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Recently an important report about President Trump and Iran was drowned out by the weeping and wailing over the president’s Liberation Day increases on tariffs. According to Park MacDougald on The Scroll, Axios reported that the president is “seriously considering an Iranian proposal for indirect nuclear talks” . . . and “the administration is now exploring next steps in order to begin conversations and trust building with the Iranians.”
More troubling, MacDougald writes, “Phillip Smyth emphasized that the Iranians, despite holding an extraordinarily weak hand, are effectively offering the White House nothing: no direct talks, no negotiation over ballistic missiles or the regime’s support for its regional proxies, and nuclear negotiation only within the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal.”
We shouldn’t underestimate the president’s commitment to deterrence, or doubt his will to follow through on his pledge to prevent Iran from going nuclear. He has brought back “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, and deployed six long-range B2 stealth bombers to the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean––the only bomber able to drop “bunker buster” MOPS, “Massive Ordnance Penetrators,” 30,000-pound, precision-guided bombs capable of penetrating Iran’s underground hardened nuclear production facilities.
Also, as Smyth points out, Iran is the weakest it has been since its 1980-88 war with Iraq. Its proxies in the region have been neutralized, its economy is on the brink of collapse, its currency is approaching Weimar Germany levels of inflation, and its people are boldly disgruntled and increasingly restless. Now may be the best opportunity to end Iran’s nuclear ambition to destroy, Israel, which it mocks as a “one-bomb state.” Nor should we assume that self-preservation from a threatened repayment in nuclear kind will restrain the mullahs.
But the fact is, for nearly half a century the U.S. and the West have serially appeased Iran, even as it has killed our troops, kidnapped our citizens, and supported proxy terrorists who attack our allies, while stringing us along with duplicitous negotiations and promises they violate, even as they pocket billions of dollars that they’ve used to finance their malign intentions.
How did it happen? During the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, the Carter administration’s foreign policy team drastically misread the Iranian Revolution. It was not, as the West assumed, about anticolonialism, national self-determination, human rights, or brutal autocrats. Rather, it was a religious movement to restore Islam’s 14-centuries-long divine mission to create a world order based on the Koran and sharia law.
As the Economist warned about Carter’s feckless floundering for a deal during the embassy hostages crisis, “The denial of material things is unlikely to have much effect on minds suffused with immaterial things.” As modern jihadists have demonstrated for almost 50 years, they mean it when they say, “We love death the way you love life.”
The other dimension of this misunderstanding is the assumption that diplomatic engagement, transactional negotiations, and the “rules-based international order” can resolve conflicts, since after all, doesn’t the whole world want to live like us Westerners, enjoying affluence, living in peace with the world, liberating women, and having personal autonomy, political freedom, and human rights?
And how does one negotiate and bargain away the imperatives of passionate religious beliefs, traditions, and sacred doctrines created by Allah? As the godfather of the Iranian revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, allegedly said about the Iranian nation, “I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
Moreover, such transactional diplomacy that has been at the heart of our foreign policy idealism, has serially failed since the Versailles settlement of 1918, for secular, Westphalian nation-states function in terms of the national interests of their leaders or their peoples, and hold hostage to those interests any treaty or agreement and its terms.
Take North Korea, a gangster-state whose sole guiding principle is maintaining the power, security, and wealth of the Kim dynasty and its minions. Iran’s own nuclear ambitions have found a blueprint for creating nuclear weapons by following the North Koreans’ playbook. For decades–– under both Democrat and Republican presidents–– the Norks brilliantly played the game of negotiation, “agreed frameworks,” “moratoriums,” “inspections,” Western concessions, and broken promises, until the day it announced that its possession of nuclear weapons was a fait accompli.
Despite that monitory story, the West forged the so-called multinational “Iran nuclear deal” that Barack Obama et al. negotiated and signed in 2015, at the cost of billions of dollars in Danegeld, including $6 billion for five American hostages. In the following 10 years, Israeli intelligence rifled Iran’s nuclear program records and exposed for all to see the extent of Iran’s cheating on the deal.
But there’s a difference between other nations like North Korea reasons for violating signed treaties, and Iran’s purpose: not just national interests or those of the ruling clique, but bringing back the power and glory of the Islamic empire that for a thousand years dominated the infidel West.
That reduction of Iran to Western categories and concepts lies at the heart of our appeasement of Iran encouraged by a failure to take Iran’s religious motives seriously. This blunder was obvious from Barack Obama’s comments in 2015 about the nuclear deal in an Atlantic interview. “If you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. . . They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives. And that’s the reason why they came to the table on sanctions.”
But that “worldview” does not share the West’s materialist secularism that reduces religious faith to a personal preference or commercialized holiday rituals that have little influence on how we live and govern. Islam, on the other hand, is a totalizing political, social, and cultural system, and its sharia law covers every dimension of human existence. Pace Obama, Iran’s fundamental “interests,” “cost and benefits,” and ambitions to be “an important player on the world stage” are not our secular ones.
Rather, as followers of an apocalyptic, messianic sect of Shi’a Islam, the mullahs running Iran are pursuing the religiously inspired precepts of the founder of their state, the Ayatollah Khomeini: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry, ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be jihad.”
Obama, however, is typical of our idealistic foreign policy and failure to take faith seriously. Speaking of Iran’s dubious overtures to reopen negotiations, CENTCOM commander Kenneth McKenzie commented regarding Iran’s abandonment of its Houthi proxies after Trump’s recent strikes against them:
“Because of these developments, we now have an opportunity to bring Iran to the table for substantive negotiations over its nuclear ambitions — negotiations that must be conducted directly, not through third-party interlocutors, and with no scene-setting preconditions or concessions.”
All fine and good, but after 15 years of misdirection and violations of the terms of the agreement, and nearly 50 years of Iran’s lies and lethal aggression against the U.S., all empowered by our serial appeasement, why should the mullahs abandon a process that has brought them dangerously close to possessing nuclear weapons?
Mackenzie’s answers that: “The highest goal of Iranian statecraft is regime preservation. If the survival of the clerical leadership is directly and credibly threatened, Iran will modify its behavior. We now have the tools and the will to create this threat in a meaningful manner.”
But we’ve long possessed the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear production infrastructure, especially so after the setbacks Israel has inflicted, particularly the destruction of its SS300 missile systems defending those assets. What’s been lacking is the will to act and risk an exorbitant political price.
Most problematic is the claim that “regime preservation” is the cleric’ primary goal, which assumes that they “love life” as much as we do, and so can be threatened into abandoning its long, divinely enjoined project to acquire nuclear weapons. It’s obvious that their arrogant conditions on restarting the nuclear talks–– “effectively offering the White House nothing: no direct talks, no negotiation over ballistic missiles or the regime’s support for its regional proxies, and nuclear negotiation only within the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal,” as Phillip Smyth put it––suggests that they still need significant force to concentrate their minds.
Of course, most of want Trump’s efforts to succeed. But as Secretary of State George Shultz once remarked, “Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.” Fifteen fruitless years of “conversations and trust-building” with the clerics have demonstrated this truth, and left Iran dangerously close to acquiring the weapons necessary for destroying Israel and the clerics’ Sunni enemies.
Preventing that disaster won’t be achieved with “parchment barriers,” but with mind-concentrating force. Let’s hope the president’s efforts do not end up another Western fool’s errand.
The “Western Fools” are all in the trash bin of History now.
We have a real Gunslinger as POTUS.
“…..religious beliefs, traditions, and sacred doctrines created by Allah?”
allah is a fictional character like a genie, Mickey Mouse and Jizzmine Crockett.
And bunker buster bombers aren’t in range of Iran by accident. Neither are American naval forces.
Trump is going to take out the mullahs.
Yahweh is a fictional character like a genie too.
Bitter, table for one. Do you ever have anything to offer us, besides the same old useless and predictable God hatred.
Except for your pathetic narcissism your atrophied brain is truly an empty vessel.
You mock God by engaging in homosexual activity, but want to use God to criticize others?
The gall on you people
Intrepid isn’t gay.
We won’t be seeing you in eternity – fool
Psalm 14:1 To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
But as long as you vote MAGA we can use you here on earth!
“Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.” – Emily Bronte
So is your mom.
First priority is Iran can not have a nuclear weapon.
Second, and no less essential, is Iran is not able to continue proxy wars against Israel and America.
It would be irresponsible if elimination of their nuclear program resulted in relaxing economic sanctions and enabled more terrorism.
Iran should be sanctioned into the Stone Age until there is regime change and until that change results in elimination of terrorism and elimination of religious fanatic leadership.
regardless of who is on the errand, it will always be a fools mission . you are dealing with barbarians . anyone who thinks they can will be lumped in with fools . fools believe in islam , bigger fools think they can deal with them like they can with reasonable people . its a death cult . give them what they love , ” death ” the only language they are happy with .
I think we can expect the mullahs to drag out the talks to no end making sure they amount to nothing while they work feverishly to build a nuclear weapon they can use to take out Israel.
“But that “worldview” does not share the West’s materialist secularism that reduces religious faith to a personal preference or commercialized holiday rituals that have little influence on how we live and govern.”
The pursuit of happiness on earth is not materialist secularism it is SPIRITUAL secularism. The automobile and the lightbulb are not mere materialism but the spirit of man, his reasoning mind, his rational capacity, applied to his pursuit of happiness on earth.
Thank God, so to speak, religion in the West has been reduced mostly to lip service and mild superstitions clearing the way for the pursuit of happiness here on earth.
Secular Materialism? “Reduces religious faith to a personal preference or commercialized holiday rituals that have little influence on how we live and govern.”
How would you know how religious faith influences anyone. You are flirting with Marxism. Is it any wonder why you are so miserable.
I guess you haven’t heard but there is an actual Christian revival, a great awakening, if you will, going on in this country, particularly since it became obvious that Trump was going to get his second term. God’s hand was most definitely involved in the failed assassination attempt last year in Butler PA.
Sucks to be you, as usual. Not really much going on in your pathetic life other than your failure to “change the world” by forcing everyone to accept Ayn Rand as our new fairy god mother
You’re a mushroom – a fungi – get it –
You are an atheist nihilist – which is your foundation of belief but a belief that you violently defend nonetheless.
I agree to the point of separating religion from belief
Most people of belief have religion as their foundation
The practice round and round in circles with the calendar’s events within their belief
Religion gets in the way of experiencing God Almighty and Lord Jesus Christ –
Who am I to criticize? I was once lost like you – It was me that was crippled inside.
We can only function at a higher capacity if we know the Bible is fact and the persons mentioned in the Bible are true, really lived and Lord Jesus Christ – Yeshua Messiah is exactly what the Bible says – yes the Bible does a piss poor job explaining in our fast high tech short attention span world – That takes time and frankly my time on earth grows short, my eternal life does not –
Trump is kicking the can down the road. He doesn’t want another war. If he gets a deal it will look a lot like Obama’s deal. But he will talk it up as “tough” and distinct from Obama’s deal when it isn’t.
As the ayatollah Khomeini once said, if memory still serves me, “The Americans worship Coca-Cola. We worship death.”
This is what the myzzlumz do – they will wait out 4 years of President Trump – feign peace treaties and build up – the deep state is still in play – they are funding radical izzylam jihad – Obama is one of them – Biden is just a dumbass dupe – and he was not POTUS, President AutoPen was our president for 4 years.
I am expecting JD Vance to serve 8 years post President Trump.
Young jihad soldiers will grow too old and new generations will come — this is waiting game until Lord Jesus Christ returns and that will be after the antichrist – you know the devil himself satan comes pretending to be Christ and fooling the deep state and rapture believing Christians and everyone else in-between except for the very elect.
Ass holes like me who have been through hell in this life and brought to where THEY want and need me. Like the Count of Monte Cristo on LSD.
This will not be an ‘I told you so’ – the scant relative few those filled with YHVH’S Holy Spirit will do YHVH’S Bidding = that’s all –
Obama was right that Iran’s rulers are acting strategically. He just misunderstood the strategy.
First, regime preservation in order to work toward the second, the triumph of (Shia) Islam worldwide.
Too simple for such a brainiac to comprehend.
If any US government official, takes a direct or Indirect talks with those fiendish ,dangerous disingenuous and outright liars who are those Islamic dictators of Iran with only lead to and in a disaster.
There’s an old Christian saying which is “No dialogue with the Devil.” The statement of wisdom is based in the Bible book of Genesis which in Eden when Eve had talked with the Devil who spoke through the serpent. That dialogue ended in disaster.
The point is that in modern times, those Muslim despots of Iran may, rightly, to symbolic of the Devil.