By David French
Friday, August 21, 2015
It’s increasingly clear that the key terms of the Iran
deal — the terms that deal in any way with verifying Iranian nuclear activity,
past and present — are a joke. As the text of a side agreement released
released by the AP yesterday confirms, the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) will actually rely on Iran to inspect itself at the crucial Parchin
nuclear site, providing “mutually agreed” upon photos, videos, and
environmental samples to IAEA monitors. And the deal’s broader monitoring
regime eschews “anytime, anywhere” inspections in favor of a process that
provides Iran written notice of requested access to suspicious sites, followed
by a weeks-long dispute-resolution process that still won’t guarantee such
access is granted.
Put plainly, under the terms of the deal, Iran makes
promises that it does not have to keep. In exchange, it receives sanctions
relief, access to international arms markets, and the ability to build
ballistic missiles. This isn’t a nuclear agreement, it’s an economic treaty —
an economic treaty almost perfectly designed to advance President Obama’s very
particular worldview.
If more than six years of Obama’s foreign policy have
taught us anything, it’s that he’s thoroughly adopted the academic Left’s view
of America’s international troubles — the view that such troubles are largely
America’s own fault. Our Islamic-supremacist enemies, this thinking goes, exist
because we and our allies have marginalized the dissenting, “authentic” voices
of the Middle East in favor of propping up oppressive, unrepresentative secular
dictators in the region. By switching sides from such “establishment” dictators
to the “authentic” voice of the region’s people, we can bring these dissenters
into the international community, deprive terrorists of recruits, and usher in
a new era of international relations. The truly extreme holdouts — the “tiny
few” who are irredeemable terrorists — can then eventually be dealt with by
international law enforcement.
Obama’s foreign policy fits this thinking to a tee: In
Libya, he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped depose Moammar Qaddafi
by transforming allied squadrons into the jihadist militias’ air force. In
Egypt, Obama and Clinton quickly threw longtime American ally Hosni Mubarak
under the bus and wrapped both arms around the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood
government, sending American taxpayer-funded F-16s and M1 Abrams tanks to Egypt
even as the Brotherhood violated the Camp David accords and forged closer ties
with Hamas. In Gaza, the administration has consistently condemned Israeli acts
of self-defense (though Israel uses tactics often more restrained than those
dictated by America’s rules of engagement) and presented cease-fire proposals
more in line with Hamas’s demands than Israel’s needs. In Syria, the
administration came dangerously close to deploying American pilots as
al-Qaeda’s air force to help topple the Assad regime.
The pattern keeps repeating itself. When it comes to
Mideast unrest, the administration repeatedly backs the more Islamist “street”
over the more secular establishment. But what if the Islamic supremacists are
the establishment? Then, the administration stands with the Islamists. American
arms flowed to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government, but deliveries were
frozen for months after the world’s largest political protests helped eject the
Brotherhood from power, replacing it with a government dedicated to fighting
jihadists. Similarly, America stood by as Iran’s mullahs crushed the Green
Revolution, missing a chance to depose a decades-old enemy regime. Obama
believes there can’t be peace until the Islamists are mainstreamed.
Yet the president refuses to understand the supremacists.
They don’t want to join the Family of Nations, they want to be the Family of
Nations. No one claims America’s Middle Eastern policy has been perfect. We’ve
made our share of mistakes in the region. But the theology of Islamic supremacy
goes back to the founding of Islam, and its list of grievances predates the
discovery of the New World, much less American “meddling” abroad.
Obama woos, and the mullahs laugh. In fact, they don’t
even disguise their hatred of the United States as they chant “Death to
America” and vow to continue their policies of terror and aggression. Obama is
saving his most desperate gamble — the greatest test of his worldview — for the
end of his presidency. He wants to mainstream the Islamic Republic of Iran, in
the hopes that they will subsequently mainstream themselves, in essence
becoming a religiously devout, Muslim version of the famous “Coexist” bumper
sticker.
Thus, Iran’s unenforceable promises aren’t truly part of
the nuclear deal — they’re the pretext for normalizing relations, for embracing
Iran in the hopes that it will embrace us back. The Islamic Republic of Iran
has been ostracized and marginalized. Like any good university leftist, Obama
wants to be inclusive. And for a time it just might look like Iran returns our
embrace — right until we feel the knife in our back.
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