the east. Germany was not, perhaps, instrumental in these events, but it was a significant player.

As the Germans came to realize that this affair would not simply be political but would take on a military flavor, they began to back away from a major role. But disengagement was difficult. The Germans adopted a complex stance. They opposed the Russians but also did not want to provide direct military support to the Ukrainians. Instead, they participated in the sanctions against Russia while trying to play a conciliatory role. It was difficult for Merkel to play this deeply contradictory role, but given Germany's history the role was not unreasonable. Germany's status as a liberal democracy is central to its post-war self-conception. That is what it must be. Therefore, supporting the demonstrators in Kiev was an obligation. At the same time, Germany — particularly since the end of the Cold War — has been uneasy about playing a direct military role. It did that in Afghanistan but not Iraq. And participating in or supporting a military engagement in Ukraine resurrects memories of events involving Russia that Berlin does not want to confront.

Therefore, Germany adopted a contradictory policy. Although it supported a movement that was ultimately anti-Russian and supported sanctions against the Russians, more than any other power involved it does not want the political situation to evolve into a military one. It will not get involved in any military action in Ukraine, and the last thing Germany needs now is a war to its east. Having been involved in the beginnings of the crisis, and being unable to step away from it, Germany also wants to defuse it.

The Greek Issue

Germany repeated this complex approach with Greece for different reasons. The Germans are trying to find some sort of cover for the role they are playing with the Greeks. Germany exported more than 50 percent of its gross domestic product, and more than half of that went to the European free trade zone that was the heart of the EU project. Germany had developed production that far exceeded its domestic capacity for consumption. It had to have access to markets or face a severe economic crisis of its own.

But barriers are rising in Europe. The attacks in Paris raised demands for the resurrection of border guards and inspections. Alongside threats of militant Islamist attacks, the free flow of labor from country to country threatened to take jobs from natives and give them to outsiders. If borders became barriers to labor, and capital markets were already distorted by the ongoing crisis, then how long would it be before weaker economies used protectionist measures to keep out German goods?
The economic crisis had unleashed nationalism as each country tried to follow policies that would benefit it and in which many citizens — not in power, but powerful nonetheless — saw EU regulations as threats to their well-being. And behind these regulations and the pricing of the euro, they saw Germany's hand.

This was dangerous for Germany in many ways. Germany had struggled to shed its image as an aggressor; here it was re-emerging. Nationalism not only threatened to draw Germany back to its despised past, but it also threatened the free trade essential to Germany's well-being. Germany didn't want anyone to leave the free trade zone. The eurozone was less important, but once they left the currency bloc, the path to protectionism was short. Greece was of little consequence itself, but if it demonstrated that it would be better off defaulting than paying its debt, other countries could follow. And if they demonstrated that leaving the free trade zone was beneficial, then the entire structure might unravel.

Germany needed to make an example of Greece, and it tried very hard last week to be unbending, appearing to be a bit like the old Germany. The problem Germany had was that if the new Greek government wanted to survive, it couldn't capitulate. It had been elected to resist Germany. And whatever the unknowns, it was not clear that default, in whole or part, wasn't beneficial. And in the end, Greece could set its own rules. If the Greeks offered a fraction of repayment, would anyone refuse when the alternative was nothing?

Therefore, Germany was facing one of the other realities of its position — one that goes back to its unification in 1871. Although economically powerful, Germany was also extremely insecure. Its power rested on the ability and willingness of other countries to give Germany access to their markets. Without that access, German power could fall apart. With Greece, the Germans wanted to show the rest of Europe the consequences of default, but if Greece defaulted anyway, the only lesson might be that default works. Just as it had been in the past, Germany was simultaneously overbearing and insecure. In dealing with Greece, the Germans could not risk bringing down the European Union and could not be sure which thread, if pulled on, would unravel it.

Merkel's Case in Washington

It was with this on her mind that Merkel came to Washington. Facing an overwhelming crisis within the European Union, Germany could not afford a war in Ukraine. U.S. threats to arm the Ukrainians were exactly what she did not need. It wasn't just that Germany had a minimal army and couldn't participate or, in extremis, defend itself. It was also that in being tough with Greece, Germany could not go much further before being seen as the strongman of Europe, a role it could not bear.

Thus, she came to Washington looking to soften the American position. But the American position came from deep wells as well. Part of it had to do with human rights, which should not be dismissed as one source of decision-making in this and other administrations. But the deeper well was the fact that for a hundred years, since World War I, through World War II and the Cold War, the United States had a single rigid imperative: No European hegemon could be allowed to dominate the Continent, as a united Europe was the only thing that might threaten national security. Therefore, regardless of any debate on the issue, the U.S. concern about a Russian-dominated Ukraine triggered the primordial fear of a Russian try at hegemony.

It was ironic that Germany, which the United States blocked twice as a hegemon, tried to persuade the United States that increased military action in Ukraine would not solve the problem. The Americans knew that, but they also knew that if they backed off now, the Russians would read it as an opportunity to press forward. Germany, which had helped set in motion both this crisis and the European crisis, was now asking the United States to back off. The request was understandable, but simply backing off was not possible. She needed to deliver something from Putin, such as a pledge to withdraw support to Ukrainian secessionists. But Putin needed something, too: a promise for an autonomous province. By now Merkel could live with that, but the Americans would find it undesirable. An autonomous Ukrainian province would inevitably become a base for undermining the rest of the country.

This is the classic German problem told two ways. Both derive from disproportionate strength overlying genuine weakness. The Germans are trying to reshape Europe, but their threats are of decreasing value. The Germans tried to reshape Ukraine but got trapped in the Russian reaction. In both cases, the problem was that they did not have sufficient power, instead requiring the acquiescence of others. And that is difficult to get. This is the old German problem: The Germans are too strong to be ignored and too weak to impose their will. Historically, the Germans tried to increase their strength so they could impose their will. In this case, they have no intention of doing so. It will be interesting to see whether their will can hold when their strength is insufficient.
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2)

ISRAELI OFFICIALS: NETANYAHU TO GIVE SPEECH TO CONGRESS AS PLANNED

Authors: Herb Keinon and Sam Sokol 

Despite continuing and mounting opposition to his plans to address the US Congress on March 3, including from American-Jewish organizational leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “determined to go” and make the case against an Iranian nuclear deal, a senior government official said Sunday.

The official’s comments came amid speculation that Netanyahu might, at the last minute, find a reason to put off the trip to Washington until after the March 17 election and avoid exacerbating tensions with the Obama administration.

Netanyahu, however, seems to feel that the speech against an Iranian nuclear deal cannot be delayed until after the election and the establishment of a new government, because by then it would be too late.

He alluded to this at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, saying that US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held talks over the weekend and announced that they intend to complete a framework agreement by the end of March. It is precisely so as to warn against that agreement that Netanyahu has indicated he cannot put off the visit, and that there is a timetable that cannot be ignored. Israeli government officials said there is an ongoing dialogue with the Democrats, a number of whom have indicated that they might not be present when Netanyahu speaks before a special joint session of Congress. Aides to US Vice President Joe Biden indicated over the weekend that he will be traveling abroad at the time of the speech.

They said there is also an ongoing dialogue with the heads of Jewish organizations, some of whom – such as the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman and Rick Jacobs, who heads the Union for Reform Judaism – have urged Netanyahu to reconsider delivering the speech at this time.

In an interview with the Jewish Daily Forward last week, Foxman, called the prime minister’s plan to address Congress “a tragedy of unintended consequences.”

Telling the newspaper that the media frenzy surrounding the oration “turned the whole thing into a circus,” Foxman said that “one needs to restart, and it needs a mature adult statement that this was not what we intended.”

“Now is a time to recalibrate, restart and find a new platform and new timing to take away the distractions,” he said.

While Foxman did not dispute the urgency of dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the central focus of the speech, he told the Forward that the controversy detracts from Netanyahu’s message.

In a separate interview with the Forward, Jacobs said that Netanyahu should “rethink” the speech, calling it a “bad idea” that could turn support for Israel into a partisan issue.

“This is something we in the Jewish community cannot afford,” he was quoted as saying.

Seymour Reich, the former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is reported to have come out against the speech.

These objections, as well as those of some Democrats and media personalities, have come out in diplomatic cables that have reached Jerusalem from Israel’s consuls-general in the US.

Although those consuls are holding meetings in Jerusalem this week – meetings scheduled long before the current controversy – a meeting to discuss the matter with Netanyahu is not on the premier’s schedule.

2a)  NETANYAHU VOWS TO SCUTTLE WORLD POWERS' IRAN DEAL

Author: Stuart Winer

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Sunday he would continue to try to defeat an expected agreement between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear development program as Washington predicted a handshake on the matter in the coming weeks.

“The [international] powers and Iran are racing forward with an agreement that will allow Iran to arm with nuclear weapons, something that will threaten the existence of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu declared that he was ready to go head to head with US Secretary of State John Kerry in order to stop the deal.

“At the end of the week, Kerry and [Iranian Foreign Minister] Zarif announced their intention to complete the framework agreement by the end of March, and that is what gives rise to the urgency in our efforts to try and halt this bad and dangerous agreement,” Netanyahu said. “We will continue to act and to lead the international efforts against the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons and we will act in every way to foil the bad and dangerous agreement that would cast a heavy cloud over the future of Israel.”

The comments came after Kerry stressed to his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, that the US aimed to meet a late March deadline for a deal reining in Iran’s nuclear program when the two men met on Friday in Munich.

On Sunday, Zarif said, after meeting with Kerry for a second time, that progress had been made toward a deal and that neither side wanted an extension.

Netanyahu is set to speak before US Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat in early March, as Congress debates a bill that would increase sanctions on Tehran.

The timing, arrangements and likely content of the speech have infuriated the Obama administration, and Netanyahu has come under increasing pressure to scrap the speech, both at home and in the US.

In the latest blow, Vice President Joseph Biden’s office announced Friday that he would not attend, claiming he was scheduled to travel abroad at that time. President Barack Obama and Kerry said shortly after the speech was announced on January 20 that they would not meet with Netanyahu during his visit, citing the proximity to Israeli elections set for March 17.

A Channel 10 news report Saturday indicated that some 60 Democratic legislators were expected to stay away from the address.

Netanyahu remains determined to go ahead with the address to highlight the dangers of a deal that would leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, but is making an effort “to soften” the Obama administration’s anger and that of many Democrats by stressing that he believed the invitation to address Congress by House Speaker John Boehner was truly bipartisan, according to Channel 10 news.

Global powers have been struggling for more than a year to pin down a comprehensive deal to rein in Iran’s suspect nuclear program, after an interim accord was struck in November 2013.

After missing two previous deadlines, the group known as the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States — set a March 31 deadline for a political agreement.

So far, Iran has frozen some of its nuclear enrichment program in return for limited sanctions relief.

Kerry and Zarif have met many times over the past months, mostly in European capitals, as they have sought to hammer out a deal. Their political teams have also been negotiating behind the scenes.

Both diplomats were in Germany to take part in the annual Munich Security Conference, which this year is focusing on the “collapse of the global order,” and which Biden is also attending.

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3)  U.S.-BACKED IRAQI FORCES FACE RISKY URBAN WARFARE IN BATTLE AGAINST ISLAMIC STATE

Authors: Missy Ryan and Mustafa Salim

The Obama administration has touted the modest successes in recent months of Iraqi forces and paramilitary fighters, backed by U.S. air power, as they have fought to wrest towns, villages and parts of Iraq’s rugged countryside from the Islamic State.

Now, the renewed U.S. campaign in Iraq faces a greater challenge as American advisers scramble to prepare Iraqi forces for an offensive to reclaim some of Iraq’s most important cities, which remain under the militant group’s control.

Attempting to take back the city of Mosul, the country’s ­second-largest, as well as Tikrit and Fallujah, will test not only the fighting power of Iraqi forces and the country’s fragile sectarian compact but also President Obama’s indirect strategy for containing the Islamic State.

A U.S. official in Baghdad, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the evolving campaign, said the United States and a coalition of Arab and other allies are “on a steady progression of effectiveness” in six months of airstrikes against the Islamic State.

“To win this thing, we’re going to have to have Iraqi ground troops go into the places that are really being held by Daesh,” the official said, using the Arabic name for the militant group. “You’re not going to win this just with airstrikes.”

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters inspect an rocket-propelled grenade launcher as they take control of the area, on the outskirts of Mosul, February 6, 2015.
(Stringer/Iraq/Reuters)

The Islamic State easily captured Mosul last June after Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts in droves. The rise of the militant group led to a change of government in Baghdad and galvanized an international coalition to support Iraqi forces with airstrikes.

The fighting that followed — between the well-armed militants on one side and a mix of Iraqi forces, Kurdish peshmerga, Shiite militiamen and volunteers on the other — has taken place mainly outside Iraq’s largest cities.

Some fighting has occurred in urban areas. Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and Baiji, a small city that is home to an oil refinery, remain contested. Government forces control areas on the edges of Tikrit but have not been able to seize the city.

“We’re very aware of how big of a symbol it would be to be able to take back one of these major operating areas from” the Islamic State, said another U.S. official. “But we certainly don’t want to have the Iraqis go into those types of fight without the proper organizational structure, without the resources needed, such that they’ll succeed.”

U.S. officials plan to help Iraq prepare by providing soldiers from some of the country’s best military units with enhanced training in skills they will need in an urban setting: house-to-house fighting, handling improvised bombs, identifying booby traps and protecting against sniper fire. Ordinary obstacles such as narrow streets or low-hanging power lines make it harder for tanks and soldiers to maneuver.

Sending soldiers into Iraq’s chaotic cityscapes to root out adversaries is painstaking work, requiring precision as troops progressively clear tightly populated areas and identify targets for air or artillery attacks.

“The difference between the open, rural context and the urban context is night and day,” said Nate Freier, a researcher at the Army War College who served twice in Iraq, “especially if you’re talking about close-in operations, where threats are . . . right around corners and you really don’t know they’re there until you get to them.”

While U.S. forces honed those skills during the last Iraq war, the Iraqi military, which was rebuilt from scratch after 2003, has much less experience in urban fighting, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, who commanded the U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces in 2008 and 2009. He said the goal of that training was largely to build up security institutions and train Iraq’s conventional army in external defense.

“Urban fighting is going city to city, street to street, building to building, room to room,” Helmick said. “Our goal was to get the army out of the cities in order to allow them to help secure the borders.”

In general, said Ahmed Ali, a senior fellow at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, “this was not part of their mandate, and they were heavily reliant on U.S forces to engage in urban battles from 2004 to 2008.”

The same will not be true in 2015. Obama, intent on limiting U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts, has ruled out sending U.S. troops into combat. That will make the performance of Iraqi forces critical to his plan to indirectly battle the Islamic State.

The biggest test promises to be Mosul, which became a hotbed for the Sunni insurgency after 2003. Many of the city’s residents have fled, and those who remain live under the Islamic State’s austere rule. As militants prepare for an offensive expected to begin as early as this spring, the group is hardening its defenses in the city.

“Mosul is simply going to be hard,” said Jessica Lewis McFate, a former Army intelligence officer at the Institute for the Study of War, especially if militants try to draw attacking forces into the city “and sink them” there.

“It’s going to be a difficult fight,” said a U.S. defense official. “It’s important that when [Iraqi forces] do it, it’s a decisive fight.”

U.S. officials say no decisions have been made about the timing of an attempt to recapture Mosul or other cities, or about the makeup of the force that will be sent there.

The sensitivity of the latter question underscores the delicate position of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Much of the heavy fighting against the Islamic State has been done by Kurdish peshmerga forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militias and volunteers. But deploying Kurdish or Shiite fighters into largely Sunni Arab Mosul would be a risky move, potentially undermining any local support for the operation. In recent weeks, Iraq has been gripped by reports that militiamen have carried out sectarian killings.

An official from Iraq’s Defense Ministry said the government was reluctant to send militias into Mosul because of “fear of the reaction of the people . . . who reject the policy of Iranian interference.” Mosul residents might also oppose the entry of peshmerga fighters whose long-standing mission has been protecting the largely autonomous Kurdish region.

Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, a prominent Sunni tribal leader from Anbar province, said reliance on militias would open the door to abuses and trigger renewed sectarian fighting among Iraqis. “We want the fight to be against ISIS only,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Those sectarian hazards will be equally present in Tikrit, the birthplace of Sunni Arab strongman Saddam Hussein, and Fallujah, where resentment toward the Shiite-led government in Baghdad has helped keep the city in Islamic State hands for more than a year.

Urban offensives may require a shift in U.S. air tactics as well. Because dropping bombs on a major city would increase the odds of striking civilians, U.S. military officials may request White House permission to send air controllers closer to the front lines.

Abu Risha said a first step should be clearing Fallujah, Ramadi and all of Anbar in order to weaken the group in Mosul and in Salahuddin province, where Tikrit is located.

“The fighter’s wisdom says you should strike the weak first,” he said, “so you instill fear in those that are still strong.”

3a)  IRANIAN NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS

Why the White House Is Getting Lonelier on Iran

By WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

The administration has persistently avoided dealing with the most serious critics of its Iran policy.

Suddenly, we seem to be having the conversation the administration didn’t want to have: a conversation about just where President Obama’s approach to Iran is taking us. A Washington Post editorial has put the issue on the agenda in a way that it will be hard for the spinners and Iran-apologists to dance past, and there are signs that bipartisan concerns are beginning to grow.

The Post, in one of the most important newspaper editorials of recent years, signals out three important concerns with the President’s approach:

• First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and restrict that capability.
• Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.
• Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran — including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress — without seeking a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.

As the Post points out, a cavalcade of distinguished American foreign policy voices, including Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, have issued warnings that the White House seems to have lost its way as it tries to navigate the complex minefield that is U.S.-Iranian relations. As my colleague Michael Doran has recently pointed out in an article that contributed to the rising disquiet about the administration’s Iran strategy, the approach to Iran has been the centerpiece of the administration’s Middle East strategy from 2009 to the present day.

What’s interesting is that the growing disquiet about our Iran policy isn’t over the basic decision to negotiate with Iran. Although as usual the White House tries to portray its opponents as hot heads whose unreasoning hatred of Iran combines with a love of war to create a blind opposition to the President’s sensible and rational preference for diplomacy, the debate is not about whether to negotiate with Iran. It is about how to ensure that those negotiations advance important American interests.

The debate over Iran negotiations is really a debate over Middle East strategy as a whole. The Iran apologists inside the administration and out have a case that basically looks like this: Iran is the best possible long term partner for the United States in the region and American and Iranian interests are strategically aligned. The Saudis, who call themselves our allies, export religious extremism and are fundamentally committed to a backward form of political organization. The Saudi monarchy is a ticking time bomb that will one day explode when the population tires of a greedy, corrupt and incompetent royal family. Iran, by contrast, has a large and educated middle class; flawed as its current political system may be, forces are at work that will soon make Iran a much more modern and democratic country than any of the backward Arab states with whom the United States is currently allied. An end to U.S.-Iranian hostility over the nuclear issue will do more than lay a dangerous dispute to rest. It will open the door to a much wider and more fruitful relationship.

The goal of American policy should therefore be to create a relationship of trust between the two capitals based on this community of interest. When the regime feels less threatened by the United States, and when it understands that the United States wants to work with it towards a regional order that is in the interess of both countries, Iran will begin to work ‘within the system’ and become a responsible stakeholder rather than an exporter of subversion. Moreover, an end to sanctions combined with better relations with the United States will contribute to the democratization of Iranian society. The revolution, Iran apologists argue, is old and decrepit. The rising generations are tired of clerical rule and hunger for western modernity. The United States is actually popular among Iranian youth. The clerics and their repressive allies are only clinging to power because the sense of encirclement and danger drives nationalists into their camp and because the sanctions undermine the middle class and concentrate economic power in the hands of the Revolutionary Guard and other regime allies. By offering a face-saving compromise on the nuclear issue, ending sanctions and opening the door to a wider role for Iran in the region, the Obama administration can stabilize the region and democratize Iran while reducing the American profile—and reducing our dependence on unsteady and problematic allies like the Gulf states.

This is an intoxicating vision, and a number of people have been intoxicated by it. But it is not the only reason the President can give to defend his policy approach. Besides hope, there is fear. What is the alternative, President Obama asks his critics, to the White House course? Strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities? Won’t those just set the nuclear program back by at most a few years while consolidating the power of a regime that will hate America more than before? War with Iran—at a time when the region is already in flames and the American people are deeply war-weary? What happens to the international coalition that has been supporting the United States in the nuclear negotiations if the Americans are seen to be walking away from them?

There is merit to these points, more merit than some of the President’s harsher critics are prepared to acknowledge. It is much easier to criticize an existing Iran policy than to propose (and to execute) something different.

But the growing chorus of sober and informed critics of the White House approach to Iran aren’t for the most part attacking the idea of negotiations over the nuclear issue or even of a possible future rapprochement with Iran. This isn’t even primarily an argument about exactly how many centrifuges the nuclear talks allow the Iranians in the end – or about any of the other technical details of a proposed nuclear understanding. The skeptics are criticizing what looks like a disjointed and misguided approach to the relationship with Iran that threatens to further destabilize the Middle East. It is possible that the administration has good answers for them, but up until now the White House has preferred not to engage with the serious arguments against its Iran approach. The longer the President and his top aides keep pretending that critics have no concerns that are worth taking seriously, the more they feed the narrative that the White House is in over its head on Iran—that it has lost sight of some important considerations in a headlong drive to get a deal. That perception, unless refuted (rather than mocked, caricatured or ignored) will ensure that neither Congress nor the country will allow the White House to pursue an Iran strategy that lacks public buy-in and consent.

So what are the arguments the White House needs to address in order to shore up the eroding support for its Iran strategy?

The Balance of Power Problem

One of the strongest arguments in favor of this approach to Iran comes from those who see in it an opening for the United States to cut back its commitments in the Middle East without sacrificing core interests—by adopting the posture of an “offshore balancer.” Instead of being intimately involved with all the nitty-gritty of Middle Eastern power politics, the United States could rely on an offshore naval and air presence to ensure that no single power in the Middle East can dominate the rest. In some cases offshore balancing serves as a code-phrase to suggest a loosening of the U.S.-Israeli alliance as part of a general pullback; in others it is a way one underlines one’s differences from George W. Bush and his strategy. Proponents of this strategy have been among the strongest supporters of the administration’s Iran approach.

It’s hard to see why the offshore balancers should support the White House on this. The gravest danger to the balance of power in the Middle East today is not Saudi Arabia, Israel, or Turkey. The greatest danger is Iran’s push to consolidate its domination of the swath of territory from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon. If the United States aimed to pursue an offshore balancing strategy, it would currently be coming down like a ton of bricks on Iran’s regional ambitions. Instead, the Obama administration appears to be edging toward embracing Iran as a useful partner against ISIS and its fellow travelers.

A nuclear deal under these circumstances that lifts the sanctions without addressing the question of Iran’s regional ambitions would have the inevitable effect of greatly strengthening Iran’s hand.

Intelligent skeptics want to understand what the administration thinks about Iran’s growing predominance in the region. Is our strategy one of offshore balancing, or is it based on something like a return to the Nixon strategy of relying on the Shah of Iran as our right hand in the region? If the former, what does the administration propose to do about the imbalance that increasingly favors Iran? If the latter, what assurances does the administration have that a regionally dominant Iran would be our friend?

The Strategic Alignment Problem

The offshore balancer question leads to the next issue that troubles informed skeptics of the current negotiations with Iran. Supporters of a new relationship argue that the United States and Iran can work together for the long term because their interests are broadly aligned.

That may be true—and it may not be. It seems, for example, that Iran would be a much more hawkish leader of OPEC than the Saudis have been. With a larger population and an ambitious regional policy, Iran would likely use its enhanced influence in OPEC to push prices higher.

More fundamentally, for Iran to hold its position as a regional strongman, it would have to overcome deep-seated Sunni Arab prejudices against both its Shi’a faith and its Persian culture. Being identified as Uncle Sam’s closest regional ally and hired gun would not exactly strengthen Iran’s soft power in the Middle East.

So far, Iran has consistently cast its quest for regional power as a movement of “Islamic Resistance” against the United States and its sidekick in Jerusalem. It casts American allies like the Saudis and others as pawns and puppets of the anti-Islamic “Crusader-Zionist” alliance. Iran and its allies (Syria, Hezbollah, and, in the past and once again perhaps in the near future, Hamas) have identified themselves as the “Resistance Front,” and have consistently taken the hardest possible line against both the United States and Israel.

Perhaps the administration has solid grounds for the belief that a stronger Iran would be a friendlier power. To the naked eye, however, it would seem that the larger Iran looms in the region, the more it will need the image of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism to legitimate its position.

The Obama administration will not be able to address rising skepticism about its Iran policy unless and until it can show why it makes sense to think that a stronger Iran will choose alignment with the United States when its own political interests would benefit from a more anti-American posture.

The Regime Change Argument

One of the most attractive arguments in favor of the current course is that moving to a less polarized relationship with Iran will accelerate a transition toward a more democratic and less theocratic regime within Iran. A new and democratic Iran is struggling to emerge from the chrysalis of the revolutionary government; by opening Iran’s economy to the world we can help the Iranian people change the regime from within. The new Iran that comes to life in this way will be a reliable partner for the United States and other free countries in remaking the region.

This argument is extremely popular and indeed is a mainstay among the many Iranian exiles and expats who are lobbying for improved relations between their countries of adoption and origin. It is passionately advanced; many of its advocates have friends and family back in Iran who long for this kind of opening and have high hopes for the results.

It may be true, but again it may not be. Most revolutions fail, if our criteria for success is the destruction of a dictatorship and its replacement by a stable, democratic regime. Exiles and upper middle class liberals are notoriously out of touch with political developments in their own countries. Look at the Egyptian liberals who passionately believed that the overthrow of Mubarak would lead to the kind of liberal democracy they so deeply and sincerely long for.

One of the things that keeps Iran skeptics up at night worrying is the fear that in fact the White House is betting the ranch on some kind of democratic evolution in Iran as the sanctions come down and the nuclear standoff ends. Certainly a democratic revolution in Iran would be a welcome development, but the Obama administration has a terrible track record in predicting the outcomes of Middle East political turmoil. Americans generally are bad at predicting when revolutions will take place in foreign countries, and we are if anything worse at predicting the course those revolutions take once under way.

Those who currently oppose the President’s strategy on Capitol Hill and elsewhere want to know that the President isn’t pursuing a strategy that depends on the deus ex machina of a timely, friendly, and successful democratic revolution that has us all getting along like there had never been any bad blood to begin with. They want to be sure that the President and the very tight and close circle of relatively inexperienced people on whom he relies haven’t swallowed the Kool Aid passed out by Iranian exiles—remarkably similar in many ways to the Kool Aid that Iraqi exiles passed out to members of the Bush administration. How does the President’s strategy hold up if we assume that the same of assemblage of messianic ayatollahs and thuggish Revolutionary Guards will be running Iran when the sanctions are lifted?

The Alliance Problem

Finally, there is the question of our current unhappy allies. In pursuit of a new understanding with Iran, the White House has put severe stress on our existing relationships with countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel. As a result, Iran has been able to watch America’s regional position and alliance network weaken without lifting a finger or spending a dime. Seeing public quarrels erupt between Riyadh and Washington, and Jerusalem and Washington, makes people feel all warm and fuzzy in Tehran.

One can imagine situations in which the United States would switch from one set of allies to another. Something very like that has been gradually happening in South Asia as the United States and Pakistan move away from each other while the United States and India draw nearer. But the case in India for a U.S.-India alliance seems much stronger than the case for a U.S.-Iran alliance seems in Tehran. The administration has never articulated a compelling case for the belief that the U.S. and Iran are natural allies in today’s Middle East. Nor has much on this subject been heard from Tehran.

Under the circumstances, it looks to many as if the United States is dumping its old allies without securing a replacement. More may be said behind closed doors than is heard on the street, but even those who participate in high level briefings do not seem to have much confidence that the nuclear talks are simply an overture that looks almost certain to produce a much wider and sturdier U.S.-Iranian partnership that will be more useful and stable than the network allies we currently have.

If the administration has a serious case for how its Iran policy will leave the United States with a stronger and more useful regional alliance network than it now has, that case has not been made, not only to the public at large, but to the congressional leaders and former secretaries of state who could be expected to be convinced by strong arguments along these lines.

And this, finally, is why the chorus of concern about the President’s Iran strategy is becoming so much louder this winter. The bits and pieces of the strategy that we know about don’t make sense, and the President and his team don’t seem to understand how weak and vapid the case they make to the public really is. We are reduced to hoping that there is some kind of Top Secret strategy of genius that the circle of advisors close to the President isn’t sharing, but the President’s very checkered record as a global strategist makes this kind of confidence hard to sustain.

Unless President Obama can make a much stronger case for his Iran policy than he has so far done, expect skepticism and opposition to grow.

3b) Kissinger on Iran

Has the U.S. already conceded a new era of nuclear proliferation?

One big question coming out of the Munich security conference this weekend is whether Iran and the U.S. can strike a nuclear deal before the next, and perhaps final, deadline in March. But the better question may be what happens if they succeed—what happens if they sign an accord close to the parameters of the talks as we now know them? The Obama Administration may be underwriting a new era of global nuclear proliferation.

That’s the question Henry Kissinger diplomatically raised in recent testimony to the Senate that deserves far more public attention. The former Secretary of State is the dean of American strategists who negotiated nuclear pacts with the Soviets in the 1970s. This gives his views on the Iran talks particular relevance as President Obama drives to an accord that he hopes will be the capstone of his second term.

On Jan. 29 Mr. Kissinger appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee with two other former Secretaries of State, George Shultz and Madeleine Albright. Here’s how he described the talks in his prepared remarks:

“Nuclear talks with Iran began as an international effort, buttressed by six U.N. resolutions, to deny Iran the capability to develop a military nuclear option. They are now an essentially bilateral negotiation over the scope of that capability through an agreement that sets a hypothetical limit of one year on an assumed breakout. The impact of this approach will be to move from preventing proliferation to managing it.” (The italics are Mr. Kissinger’s.)

Mull that one over. Mr. Kissinger always speaks with care not to undermine a U.S. Administration, and the same is true here. But he is clearly worried about how far the U.S. has moved from its original negotiating position that Iran cannot enrich uranium or maintain thousands of centrifuges. And he is concerned that these concessions will lead the world to perceive that such a deal would put Iran on the cusp of being a nuclear power.

Administration leaks to the media have made clear that Secretary of State John Kerry ’s current negotiating position is that Iran should have a breakout period of no less than a year. But as Mr. Kissinger told the Senators in response to questions, that means verification and inspections become crucial. “In the space of one year, that will create huge inspection problems, but I’ll reserve my comment on that until I see the agreement,” Mr. Kissinger said.

“But I would also emphasize the issue of proliferation. Assuming one accepts the inspection as valid” and “takes account of the stockpile of nuclear material that already exists, the question then is what do the other countries in the region do? And if the other countries in the region conclude that America has approved the development of an enrichment capability within one year of a nuclear weapon, and if they then insist on building the same capability, we will live in a proliferated world in which everybody—even if that agreement is maintained—will be very close to the trigger point.”

Mr. Kissinger didn’t say it, but those other nations include Saudi Arabia, which can buy a bomb from Pakistan; Turkey, which won’t sit by and let Shiite Iran dominate the region; Egypt, which has long viewed itself as the leading Arab state; and perhaps one or more of the Gulf emirates, which may not trust the Saudis. That’s in addition to Israel, which is assumed to have had a bomb for many years without posing a regional threat.

This is a very different world than the one we have been living in since the dawn of the nuclear age. A world with multiple nuclear states, including some with revolutionary religious impulses or hegemonic ambitions, is a very dangerous place. A proliferated world would limit the credibility of U.S. deterrence on behalf of allies. It would also imperil U.S. forces and even the homeland via ballistic missiles that Iran is developing but are not part of the U.S.-Iran talks.

President Obama would claim the inspection regime is fail-safe, but Iran hid its weapons program from United Nations inspectors for years. That’s why the U.N. passed its many resolutions and the current talks began. Iran also hid its facility at Qum. All of this shows how difficult it is to maintain a credible inspection regime in a country determined to evade it. Or as Mr. Kissinger delicately put it, “Nobody can really fully trust the inspection system or at least some [countries] may not.”

Our own view is that Mr. Obama is so bent on an Iran deal that he will make almost any concession to get one. In any case Mr. Kissinger’s concerns underscore the need for Congressional scrutiny and a vote on any agreement with Iran

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