RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/05/making_the_iranians_mad.html

There is much to be learned from the endgame between the Reagan administration and the final leaders of the Soviet empire that can be applied to the current situation with Iran.

When Ronald Reagan proposed the “Zero-Zero Option” for no intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, the pundits – and the Europeans – said, “The Russians will never agree to that.” They demanded that Reagan put forward what the Russians could accept – or not aggravate the Russians by putting U.S. Pershing missiles in Europe.
When Israel defines its aims in negotiations as recognition of its legitimacy and permanence as a Jewish State in the Middle East, pundits – and lots of other people – say, “The Arabs will never agree to that.” They demand that Israel not build houses in places the Palestinians don’t want them, not welcome the U.S. embassy in its capital, and not ensure that rioting Palestinians determined to enter Israel to “rip the hearts out of Jews” are stopped before they get to the aforementioned Jews. It will only make the Palestinians angry and there won’t be any more “peace process.”
When President Trump said his goal in discussion with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is the de-nuclearization of North Korea, pundits – and Democrats – said, “He’ll never agree to that.” Other administrations bribed the Kim family to abandon their nuclear project. It didn’t work, but hey, at least we weren’t making them mad.

So it was inevitable that when secretary of state Mike Pompeo listed twelve objectives that would make Iran a positive actor on the international stage – objectives the United States plans to pursue – the pundits would cry, “They’ll never agree to that.”

Inevitable, but the level of angst is actually a bit startling. “Sound, fury, and ‘regime change’ lite.” “Economic war on Iran.” In an ironic nod to pop culture and perhaps a veiled threat to President Trump, “[i]n the 1976 media satire Network, the frustrated and emotionally unhinged anchor Howard Beale, facing termination, goes on air and shouts ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.'” And Pompeo used “elements of a presentation … by Benjamin Netanyahu, a strident critic of the accord.” “European allies alarmed.” “Iran’s people will punch U.S. Secretary of State in the mouth.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-gives-europe-a-wake-up-call-1527201614

The Iran nuclear deal, cosigned by France, Germany and the United Kingdom, was hailed as a success for Europe’s style of multilateral diplomacy, so President Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement sent shock waves through the Continent’s capitals.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, for the second time in a year, that Europe could no longer rely on the U.S. to protect it. The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, tweeted: “Looking at latest decisions of @realDonaldTrump someone could even think: with friends like that who needs enemies.” Some commentators even proclaimed the end of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

There is a crisis all right, but it isn’t in diplomatic relations. It’s a crisis of European weakness. In a world increasingly defined by great-power competition, Europe is finding it increasingly hard to defend its preferred model of multilateral decision-making and soft-power diplomacy. As Mr. Trump decided to make his U-turn on Iran, he looked to other American allies: Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Trump’s snubbing of Europe is a continuation of the broader trend in U.S. foreign policy. President Obama came into office intent on a pivot to Asia. His administration canceled a missile-defense system for Poland and the Czech Republic in 2009, and retired two U.S. Army brigades from Europe in 2012. As of 2016, there were 62,000 U.S. troops on the Continent, down from more than 300,000 at the end of the Cold War.

When Mr. Trump calls on Europe’s wealthy nations to invest in the common defense, the diplomatic establishment practically faints. But Mr. Obama made the same point, at one point saying that “free riders aggravate me.”

During Mr. Obama’s tenure, European leaders similarly resented being left out of White House decision-making, such as when American policy on Afghanistan was being reviewed. On issues like Syria or even during the Iran negotiations, which began through a secret back channel in Oman, Mr. Obama prioritized his view of U.S. interests.

Yet America is still doing the heavy lifting to defend Europe. The European Deterrence Initiative, which positions allied troops in Eastern Europe, was reinforced by the Trump administration with $4.8 billion in 2018. American funding is expected to grow to $6.5 billion in 2019. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/north-korean-summit-should-stay-cancelled/

It’s not exactly Donald Trump’s Reykjavik, but he has done the right thing by calling off the misconceived summit with Kim Jong-un.

The North Koreans have been yanking our chain over the last week or so, presumably trying to establish their leverage and begin a negotiation over the negotiation. They seemed to make some progress, with Trump saying the other day that maybe we could settle for something short of complete, verifiable denuclearization, which is supposed to be our core demand. The president may have tempted the North Koreans into the gamesmanship by occasionally seeming over-eager to take credit for a stupendous diplomatic success (stripping North Korea of its nukes) that hadn’t happened yet and is unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, unpredictability is a typical North Korean negotiating tactic, so the sudden shift from warmth and sunshine to blustery demands and threats shouldn’t have been unexpected.

It was always far-fetched that the North would be willing to give up its nuclear weapons. For Pyongyang, the value of a summit wouldn’t be the opportunity for a good-faith negotiation at the highest levels but the chance to use a superficially successful meeting to unravel the sanctions against it, the way it has in the past.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dodging-a-korean-summit-failure-1527203552

Donald Trump described his decision Thursday to nix his June summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as a “tremendous setback” for North Korea and the world, but the better word might be relief. Mr. Trump had overestimated Kim’s willingness to give up his nuclear weapons and was heading toward a summit failure.

In a letter to Kim announcing his withdrawal, Mr. Trump cited “the tremendous anger and open hostility” in Kim’s “recent statement.” But the real problem is substance, not tone. As North Korea’s recent comments made clear, the North hasn’t decided to give up its nuclear weapons. The North continues to define denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as a process of arms control that includes the departure of America’s presence in South Korea. Like his father and grandfather, Kim wants sanctions relief and other benefits in return for nuclear promises his country has never honored.

Mr. Trump agreed to the summit in part because South Korean President Moon Jae-in misrepresented the North’s position after talks with Kim’s sister at the Winter Olympics. After claiming Kim had a change of heart about nuclear weapons, Mr. Moon pursued his plan to resurrect the Sunshine Policy of appeasement toward the North that failed in the 2000s.

This created a peace euphoria in the South that pushed the Trump Administration to explore the opening to preserve the alliance. Mr. Trump was ill-advised to agree to the summit so readily and without much planning, and he compounded the error by talking up its prospects. He might have gone to a summit that gave Kim a diplomatic victory for nothing in return. But perhaps the experience has taught the President that Mr. Moon and Kim have different priorities than his goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.

Mr. Trump said the U.S. will now continue with its “maximum pressure” campaign against the North, but the international consensus will have to be revived. Even without the summit, Kim scored a major propaganda victory by playing the peacemaker. This week he invited foreign journalists to witness the closure of the North’s nuclear test site at Punggye-ri.

There has been a lot of misinformation about both getting out of the so-called Iran deal and getting into a new North Korean agreement. The two situations may be connected, but not in the way we are usually told.

Getting out of the Iran deal did not destroy trust in the U.S. government. Our departure from the deal does not mean that North Korea cannot reliably negotiate with America.

In 2015, the Iran deal was not approved as either a Senate-ratified treaty or a joint congressional resolution. Had the deal been a treaty, President Donald Trump could not have walked away from it so easily and with so little downside.

Former President Obama knew that he did not have majority congressional support for his initiative. Therefore, he desperately sought ways to circumvent the constitutionally directed authority of the Senate and redefine a treaty as a mere executive order

Obama got the deal approved by the Iranians in part by paying them ransom for hostages through huge nighttime cash transfers.

A cynical North Korea knew only too well that in the past, President Obama either entered into agreements or avoided them based on his therapeutic notion that human nature was both changeable and essentially noble.

The North Koreans now seem worried that a more unpredictable Trump has a quite different, pessimistic and tragic view that humans are predictably capable of almost anything—if not strongly deterred.

After Trump’s rejection of the Iran deal, North Korea now concedes that it cannot cajole a flawed agreement with the current U.S. president, who is mercurial rather than scripted in his reactions.

The trans-Atlantic relationship is in trouble. No American president has ever been as widely loathed among Europe’s political class as Donald Trump. And not since the era of Freedom Fries and Axis of Weasels have so many European countries, this time including Britain, been spoiling for a fight with the U.S.

To the Europeans, Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal and impose sanctions on European companies that trade with Iran is a profound betrayal. As they see it, the U.S. made a solemn commitment to observe the deal after European countries entered into it in good faith. Harming European commerce with Iran to serve American interests is the act of a bully and an overlord, not of an ally and friend.

The Trump administration’s apparent indifference to European concerns boils the blood of even the most placid of Eurocrats. Europe is now actively looking for ways to inflict pain on the Trump administration in the short term, and in the long term to ensure its increasing independence from the U.S.

From the White House, things look very different. The Iran deal was not a legally binding instrument but the result of President Obama’s overreaching freelance diplomacy—as if Woodrow Wilson, counting the votes against the Treaty of Versailles, unilaterally committed the U.S. to join the League of Nations. The Europeans should have checked the relevant clauses in the American Constitution, assessed the state of congressional sentiment, and realized that Mr. Obama simply lacked the authority, political or constitutional, to commit the country permanently to such an agreement.

For the Trump administration, the Iran decision was not about deserting allies or overruling their wishes. Mr. Trump’s Middle East policies, after all, are quite popular with most of America’s Middle East allies. The Gulf Arabs and Israel felt betrayed by the Obama administration’s pivot to Iran; they are thrilled about the American change of course. The question isn’t whether the U.S. should stand by its allies but whether the Middle East policy preferences of America’s European allies should be imposed on those allies that actually live in the region.

The suggestion that their wishes must be weighed against those of the Gulf Arabs and Israel is humiliating to European policy makers. Most European governments do not regard these postcolonial Arab monarchies and Zionist upstarts as anything near their equals. For a U.S. administration to take that view is a slap in the face.

But preventing a single power from dominating the oil resources and transportation routes around the Persian Gulf has been a central objective of American policy since the Truman administration. Iran is currently the largest, indeed the only, significant threat to these vital interests. The maintenance of the U.S. power upon which America’s European allies rely, the administration believes, depends on blocking Iran’s drive for regional primacy. From this perspective, it seems arrogant of European countries to so casually brush aside the claims of longtime U.S. partners like Israel and the Gulf Arab states, and ridiculous of Europe to demand a veto power over actions the American government believes are necessary to the preservation of the global system. CONTINUE AT SITE

Barack Obama’s policy was to ask Iran to show some flexibility, give good relations with America a chance, just as he sought to make nice with Cuba, Russia, China, even the Muslim Brotherhood. Odious but not stupid, the mullahs knew a sucker when they saw one.

Watching President Trump scupper the Iran Deal made me wonder where we would be today if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election. I was reminded of fired FBI Director James Comey’s praise for the defeated Democratic nominee at a Town Hall meeting in April of this year: “Hillary Clinton is more meshed in, trained in, respectful of the norms and traditions that I’m so worried about being eroded today.” Lucky, I thought, Donald Trump is not “meshed in, trained in, respectful of the norms and traditions” that constituted the Obama Doctrine.

Barack Obama’s Big Idea was to ask the US’s traditional adversaries – Russia, Iran, Cuba, China, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and so on – to show some flexibility and give good relations with America a chance. His entreaty, however, was interpreted by Uncle Sam’s traditional adversaries – or, should we say, “partners in peace” – to mean the US, the self-identified guilty party in international relations, wanted a second chance. The Islamic Republic of Iran, eventually, decided it would play along with Obama’s “feel good” diplomacy, and entered into negotiations with the P5+1 (UN Security Council members plus Germany).

For the Obama administration, and for virtually every progressive we-are-the-world Westerner, the Iran Nuclear Deal was what we had been waiting for, the moment when hope and change meet and the promise of a global people’s community takes a giant step forward. Older hands warned that this was all a recipe for disaster, as I wrote in “Wiser Men on the Iranian Deal” back in May 2015.

Former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has penned an op-ed column for the New York Times entitled “Trump’s Most Foolish Decision Yet.” Ms. Rice, who previously counseled the Trump administration to “tolerate” North Korea as a nuclear power, has now outdone herself with her most foolish op-ed column yet. She condemned President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Obama administration’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA for short. Ms. Rice was echoing the laments of her boss Obama and Obama’s feckless Secretary of State John Kerry.

Susan Rice argued in her op-ed column that the “U.S. is about to violate a nuclear deal that has worked.” She is wrong. It is the Iranian regime, not the United States, that lied its way into the JCPOA and has been in violation since. And the JCPOA has only worked for the Iranian regime, which reaped the benefits of sanctions relief and cash infusions upfront while making temporary loophole-ridden “commitments.” At best, all this fundamentally flawed deal has done is to create a pathway for Iran’s eventual attainment of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles capable of delivering them. In about ten years or so, if Ms. Rice is still dispensing advice, she will be counseling the president in office at that time to be prepared to “tolerate” a nuclear-armed Iran. That is what happens when all that a foreign policy consists of is leading from behind, strategic patience and kicking the can down the road.

In the very first paragraph of the JCPOA’s preface, the Iranian regime knowingly misrepresented its intentions, stating it “reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” Iran repeated this “reaffirmation” in subsection (iii) of the JCPOA’s “Preamble and General Provisions.” Susan Rice most likely had this Iranian promise in mind when she wrote in her op-ed column that Iran “foreswore ever producing a nuclear weapon.” At the very time that Iran made this fraudulent misrepresentation of its intentions, which the Obama administration took as gospel, the regime was hiding its “atomic archive” documents on its nuclear weapons program. In 2017, the regime moved the archive to another secret location.

President Trump this week withdrew the United States from the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran. It’s about time. In the long history of delusional diplomatic agreements, Obama’s pact with the genocidal mullahs to halt their development of nuclear weapons was was one of the worst since Neville Chamberlain handed Czechoslovakia over to Nazi Germany. Like Trump’s abandoning of the feckless Paris Climate Accords, ending the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action may contribute to a needed reevaluation of the West’s antique paradigm of diplomatic engagement as the best way to stop aggression and protect our country’s interests and security.

The Europeans, of course, are unhappy. They’ve been doing a bustling business with Iran ever since Obama delivered $1.7 billion in cash on pallets as the payola to the mullahs for going along with the charade. At home, the evangelical internationalists of both parties and the foreign policy establishment are caterwauling, with grim predictions of doom of the sort we heard about North Korea until Kim, his mind apparently focused by Trump’s tough talk, agreed to meet with the president. They all assert that Trump’s move is counterproductive, that under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the agreement was working and that Iran had stopped it progress. Not counting ballistic missiles, of course. Now, they warn, Iran is free to start the program back up and obtain a weapon sooner than they would have if the deal remained.

This is what counts as a diplomatic triumph for delusional internationalists: for nearly forty years, a brutal, apocalyptic, fanatical cult has been at declared war on us, threatened our closest ally Israel with genocide, murdered our troops, kidnapped our citizens, fomented terrorism across the world, and declared openly and repeatedly its hatred of us and its intentions to harm our interests––this failing state that brutalizes its own citizens and rampages throughout the Middle East will see its acquisition of nuclear weapons delayed for maybe a decade.