President Obama purports to have a sophisticated theory of international relations supporting his catastrophic deal with Iran. Dealing with the world’s foremost sponsor of state terrorism and an avowed enemy of the United States, Obama is lavishly funding the regime and leaving Iran’s nuclear program on the path of development to nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.
He proclaims the deal a famous victory, but with the AP’s report on the, ah, unusual arrangement for the self-inspection of the Parchin research facility, it has descended into self-evident farce. Even Stevie Wonder could see that.
Why self-inspection? With the death of Peter Sellers, Inspector Clouseau was unavailable.
For the United States, the self-inspection is one more humiliation among a long train of humiliating concessions. It represents a sort of reductio ad absurdum, a piece of black humor in the style of Joseph Heller. The secret side deal could be a sequel to Catch-22. From President Obama’s perspective, the humiliation of the United States must be an added advantage of the deal.
The revelation of the terms of the Parchin side deal prompts me to think back to the comments of senior Iranian presidential adviser and former intelligence minister Ali Younesi this past fall. The comments were offered for domestic political consumption to the official Iranian news agency.
There was something to offend everyone in Younesi’s comments. Most striking to me, however, was Younesi’s perception of Obama. Younesi had Obama’s number. Younesi’s contempt for Obama shone through his comments and it surely reflects the consensus of the regime. Obama has worked hard to earn it.
The fact that Younesi made these comments on the record for public consumption was striking and newsworthy. The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo had the story:
The Iranian president’s senior advisor has called President Barack Obama “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and described the U.S. leader’s tenure in office as “humiliating,” according to a translation of the highly candid comments provided to the Free Beacon.The comments by Ali Younesi, senior advisor to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, come as Iran continues to buck U.S. attempts to woo it into the international coalition currently battling the Islamic State (IS, ISIL, or ISIS).And with the deadline quickly approaching on talks between the U.S. and Iran over its contested nuclear program, Younesi’s denigrating views of Obama could be a sign that the regime in Tehran has no intent of conceding to America’s demands.“Obama is the weakest of U.S. presidents, he had humiliating defeats in the region. Under him the Islamic awakening happened,” Younesi said in a Farsi language interview with Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency.“Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era: Terrorism expanded, [the] U.S. had huge defeats under Obama [and] that is why they want to compromise with Iran,” Younesi said.
Younesi followed up with comments that were somewhat offensive to conservatives like us, but the substance wasn’t unflattering. We believe Israel is our friend and Iran has been our mortal enemy since, you know, around about 1979. In assessing Iran our enemy, we have taken them at their word and judged them by their actions. They have a voluminous amount of American blood on their hands.
Younesi is to some extent on the same page with President Obama. He said of American conservatives: “Conservatives are war mongers, they cannot tolerate powers like Iran. If conservatives were in power they would go to war with us because they follow Israel and they want to portray Iran as the main threat and not ISIS.”
Well, Iran is the main threat. ISIS doesn’t have a nuclear program or the trappings of a state and I would like to think we would support military action against Iran if necessary, though a president whose strength they respected would make it unnecessary.
Younesi also had the Democrats’ number. He deemed them “no threat.” He got that right, though you don’t have to be a former intelligence minister to figure that out.
Younesi’s comments foretold our rendezvous with destiny, Obama style: “We [the Islamic Republic] have to use this opportunity [of Democrats being in power in the U.S.], because if this opportunity is lost, in future we may not have such an opportunity again.”
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