Peace is breaking out all over, so why won’t those pesky warmongers just shut up and go away?
President Obama’s dizzying-paced Mideast diplomacy worries America’s Sunni allies (especially the Saudis, who are privately seething). Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls the interim deal signed with Iran in Geneva on Sunday a “historical mistake.”
But for Tehran everything’s coming up roses. As our diplomats claim that the “infrastructure” of sanctions remains intact for at least six months, Asian and European firms are already cutting deals with Iranian counterparts as if the sanctions are gone.
Some, in fact, really are. Like the lifted-in-Geneva ban on insuring Iranian ships — a major reason that Iran’s oil exports had screeched to a near halt.
Plus, as Tehran’s diplomats contend (and ours deny), the deal “kosherizes” Iran’s uranium enrichment by promising to ultimately let it run “a mutually-defined enrichment program.”
Even before the end of the deal’s six-month interim period, it promises that the UN Security Council (which has long been on record demanding an end to all enrichment) will prepare a new resolution “with a view toward” closing its Iran file — the legal basis for international sanctions on Tehran.
See those cracks up there? Oops, there goes the whole dam.
In return, Iran makes some reversible nuclear tweaks, such as temporarily capping elements of its enrichment program.
Secretary of State John Kerry boasts that it’s the first time Iran has made any such concessions; in fact, Tehran completely halted enrichment back in 2003.
But never mind the facts. With a new, “moderate” Iranian leadership, we’re told, we may soon end a decades-old standoff without firing a shot. How can we afford not to try?
Hanukkah starts Thursday; it commemorates a rebellion against Antioch IV, who tried to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth more than 2,000 years ago. So go Jewish holidays: Remember Antioch, and Amalek (at Passover) and Haman (Purim): They tried to kill us, we survived, now let’s eat.
Israelis wish the West would at least recall last week’s words from Iran’s real power broker, Ali Khamenei.
In a speech to his Basij henchmen on Wednesday, Khamenei called Zionists “rabid dogs” that “can’t be called human beings” and vowed that their state will soon disappear. His diatribe was perfectly timed to coincide with the gathering of diplomats in Geneva, but they brushed it off.
A top US official said such words make her “uncomfortable,” but allowed that they represent “decades of mistrust” in which we too say “difficult things about Iran and Iranians.”
Israelies are furious at the cavalier way Geneva diplomats, eager for a deal, dismissed such language. While rival Israeli politicians criticize Netanyahu’s new confrontation with Obama, they (and almost all Israelis) agree with him that Geneva was a “bad deal.”
It doesn’t help that much of the dealing between the US and Iran was done secretly for months, mostly in Oman. Our strongest regional ally learned about the back channel from its own intelligence sources, but Kerry & Co. still kept the Israelis in the dark about the details.
No wonder they feel cheated and suspect that Team Obama will cut more deals behind their back. (Maybe as soon as next month: Our diplomats announced Monday that there’ll be a a mid-December powwow in Geneva of the warring Syrian factions.)
Yet Netanyahu has few options left. He’ll try to lean on Obama to “change policies,” as he reportedly told the president in a phone conversation Sunday. He’ll work with congressional allies to try to tighten sanctions on Iran, perhaps endangering the Geneva deal. And Israel will watch like a hawk for any sign of Iranian cheating.
But it’s hard to make much headway against the Obamaites’ unreality-based approach. The administration and its allies argue Kerry’s diplomacy is the opposite of “war as first option.” Huh? We’ve been considering “all options” for more than a decade.
And even as they demolish the sanctions that had the Iranian regime in serious pain, they insist that the only alternative to the Geneva agreement (the only “realistic” deal possible) is war.
Sorry: Geneva makes war more likely, not less.
Iran remains a near-nuclear state, which enables it to escalate its aggression in the region and beyond. Once the six-month period is over, it will continue to play for time, basking in the de facto end of sanctions — until Tehran decides to break out as a full-fledged nuclear state.
And nobody can pretend that “moderate” Iran hasn’t clued us about its ultimate intentions. Khamenei spelled them out last week.