RICH BAEHR: THE DISAPPEARING IRAN STORY
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10237
The Drudge Report is filled these days with alarming stories about the Ebola epidemic. A recent banner headline read: “Most Severe Health Emergency in Modern Times.” On Monday, a Hazmat crew boarded an Emirates plane from Dubai that landed at Boston’s Logan Airport, after a few passengers were isolated with flu-like symptoms.
After the first Ebola death in America, the debate about allowing flights from the most afflicted countries in Africa into America, or whether to allow anyone who has been in these countries recently to enter the United States, has picked up in intensity. There are loud voices on cable news programs claiming the country is unprepared to deal with the disease if it appears in multiple locations. A group that supports Democrats is running an ad in several battleground states where the midterm races are close, arguing that Republicans are responsible for pretty much anything bad that comes from the Ebola outbreak now, since their call for cuts in federal spending led to reductions in appropriations at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Of course, the ad conveniently neglects to mention the role of the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress in negotiating the terms of sequestration that created many of the alleged cuts.
The Sunday TV news programs this week addressed the Ebola story, and also the apparent failure of U.S. airstrikes to in any way change the dynamic of the advances by the Islamic State group in Iraq, now threatening the capitalBaghdad as well as in Kurdish towns in Syria, borderingTurkey.
In the only debate held between then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his opponent, former California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1980, Reagan asked the American voters whether they were better off than they were four years ago. Some analysts think the question, mishandled of course by the unusually inept Carter, led to Reagan pulling away in the contest. In a nasty black humor attempt to address the current political climate, one tweet on Twitter asks: “Are we more likely to be beheaded or infected than we were 6 years ago??”
Added to the mix is the potentially most volatile issue that could impact many American cities. A grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri will decide whether there is enough evidence to indict Darrin Wilson, the policeman who shot and killed 18-year-old Mike Brown, a black resident of the city. Last week another black resident of St. Louis was shot and killed by a St. Louis policeman in what the police claim was an exchange of gunfire. Civil rights leaders are picking up the pace of demonstrations in the area, and already there have been confrontations at the city’s symphony orchestra and an uglier one outside the Cardinals’ baseballstadium. There are fears in the St. Louis area about rioting and violence if the policeman from the Ferguson shooting isnot indicted. Clearly, this could spread to other cities with large black populations.
With all this as backdrop, it is not surprising that some important stories seem to have disappeared from the news pages. Had Americans not been beheaded by ISIS monsters, and had Ebola been confined to West Africa, neither story would have had nearly as much resonance in the United States. Foreign policy is almost never the top story for a population that tends to be tuned into football this time of year, and is rarely as obsessed about politics as people in many other countries.
One important story that has fallen almost entirely out of the news stream concerns the negotiations about Iran’s nuclear program with the P5+1. These talks, already once extended after a failure to reach a comprehensive agreement following the signing of an interim accord last year, are due to expire on November 24. The Obama administration, facing obstacles and problems on many fronts, seems desperate to have the negotiations with Iran result in a deal, or failing that, get the talks extended again. The collapse of the talks would be a big story, and suggest one more failure for an administration already on a long losing streak abroad.
Fortunately for Israel, and all those skeptical of both Iran’s intentions, and the current American administration’s seeming captivation with starting a new path forward with Iran, the deadline for the talks is after the current midterm elections on November 4. It is almost certain that the administration helped set that date, much as it moved major implementation of Obamacare rules until after the 2012 presidential election. The almost complete misfiring of the startup of online registration for the new health care program had it occurred in October 2012, rather than October 2013, would likely have resulted in a President Mitt Romney.
The Obama administration has made its displeasure clear over some new housing tenders in Jerusalem. Presumably, only Arabs are to be allowed to reside in some sections of Israel’s capital, though never a peep is heard about allowing Arabs to live in predominantly Jewish sections of the city. Only in Israel, is every housing program microanalyzed internationally. Israel, of course, unlike many of its critics in Europe, is expanding its population through natural means (high birth rate, and many more births than deaths). The critics are in countries whose birth rates are so low, that only large levels of immigration, predominantly Muslim immigration at this point, can sustain population numbers. Israel needs to build new housing. That in itself may be a shock to some of its European critics. In any case, new sanctions to protest Israel’s housing misbehavior are coming.
While the usual protests from the usual sources always accompany Israel’s housing news, one story that failed to make any national newscasts recently concerned Iran’s effective takeover of Yemen through support of radical Shiite forces. In essence, we now have an Hezbollah in the south.
President George H. W. Bush assembled an international coalition to successfully drive Iraq out of Kuwait after it invaded that small country in 1990. Today with the administration looking to embrace Iran’s mullahs, Washington is silent about the end of Yemeni sovereignty.
Washington is also loathe to criticize Iran for injecting its own fighters into the Syrian civil war. In fact, Iran seems to be using the United States as a vehicle to deliver a message to Israel — don’t mess with Syrian President Assad or threaten his hold on the country or it will prove bad forIsrael. Iran seems to have chosen to deliver a more direct warning to Israel with a step-up in activity by Hezbollah on Israel’s northern borders, including a bombing attack. The Hezbollah actions were ostensibly a response to the perception (denied by Israel) that Israel may have been responsible for an explosion at one of the many unexplored Iranian military sites at Parchin.
The overall reading on Iran’s activities lately is that the country continues to be an aggressive threat to its neighbors and to Israel and others in the region. But none of this seems to have dampened Obama’s interest in setting out a new path in relations between the countries, and to use the liberal vernacular — “welcoming Iran back into the community of nations.” All that would be left after that would be for Iranian officials to “join the conversation” at National Public Radio, or in the pages of The New York Times. But wait, that seems to already be happening with plans for a luxury tour of mullah land led by Times “expert” writers.
Some of the almost incredible deference shown to Iran by the Obama administration, supposedly relates to its assistance in the struggle in Iraq against ISIS. But truth be told, our courtship of Iran began far earlier in the Obama administration’s years in office. America had pretty much abandoned Iraq, because its governance under Nouri al-Maliki was not appropriately diverse to satisfy Washington. Absent some showboating extreme violence by ISIS, Obama might never have had the U.S. re-enter the conflict, even in as limited a fashion as we have so far. Abandoning Iraq (and for that matter Afghanistan) fit the Obama narrative about ending the Bush wars. Playing “Let’s Make a Deal” with Iran also fit the Obama narrative about talking with our enemies. True to his word, Obama has tried to make friends of our enemies as he has made life difficult at times for what have historically been this country’s friends.
In any case, the number of Americans aware that there was an explosion at an Iranian military site, or that Hezbollah set off a bomb that wounded Israeli soldiers, or that Yemen’s government has fallen to Iranian backed forces is likely trivial. Israeli housing announcements are of course different — the Obama friendly media are all over them. If Kerry, like the president he serves, is committed to a deal with Iran seemingly at any cost, then the concessions will come tumbling down, as the latest drop dead date approaches. Alternatively, the concessions needed to satisfy Iran may be too transparent, so that only a handful of them are delivered in order merely to further extend the talks.
In any case, when you are in the bazaar, the impatient party loses.
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