Column: It exposes the Iran deal as indefensible—and Obama’s politics as bankrupt
Matthew Continetti, FREE BEACON
The emerging nuclear deal with Iran is indefensible. The White House knows it. That is why President Obama does not want to subject an agreement to congressional approval, why critics of the deal are dismissed as warmongers, and why the president, his secretary of state, and his national security adviser have spent several weeks demonizing the prime minister of Israel for having the temerity to accept an invitation by the U.S. Congress to deliver a speech on a subject of existential import for his small country. These tactics distract public attention. They turn a subject of enormous significance to American foreign policy into a petty personal drama. They prevent us from discussing what America is about to give away.
And America is about to give away a lot. This week the AP reported on what an agreement with Iran might look like: sanctions relief in exchange for promises to slow down Iranian centrifuges for 10 years. At which point the Iranians could manufacture a bomb—assuming they hadn’t produced one in secret. Iran would get international legitimacy, assurance that military intervention was not an option, and no limitations on its ICBM programs, its support for international terrorism, its enrichment of plutonium, its widespread human rights violations, and its campaign to subvert or co-opt Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria. Then it can announce itself as the first Shiite nuclear power.
And America? Liberals would flatter themselves for avoiding a war. Obama wouldn’t have to worry about the Iranians testing a nuke for the duration of his presidency. And a deal would be a step toward the rapprochement with Iran that he has sought throughout his years in office. The EU representative to the talks, for example, says a nuclear agreement “could open the way for a normal diplomatic relation” between Iran and the West, and could present “the opportunity for shaping a different regional framework in the Middle East.” A regional framework, let it be said, that would leave American interests at risk, Israel one bomb away from a second Holocaust, nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East, and Islamic theocrats in charge of a large part of a strategic and volatile region.
I feel safer already.
Close to a decade of negotiations meant to end the Iranian nuclear program is about to culminate in the legitimization of that program and an enriched—in both senses of the word—empowered, and no less hostile Iran. Our government and the media that so often resembles its propaganda organ will attempt to characterize this colossal failure of nerve as a personal victory for a lame duck president and a milestone in international relations. It is important that they lose this battle, that the Iran deal is revealed to the world for the capitulation that it is, that the dangers of sub-letting the Middle East to the Koranic scholars of Qom and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are given expression, not only for substantive reasons of policy and security but also because the way in which the advocates of détente have behaved has been reprehensible.
What the opponents of a bad deal with Iran have witnessed over the last few months is the transference of Obama’s domestic political strategies to the international stage. A senior administration official is on record likening an Iranian nuclear agreement to Obamacare, and the comparison makes sense not only in the relative importance of the two policies to this president, not only because both policies are terrible and carry within them unforeseen consequences that will not be manifest for years, but also because of the way opponents of both policies are treated by the White House. If they are not ignored or dismissed, their motives are impugned. They are attacked personally, bullied, made examples of.
The alternative to a bad deal is not a better deal or tougher sanctions, Obama says, but war: “Congress should be aware that if this diplomatic solution fails, then the risks and likelihood that this ends up being at some point a military confrontation is heightened, and Congress will have to own that as well, and that will have to be debated by the American people.” The opponents of a nuclear Iran aren’t sincere, Obama explained to Senate Democrats last month, but are merely acting at the behest of their (Jewish) donors. Congress has no role to play in either approving of or enforcing a deal with Iran, John Kerry says, because any attempt to strengthen America’s hand or verify that Iran is in compliance would be like “throwing a grenade” into the meeting room.
As for Netanyahu, he is called “chickenshit” by anonymous sources, the national security adviser says his decision to address Congress is “destructive” of the U.S.-Israel alliance, Kerry tells Congress they shouldn’t listen to Bibi because he voiced wan support for regime change in Iraq (a war that Kerry voted to authorize), the congressional liaison rallies the Congressional Black Caucus to boycott the speech, and the administration leaks to the AP its strategy “to undercut” his speech and “blunt his message that a potential nuclear deal with Iran is bad for Israel and the world.” The strategy includes media appearances and the threat of a “pointed snub” of AIPAC, which has done everything it can over the last several years to ignore or acquiesce to President Obama’s anti-Israel foreign policy.
This sort of contempt for one’s opponents has become so commonplace in American politics since the 2010 “bipartisan healthcare summit” where the president snidely told John McCain “the election’s over” that I suppose it was only a matter of time before it influenced the administration’s relationships with foreign powers. But it says something about this president that the only country in the world that he treats seriously as an opponent is the state of Israel—that he holds the Israeli government to a standard he applies to no other government, that he is openly hostile to the elected prime minister of Israel and not-so-secretly hopes for the prime minister to be replaced in the upcoming election, and that he threatens reprisal against an domestic interest group with predominantly Jewish leadership and membership for a disagreement he has with a foreign prime minister—as though Jews were interchangeable when they are not, as in the case of the “deli” where they were “randomly” gunned down, invisible.
Netanyahu’s speech on Tuesday matters precisely because it is a rebuke to the Obama mode of politics to which America has become numb. Netanyahu’s refusal to back down in the face of political and media pressure, his insistence in making his case directly and emphatically, is as much a statement as any of the technical and strategic and moral claims he will make in his speech. And by going to war against Bibi, the White House has inadvertently raised the stature of his address from a diplomatic courtesy to a global event.
Netanyahu’s commitment to warning America about a nuclear Iran has given him the opportunity to explain just how devoid of merit the prospective deal is. His speech is proof that Congress is a co-equal branch of government where substantive argument can triumph over vicious personal attacks and executive overreach and utopian aspirations. Of course Barack Obama can’t stand it.
the teitelbaum “true torahs” are out inciting anti semitism again. these kapo so called jews along with the NK and leftists are one of the reasons for anti Israelism and anti semitism today: libeling Israel and jews no less than any fanatic muslim would. Their lies and libels cause dead jews, they should be held responsible for their crimes. These idolaters of the diaspora and 18th century polish fashion worshippers would send the rest of the Jews on a cattle train to auschwitz. The muslim nutters always cite the teitelbaum satmars and the NK when libeling Isael and Jews. They are the poorest town in the US and many of them live on US welfare. They are seen to be taking over the land of nearby communities by their non jewish neighbors
The Alinsky model at home and abroad.
Very simple minded!
Will the US congress wake-up? Will the country wake-up?
Will BB after the speech show bold actions in Israel? That is what is needed.
No more concessions to PA.
Since they rejected systematically everything IL was willing to give, IL must take back everything.
A END must be put to destructive illusions.
It’s long overdue for Obama to be put in his place. No one elected him leader of the world. The best defense is a good offense. We have to take care of our own best interests.
Obama agenda:
The far left US administration is on the path of trying to realize what the USSR was incapable of accomplishing:the destruction of the Western world!
The refusal to confront Iran nuke program and terrorism is part of the project. The delegitimization of the the Iranian people and democracy The refusal to lead in the defense of the western world against the Islamists (Shia & Sunnis)is part of the project..
The alliance with the Islamists (in the US, Turkey and Qatar) is part of the project.
The refusal to confront Putin is part of the project. Obama policy in Europe is leading to recreating a zone of influence for Russia not dissimilar to what was there before the fall of the Iran Curtain. Undoing what 50 years achieved for eastern Europe.
The refusal to address the legitimate immigration issue (control of the borders N & S) is part of the project.
Confronting and undermining Israel is part of the project. Evoking the crusades as an excuse for not confronting today Islamists is part of the project.
One of the best comments to an article that I have ever read. Thank you, Arnold Harris.
It is now Friday morning, February 27 2015 in Wisconsin USA. Exactly four nights from now, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be standing before the joint houses of the United States Congress, giving his invited address to every Republican Party member of the Congress, along with most of the Democratic Party members, various significant invited guests such as Elie Wiesel and many others who want to be there when he makes his historic appearance. And viewing him and listening to what he shall say will possibly be one of the largest aggregate audiences in recent memory.
Nothing that Susan Rice, Barack Hussein Obama, John Kerry, J Street, the present Iranian ayatollah, Nancy Pelosi, Hilary Clinton, Obama’s all but insignificant vice president, or anyone else in the world, shall stop his appearance before the Congress of the United States. The anyone else category includes the Netanyahu’s opposition leaders of the Labor + Livni temporary coalition.
I shall not be so bold as to predict that what the prime minister shall tell the US Congress will change what is now clearly seen as the un-American policies of the current president of the United States. His era shall still go down in history as the one occasion in which an American president deserted his one democratic ally state in the Middle East, for purposes of siding with and appeasing the nuclear weapon appetite of a crazed theocrat whose regime has targeted for destruction not only much of the Islamic Middle East that opposes his threats, but also the United States itself, and the Jewish State of Israel.
But even without bending the treachery of this strangest of all American leaders to date, Mr Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress, the American people, and the world, stands to make a serious impact on the Congress, whose leadership stands in solid opposition to Mr Obama. That opposition is very likely to harden in days and weeks to come. For starters, the United States Senate, whose advice and consent is required for all foreign treaties, would like not consent to any agreement Obama and Kerry negotiate with Iran. Which renders any such treaty null and void.
Mr Obama ought to be intelligent enough to know that he cannot long continue running the public affairs of the USA by edicts issued from the White House without the backing of the United States Congress. They will soon take a case to the United States Supreme Court, also dominated by conservative justices, that the president is violating the very tenets of the United States Constitution.
If and when that happens, Mr Obama will find himself unable to preside over this country. And under such circumstances, the armed forces could in fact come to common understanding that the president is no longer able to function and carry out his duties to defend the United States from external enemies.
If and when matters get that far, the situation could grow ugly, but especially so for a national leader who can no longer count on the loyalty of the country’s armed forces. Those officers are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, just as Mr Obama has done. All this has happened before, throughout history. And, as we all know, there are certain limits to any certitudes, including American exceptionalism. Because ordinary people and numerous influential all across this country are beginning to seriously question the loyalty of this particular president to the fundaments of the culture and the laws of the United States, purportedly the land of his birth, and even greater questions about his Moslem connections through birth and early schooling in a foreign country.
In any case, Mr Obama and his advisers have locked themselves fecklessly into a situation in which — if neither the Speaker of the House of Representatives nor the Prime Minister of Israel could be persuaded or threatened to back down — than the White House’s present occupant would be seen as the loser of a spectacular confrontation, and Mr Netanyahu would be seen — and widely regarded in Beijing, Moscow, Cairo, Athens, Riyadh, and Jerusalem — as the man who called the bluff of this particular US President.
Some of you would argue with me that the very act that shall take place next Tuesday evening — HaShem willing — will have no effect on the Knesset election two weeks later. Without making specific predictions, because I am not a political pollster, I nevertheless am certain there shall be a significant impact, and one that supports Mr Netanyahu.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI