By Elliot Abrams, ISRAEL HAYOM
For six years the mantra of the Obama administration about the Iran nuclear negotiations ?has been simple, direct, and powerful: “No deal is better than a bad deal.” One cannot count ?the number of times the president, his secretaries of state, his national security advisers, ?and his negotiators have said exactly this — including this week when Susan Rice repeated it ?to an American Israel Public Affairs Committee audience.?
Some people believe the proposed deal is a bad deal, and therefore that no deal is better. ?One might have expected the administration to reply, “No, here we disagree; on its merits ?this deal is a good one.”?
The administration says that but cannot leave it there. We also hear, and have been hearing ?for months, that unless you accept the proposed deal you are choosing war. If you’re the ?prime minister of Israel and criticize the deal, you’re no longer an ally; you’re treated with ?vicious invective. If you object, you’re told you don’t really seek a better deal; you are ?seeking a collapse of the talks.?
To quote Susan Rice,”we cannot let a totally unachievable ideal stand in the way of a good ?deal.” But how does one define what is totally unachievable? Congress is not permitted ?by the administration to play any role. The administration seeks to limit public debate by ?scolding and warning the Israelis against revealing supposedly secret information — not ?secret from Russia, or China, or Iran, but from the American people.?
Suddenly our choice is not a bad deal or no deal, it’s this deal or a conflict with Iran. The ?administration treats disagreement on this as nearly a form of sedition. Yet those who ?disagree include not only the government of Israel: Many members of Congress in both ?parties fear the terms of this agreement that is apparently near conclusion. From the bitter ?experience of North Korea the administration has apparently learned little — and that was a ?bad deal that was surely worse than no deal at all.?
Disagreement is predictable and a healthy debate is essential. But the explanation that we ?must now choose between any deal this administration can get and war with Iran is an ?unworthy argument that should be met with derision.?
From “Pressure Points” by Elliott Abrams. Reprinted with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Iran and Obama want both to impose a bad or very bad deal on the West which will very likely lead to war one way or the other. Intense/cataclysmic sanctions and a invitation to China to participate seriously in controlling Iran would be the best. Is it in China interest for Iran to have nukes?
That great Democrat and beauty queen Nancy Pelosi attacks Netanyahu for opposing a “secret deal”. Wasn’t she the one who told us we’d have to read the Obamacare bill after it was passed to find out what’s in it? The fascists are alive and well in Washington.
All this talk about bad arguments by the Obama Administration are not directly the point. Netanyahu was not directly aiming to change Obama’s mind. This speech as aimed at the Sunni Arab world, so that IT could make Obama change his mind.