JED BABBIN:BARACK OBAMA IS THE GREATEST THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY
http://www.epictimes.com/londoncenter/2015/03/the-greatest-threat-to-national-security-barack-obama/
At the signing ceremony for the Obamacare legislation, Vice President Biden memorably told the president, “This is a big f****** deal.” The foreign policy equivalent of Obamacare is about to be signed by Secretary of State Kerry. It’s an agreement that will ensure Iran develops nuclear weapons in secret and in safety.
The context of the deal is so clear that even the Washington Post got it right. In a Saturday editorial, the Post wrote that the agreement will reward Iran for more than a decade of ignoring UN Security Council resolutions that had the single purpose of preventing it from developing nuclear weapons. Iran has been lying and cheating so long, only those dedicated to ignoring the facts could believe they would live up to any deal that would prevent them from developing and deploying nuclear weapons.
There’s a lot more to the context than the Post wrote. Saudi Arabia didn’t notify us before it formed its own coalition of nations to attack Iran’s proxy forces in Yemen. The reason, according to NBC’s Richard Engel, is that they feared we would leak their plans to Iran. That is a precise measure of how much they dislike and distrust Obama.
Joined by several other Arab nations including Jordan and Egypt, Saudi aircraft have attacked the Shiites and are about to send in as many as 100,000 ground troops.
At the same time, a small part of American air forces are occasionally attacking Islamic State forces in Iraq. They’re in effect supporting the Iranian troops and Shiite militias trying – so far unsuccessfully – to throw ISIS forces out of key Iraqi cities such as Tikrit. The Iranians object to our involvement on their side, but it’s continuing nonetheless.
Obama’s 2013 preliminary deal with Iran had the effect of tying Israel’s hands. They couldn’t attack Iran and thus interfere directly with Obama’s biggest foreign policy initiative, so they haven’t. Now, facing a ten-year long extension of that deal, Israel is campaigning against it, as Prime Minister Netanyahu did in his early March speech to a joint session of congress. Obama’s extreme anger and petulant response resulted in US money and Obama advisers being used to campaign against Netanyahu.
Lest anyone think that Obama’s enmity for Israel was reduced by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s smashing election victory, Obama’s Pentagon team chose this past week to declassify and release a 1987 report that showed Israel’s development and possession of nuclear weapons, a secret both nations had kept for decades. Obama saw fit to divulge it to gain leverage with his negotiating partners – China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany – in support of the deal with Iran. Their disdain for Israel is almost equal to Obama’s, and their diplomats will have no difficulty rationalizing the “fairness” of Iran having nuclear weapons because Israel has them.
That report did two things. First, it was released only in part. The now-public version redacted out information on other nations’ nuclear weapons development (such as France’s), and only revealed Israel’s. Second, it said that at the date of the report, Israel was on par with the United States’ nuclear weapons development in 1955-1960. By then, of course, America had hundreds of nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them by aircraft and ballistic missile.
And let’s not neglect Obama’s hints that he’s going to continue pressure on the Israelis. The White House hinted last week that it’s about to let the UN Security Council declare Palestinian territory a nation, which Netanyahu said he’d never do. Obama is hinting at either abstaining or even supporting a UN resolution to recognize a Palestinian state within two years based on the 1967 borders, which Israel has said repeatedly are not defensible.
Thus, the context of Obama’s new agreement is that: (a) our Arab friends dislike and distrust Obama to a degree previously unknown; (b) Obama’s petulant dislike for all things Israeli has led him to an historic betrayal of Israel’s secrets and, perhaps even its nationhood; and (c) Obama’s desire to reward Iran for thirty-six years of behavior as one of America’s most determined enemies is unlimited by any of America’s national security and foreign policy interests.
Whatever Obama’s motivations may be, his goal is perfectly clear. He is determined to realign our policy with Iran’s interests, abandoning our vital national security interests in the Middle East.
We know – because of Iran’s religious ideology – that it cannot be deterred from becoming a nuclear power. In the thirty-six year history of Iran’s kakistocracy, there is not a single example of diplomacy changing the regime’s course of conduct. Since 2006, UN Security Council resolutions – which supposedly have the force and effect of international law – have required Iran to cooperate with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
Since then, Iran has refused to do so. Which renders absurd the idea that any inspection of Iran’s nuclear weapons program called for in the new agreement will be a reliable means of ensuring they don’t develop nuclear weapons.
We don’t yet know what Obama’s agreement will say, but we do know a few things that it won’t. It won’t even address their ballistic missile development, an essential element of any deal. It won’t force Iran to admit the extent of its nuclear weapons development to date because the Iranians deny they have done any.
Most importantly, it won’t compel Iran to stop uranium enrichment or ensure that inspections can be effective in Iran. Whatever Iran agrees to, it can only be counted on to conceal what it is doing in places the IAEA is not permitted to inspect. Like North Korea, Iran can be counted on to lie, conceal and create nuclear weapons in secret at its own convenience.
This is, as Joe Biden would say, a big (expletive deleted) deal because it will be an enormous blow to US national security. It’s too late to stop it unless senate Republicans insist on subjecting it to a ratification and vote it down. Faint hope that they will perform their constitutional duty to do so.
America’s national security interests are to maintain the Four Freedoms: freedom of the seas, the skies, in space, and in the cyber realm. Not every foreign nation has the power, or the interest, to significantly threaten those freedoms. And not every threat to one of the Four Freedoms is one to which we have to respond. But when one arises it cannot be tolerated. But what can we do when the threat to national security is created by our president? Until November 2016, not much.
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