Monday, November 25, 2013

The Nuclear Deal With Iran is a Foreign Policy Disaster


http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/11/24/the-nuclear-deal-with-iran-is-a-foreign-policy-disaster/
 
“For the first time in nearly a decade we have halted parts of Iran’s nuclear program” announced a jubilant Barack Obama after the news of the just-signed Geneva six-month interim agreement with Iran.
But the American goal for the accord was that the Iranians not “advance their program” of building a uranium nuclear bomb (and perhaps a plutonium bomb too); the apparent deal exactly permits such advancement, plus sanctions relief to Tehran worth about US$9 billion.
This wretched deal offers one occasion when comparison with Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 is valid. An overeager Western government, blind to the evil cunning of the regime it so much wants to work with, appeases it with concessions that will come back to haunt it. Geneva and Nov. 24 will be remembered along with Munich and Sep. 29.
Barack Obama has made many foreign policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster. Along with the health care law, it is one of his worst-ever steps. John Kerry is a too-eager puppy looking for a deal at any price.
With the U.S. government forfeiting its leadership role, the Israelis, Saudis, and perhaps others are left to cope with a bad situation made worse. War has now become a much more likely prospect. Shame on we Americans for re-electing Barack Obama.
This article was originally published by the National Review Online.

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“For the first time in nearly a decade we have halted parts of Iran’s nuclear program” announced a jubilant Barack Obama after the news of the just-signed Geneva six-month interim agreement with Iran.
But the American goal for the accord was that the Iranians not “advance their program” of building a uranium nuclear bomb (and perhaps a plutonium bomb too); the apparent deal exactly permits such advancement, plus sanctions relief to Tehran worth about US$9 billion.
This wretched deal offers one occasion when comparison with Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 is valid. An overeager Western government, blind to the evil cunning of the regime it so much wants to work with, appeases it with concessions that will come back to haunt it. Geneva and Nov. 24 will be remembered along with Munich and Sep. 29. 
Barack Obama has made many foreign policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster.
Aaron Klein reports in WND.com  "Israeli personnel in recent days were in Saudi Arabia to inspect bases that could be used as a staging ground to launch attacks against Iran, according to informed Egyptian intelligence officials.The officials said the U.S. passed strong messages to Israel and the Saudis that the Americans maintain and control radar capabilities around the skies of Iran and that no strike should be launched without the permission of the Obama administration.

The officials said Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other Arab and Persian Gulf countries have been discussing the next steps toward possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Ben Shapiro analyzes why the P5+1 Geneva agreement to de-nuclear-weaponize Iran is "Worse than Munich" in Breitbart.com 

 "President Obama’s cowardly deal with the Iranian regime – a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel, pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of multiple United Nations resolutions, and the persecution of Christians – marks the most ignominious moment in western foreign policy in decades. The easy comparison is to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in Munich in 1938, when he signed allowed Hitler to consolidate his gains in the Sudetenland on the bare promise of no further aggression in Europe.

But in truth, the west’s appeasement of Iran is significantly worse than its appeasement of Hitler in 1938, for a variety of reasons. First, as of 1938, Hitler had not yet made clear his plans to exterminate European Jewry. He was still attempting to ship European Jews out of Europe; the Final Solution was not formally adopted until 1941. Iran has made clear its desire to wipe Israel off the map. Its current leader, supposed moderate Hassan Rouhani, has refused to acknowledge the Holocaust as historically accurate, participated in a rally calling for Israel’s destruction, and according to Iranian press reports, stated, “The Zionist regime is a wound that has sat on the body of the Muslim world for years and needs to be removed.” Yet the Obama administration wants to pretend he is a moderate. 

... Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are militantly opposed to the western sellout of its allies in the Middle East in favor of paper promises from a lying regime.
Finally, Chamberlain’s foolishness was a combination of myopia and fear. President Obama’s foolishness is a combination of malice and egotism.
Desperate to misdirect from his failing signature program, Obamacare, and eager to earn his diplomatic laurels in his second term to placate his ego, President Obama’s Iran solution is just a convenient piece of a larger cowardly foreign policy. President Obama’s foreign policy over the last six months has “won” America the diplomatic victory of leaving a weapons of mass destruction-using dictator in power in Syria while shifting Russia into the Middle Eastern driver’s seat and donating American stockpiles to al Qaeda. Obama has undercut the secular Egyptian military regime in favor of the fascistic Muslim Brotherhood. American power in the Middle East has been effectively minimized.
... Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are militantly opposed to the western sellout of its allies in the Middle East in favor of paper promises from a lying regime.
Finally, Chamberlain’s foolishness was a combination of myopia and fear. President Obama’s foolishness is a combination of malice and egotism.
Desperate to misdirect from his failing signature program, Obamacare, and eager to earn his diplomatic laurels in his second term to placate his ego, President Obama’s Iran solution is just a convenient piece of a larger cowardly foreign policy. President Obama’s foreign policy over the last six months has “won” America the diplomatic victory of leaving a weapons of mass destruction-using dictator in power in Syria while shifting Russia into the Middle Eastern driver’s seat and donating American stockpiles to al Qaeda. Obama has undercut the secular Egyptian military regime in favor of the fascistic Muslim Brotherhood. American power in the Middle East has been effectively minimized.
What just went down in Geneva is, in fact, a replay of the greatest diplomatic tragedy of the 20th century.
The Munich deal rested on the ridiculous notion that Hitler could be satiated. The new pact builds on the equally ludicrous idea that Iran would give up the means to build a nuclear weapon that will serve as the tip of its foreign-policy spear.

The saddest part of this negotiated fiasco is that everyone agrees why Iran came to the bargaining table. The sanctions worked; the mullahs had run out of cash, and Tehran determined that the easiest way to get the funds flowing was to get the West to back off.

This is where the realists and the idealists part company. Realists knew that the sanctions were good for only one purpose: to weaken the regime to the point where it would collapse or be overthrown.  They crossed their fingers, hoping that would happen before Tehran got a nuke it could turn on the West. Regime change remains the only realistic option to bombing or bearing the danger of living with a nuclear-armed Iran.

Idealists, on the other hand, held that sanctions were the magic button for getting the Iranians to be reasonable. Once Tehran started on the path to accommodating the West (they theorized), the mullahs would realize that the benefits of collaboration and transparency outweighed the burdens of isolation and confrontation.
The parting of the ways between realists and idealist is not about two different visions of the path to a peaceful future. In the case of this particular foreign-policy conundrum, the realist approach is based on a full awareness of whom the West is really dealing with.
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Obama briefs Netanyahu on Iran deal, says US committed to Israel’s security

US president reportedly promises to consult closely in months ahead, vows to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapon

By Adiv Sterman and Elhanan Miller November 25, 2013
 
US President Barack Obama called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday evening, in a pre-scheduled conversation, and told him that the US will remain committed to Israel and its safety. The call came nearly 24 hours after Iran and world powers signed a first-step agreement in Geneva to largely freeze Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for partial sanctions relief.
Obama added that the US would not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon under any circumstances, and would confer with Israel about future negotiations with Tehran over a final agreement.               
 "The two leaders reaffirmed their shared goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” deputy White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a press gaggle aboard Air Force One. According to US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, Obama told Netanyahu that he wants the two sides “to begin consultations immediately regarding our efforts to negotiate a comprehensive solution.”
“The President underscored that the United States will remain firm in our commitment to Israel, which has good reason to be skeptical about Iran’s intentions,” Shapiro wrote on Facebook.
Israeli TV news reported late Sunday that Netanyahu was “extremely angry” with Obama over the deal, that he fears the international sanctions regime will now crumble, that the US had not come clean to Israel over a secret back channel of talks with Iran, and that Israel’s military option for intervening in Iran is off the table for the foreseeable future now that the interim deal is done.
“The president provided the prime minister with an update on negotiations in Geneva and underscored his strong commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which is the aim of the ongoing negotiations,” the White House said.
The report added that the two leaders agreed to “stay in touch on this issue.”
An Obama administration official who spoke to Reuters said that the phone call had been “very long,” though the official declined to provide further information about the two leader’s discussion.
This was Obama and Netanyahu’s first official discussion of the deal.
From aboard the presidential plane Air Force One, the US president phoned the prime minister, who strongly condemned the agreement on Sunday morning, in order to brief the prime minister on the details of the accord and to address his concerns.
On Sunday morning, Iranian delegates and Western powers reached an interim deal on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, after a weekend of intensive talks.
Obama said the deal was an “important first step” that opened up a “real opportunity to achieve a peaceful settlement” and address the world’s concerns over the program.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, called the agreement a “historic mistake,” and vowed to keep Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
“What was accomplished last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement; it’s a historic mistake,” Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday morning’s weekly cabinet meeting.
“Today the world has become much more dangerous, because the most dangerous regime in the world took a meaningful step toward acquiring the most dangerous weapon in the world.”
On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to allay Israel’s concerns about the agreement.
In an interview with CNN, Kerry said the agreement had actually made Israel safer.
“We believe very strongly that, because the Iranian nuclear program is actually set backwards and is actually locked into place in critical places, that that is better for Israel than if you were just continuing to go down the road and they rush towards a nuclear weapon.”
The Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report
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http://www.nationalreview.com/node/364739/print
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          www.nationalreview.com
November 24, 2013 3:44 PM
Munich II
By  James Jay Carafano                         
No, that’s not a facile, partisan jab. What just went down in Geneva is, in fact, a replay of the greatest diplomatic tragedy of the 20th century.
The Munich deal rested on the ridiculous notion that Hitler could be satiated. The new pact builds on the equally ludicrous idea that Iran would give up the means to build a nuclear weapon that will serve as the tip of its foreign-policy spear.
The saddest part of this negotiated fiasco is that everyone agrees why Iran came to the bargaining table. The sanctions worked; the mullahs had run out of cash, and Tehran determined that the easiest way to get the funds flowing was to get the West to back off.
This is where the realists and the idealists part company. Realists knew that the sanctions were good for only one purpose: to weaken the regime to the point where it would collapse or be overthrown.  They crossed their fingers, hoping that would happen before Tehran got a nuke it could turn on the West. Regime change remains the only realistic option to bombing or bearing the danger of living with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Idealists, on the other hand, held that sanctions were the magic button for getting the Iranians to be reasonable. Once Tehran started on the path to accommodating the West (they theorized), the mullahs would realize that the benefits of collaboration and transparency outweighed the burdens of isolation and confrontation.
The parting of the ways between realists and idealist is not about two different visions of the path to a peaceful future. In the case of this particular foreign-policy conundrum, the realist approach is based on a full awareness of whom the West is really dealing with.
The idealists’ assessment is delusional. They see a “freeze” as a confidence-building measure, the first step in disassembling Iran’s weapons program. But where there is freeze, there can also be a thaw. Nothing in this agreement prevents Iran from just picking up where it left off. Nothing in this agreement affects Iran’s effort to improve its long-range ballistic missiles. Nothing can stop Iran from continuing to work on how to weaponize (build a bomb suitable to be put on a missile) a nuclear device in secret.
In return for getting precious little, the negotiators oppose Iran at the table gave up the one thing the mullahs really feared – a continuing squeeze on Tehran’s dwindling bank account.
The only “fact” offered so far to prove that the pact will lead to something other than a good deal for Iran is the blithe assurance that the deal was negotiated by really smart people who know what they are doing. After all . . .
The British think the deal with Iran makes sense. Then, again, it was a British government that believed Munich meant we could all get a good night’s sleep now.
The Russians laud the deal. But it was a government in Moscow that believed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact solved all its problems.
Our White House likes this deal. But, our White House also thinks its policies in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and Syria have been just super.
The cold fact about the Iranian nuclear freeze is this: Any diplomatic deal that is not grounded in shared interests or a common sense of justice will surely fail. There is no evidence Iran shares either with the West. The negotiations with Iran bear too many similarities with the most spectacular failures in diplomatic history to leave any hope for optimism.
— James Jay Carafano is vice president of foreign- and defense-policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.

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