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Just what I have been saying.
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Obama always sets us a straw man, he needs an enemy to attack in order to deflect attention from his own incompetence, to gain sympathy for his failures while slipping it to America. (See 1 below.)
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Believing Obama and Kerry is akin to trusting ISIS! (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)
For Obama, Bibi’s words matter while Iran’s don’t
President Obama says that Bibi’s words matter when it comes to a Palestinian state. “We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership,” he told The Huffington Post. The President used Netanyahu’s statement as cause for a “reassessment” of American ties with Israel.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest echoed the sentiment in last Thursday’s White House briefing that the Prime Minister’s words could bring punishment. “Words matter,” he said. There could be “consequences” for Netanyahu’s statements. “Everybody who’s in a position to speak on behalf of their government understands that that’s the case, and particularly when we’re talking about a matter as serious as this one.”
So let’s get this straight. When foreign leaders speak, it matters. What they say is consequential. Bibi’s going to have to pay for his remarks.
But I have one question. Why doesn’t any of this apply to Iran? Why, on Saturday Ayatollah Ali Khameini uttered the words “Death to America” even as John Kerry was expressing optimism the very same day that the United States would come to a nuclear accord with Iran!
Suddenly, Iran’s words don’t matter?
Taking this further, the most hair-raising aspect about the growing American rapprochement with Iran is that it has all happened while Iran has continued to repeatedly threaten the annihilation of the Jewish people. Ayatollah Khameini has called Jews dogs and tweeted as recently as this past November that “there is no cure for Israel other than annihilation.”
Now, if words matter, how can the United States continue to speak to his government while they are openly threatening a second holocaust? Why did President Obama and John Kerry not establish a repudiation of these genocidal words and threats as a precondition for any talks?
The hypocrisy is startling. And it leads to a more important point.
By now it’s clear to all that President Obama positively loathes Prime Minister Netanyahu more any other world leader. His hostility to the Prime Minister has become so pronounced that the President can no longer disguise or control it.
Am I the only one that finds it just a touch unseemly for the leader of the free world to hate the leader of the only free country in the Middle East?
The President has a good relationship with Erdogan, the tyrant of Turkey, who has destroyed his nation’s democracy and allows fighters to pass through his nation to join ISIS. President Obama traveled to Saudi Arabia to pay his personal condolences upon the passing of arch-misogynist King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a man who wouldn’t even allow women to drive a car. And he utters not an unkind word about Ayatollah Khameini, the world’s foremost terrorist.
But he hates Netanyahu. Go figure.
For years we Americans have heard that our President is cerebral and unflappable. That he famously remains cool under the most challenging circumstances. It turns out that this is true for every world leader except one, Benjamin Netanyahu, who makes the President’s blood boil.
Don’t we deserve to know why?
If the two leaders merely had bad personal chemistry, I could understand. They’re not the best of friends. Fine. But for Obama the hatred of Netanyahu has become positively visceral, personal, and irrepressible.
My own belief is this. President Obama is desperate for some foreign policy victories. There’s a year-and-a-half left to his Presidency and the world is on fire. From Iran to Boko Haram to ISIS to Putin to Hezbollah to Al Qaida and Hamas, bad guys are running amok under this president. American Foreign policy is a shambles.
The only ally President Obama can truly expert pressure on for a deal that would give him the lasting foreign policy legacy he needs and craves is Israel. And in the past Israeli Prime Ministers have proven so utterly malleable. American Presidents have squeezed them like lemons.
But Bibi refuses to be squeezed. He won’t play ball. He won’t withdraw from Judea and Samaria and allow “Hamastan” on his eastern border the way it is in Gaza. He won’t shut up about America’s capitulation to the Iranian mullahs that would leave them with a military-grade nuclear program. He won’t go quietly into the nuclear night while America appeases one of the most violent and vile regimes on earth.
This darned Bibi guy just won’t bend.
And our President finds the intransigence so utterly frustrating.
He prayed and hoped that someone else might win the Israeli election. And some of the President’s top political operatives went and worked for Herzog. But, huff and puff as he might, the President could not blow Bibi’s house down.
So now he’s stuck with him. A stick-necked Prime Minister, getting in the way of the President’s peace deals with Iran and the Palestinians.
And with no way of getting rid of the Israeli nuisance, all the President can do is continue to give interviews that express his dislike and frustration, not realizing that we’re reaching a point where the President is beginning to look positively un-Presidential and where is enmity is becoming unbecoming.
It’s called democracy, Mr. President. Bibi won. And it’s time for the world’s foremost democracy, the United States of America, to live with it and work with the man who has the mandate of the Israeli people, just as you have the mandate of the American people
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2)The Iran time bomb
As negotiations between Iran and the great powers press forward, Secretary of State John F. Kerry seems to have settled on this defense of any agreement: The terms will leave Iran at least a year away from obtaining a nuclear bomb, thus giving the world plenty of time to react to infractions. The argument is meant to reassure, particularly when a sizable enrichment capacity and a sunset clause appear to have already been conceded. A careful assessment, however, reveals that a one-year breakout time may not be sufficient to detect and reverse Iranian violations.
Once the United States had an indication that Iran was violating an agreement, a bureaucratic process would be necessary to validate the information. It could be months before the director of national intelligence would be confident enough to present a case for action to the president. Several U.S. intelligence agencies, the Energy Department and national nuclear laboratories would need a chance to sniff the data to be convinced that a technical breach had occurred. Only after this methodical review was finished could the director go to the White House with conclusions and recommendations.
Given that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be the on-site inspection organization responsible for the verification of an agreement, the United States’ scoop would have to be forwarded to that body. Of course, both the speed and the extent of U.S. sharing would be affected by the need to protect sensitive human or technical sources of information. Only then would IAEA representatives begin talking with their Iranian counterparts about gaining access to disputed sites or activities. History suggests the Iranians would engage in protracted negotiations and much arcane questioning of the evidence. Iran could eventually offer some access while holding back key data and personnel. It would be only after tortured discussions that the IAEA could proclaim itself dissatisfied with Iran’s reaction. This process also could take months.
Should the indication of infractions originate with the IAEA, the United States would likewise want to validate the findings itself, which would also be time-consuming.
Once the IAEA arrived at a verdict of noncompliance, it would forward its grievances to the U.N. Security Council for adjudication. The United States would have to convince the other member states invested in the agreement — including veto-wielding Russia and China — that the accord was being violated and that forceful action was needed. Time would be spent quarrelling over divergent views, with several outcomes possible, including a Security Council presidential statement or a resolution whose content would need to be agreed upon. And only then could new economic sanctions be imposed on Iran. So, add at least a few more months.
Could sanctions really make a meaningful impact on Iran in whatever time, if any, remained in a one-year scenario? Any sanctions would take time to stress Iran’s economy, particularly in the aftermath of an agreement that paved the way for the return of trade and investment. Of course, the United States would not have to wait for the economic pressure to work and could use force against Iran without U.N. endorsement. However, since the advent of nuclear weapons, the United States has negotiated arms-control agreements with an entire spectrum of adversaries and has never used force in response to violations.
And the reality is that any cheating by Iran would always be incremental and never egregious. Throughout the duration of an agreement, there would be occasional reports of Iran enriching to unacceptably high levels and revelations of unreported nuclear installations and experimentation in weapon designs. Iran’s habit of lulling the world with a cascade of small infractions is an ingenious way to advance its program without provoking a crisis. In the end, a year simply may not be enough time to build an international consensus on measures to redress Iranian violations.
In the midst of all the typical Washington political cacophony about the progress of the negotiations, what is lost is that an accord between the United States and Iran would be the most consequential arms-control agreement of the post-Cold War period. It would determine the level of stability in the Middle East and impact global nuclear nonproliferation norms. With stakes so high, we need a national debate about the nature and parameters of any agreement. The right venue for that debate is the halls of Congress. No agreement can be considered viable or enduring without such legislative approbation.
Michael Hayden led the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009 and the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005. Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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