Obama just tossed away his last card on Iran’s nukes
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President Obama receives an update in the Situation Room on the Iran nuclear talks from Secretary of State John Kerry.Photo: Reuters
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JOHN PODHORETZ
As the June 30 deadline for the Iran nuclear deal approaches, President Obama is putting all his cards on the table — by announcing he is keeping no cards in his hand.
In an astonishing interview with Israel’s Channel 2, the president declared that “the best way to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a verifiable, tough agreement.
“A military solution will not fix it, even if the United States participates. It would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program, but it would not eliminate it.”
Why is this astonishing? Because Obama is publicly eliminating any American possibility that we will bomb Iran’s nuclear sites even if the deal in which he has invested so much collapses.
Despite his declaration at a Washington synagogue last week that “Iran must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to get a nuclear weapon,” the president is in fact making it very clear Iran will go nuclear, and with his implicit assent.
Period.
Note that he has decided to eliminate the possibility of a military strike even though he has already indicated his deal will allow Iran to go nuclear in 2028.
That’s what he told NPR last month: “A more relevant fear would be that in year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich fairly rapidly, and at that point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.”
He scoffs at the value of a military strike because he says it would only “temporarily slow down” Iran’s ambition. But that is also entirely true of the deal he’s desperately trying to sell.
Assuming Iran obeys every last jot and tittle of the agreement, which its behavior up to now assures us it would not, Obama himself envisions an Iran gone nuclear 13 years from now. If that’s not “temporary,” then what is?
Look: If your choice is (a) Iran goes nuclear or (b) Iran goes nuclear, then obviously a military option is a bad one and a diplomatic solution is better.
But the president has spent his entire time in office assuring the American people that Iran going nuclear was not a choice at all.
Indeed, David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon counted 28 separate occasions on which the president has made exactly the vow he made to the Washington, DC, synagogue-goers.
Only now he’s amending it a little bit. Last month, he said Iran wouldn’t go nuclear “on my watch.” Of course, his “watch” ends in 18 months. So long, suckers! Après Obama, le déluge.
Unquestionably, the best possible option would be for Iran to see the error and danger of its ways and give up its nuclear program on its own.
Obama is acting as though he has the carrot that will make the mullahs act as he would wish: lifting sanctions and unfreezing bank accounts to the tune of $150 billion.
But what’s a carrot without a stick? We got a sense of that Monday morning, when the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran’s nuclear stockpile is growing — even though the 2013 agreement that began the talks with the United States required Iran to freeze production.
“Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council,” a new IAEA report announced, “Iran has not suspended all of its enrichment related activities.”
In the words of a somewhat apologetic New York Times story, “The overall increase in Iran’s stockpile poses a major diplomatic and political challenge for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.”
Oh, come on. What difference does it make?
Obama isn’t going to hit Iran, and he’s going to make a deal at practically any price.
The Iranians are going to do . . . whatever. And come 2017, Obama’s successor is going to have a hell of a choice to make — the choice he was too cowardly, or too craven, to make himself.
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