KILLING THE WORST DEAL EVER (4)

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN IRAN, JOHN KERRY, OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY

The Obamabot line (and therefore that of the media, including the execrable Conor Powell of FOX News) is that there is nothing new in the Iranian nuclear archive as presented by Prime Minister Netanyahu. The line has it that Netanyahu’s presentation demonstrates the rationale of the Iran deal. Who better than Monsieur John Kerry to reiterate the case for the deal (as in the tweet below)?

John Kerry

✔@JohnKerry

Every detail PM Netanyahu presented yesterday was every reason the world came together to apply years of sanctions and negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement - because the threat was real and had to be stopped. It's working! That’s why Israeli security experts are speaking out. 1/4

12:32 PM - May 1, 2018

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What is to be said about this? I think the editors of the Weekly Standard have performed a service saying it:

Iran’s duplicity is nothing new to the Iran deal’s proponents; indeed its duplicity (in their view) is precisely why we needed the deal in the first place and why we should stay in it now.

Welcome to the world of diplomatic groupthink. We need the Iran deal, we’re told, because it’s only by “engaging” with the regime that we can monitor what it does through JCPOA-mandated inspections. The Iranians may be hiding all sorts of things from the inspectors, the thinking goes, but without the deal there would be no inspections at all.

But by this logic there is nothing Iran could ever do, short of launching a nuclear attack on Saudi Arabia or Israel, that would persuade the deal’s proponents that discarding it is a good idea. The more Iran lies, the more it’s shown to have deceived western powers before and since signing the agreement, the more its proponents insist on preserving it. Nor is there anything else Iran could do to persuade western deal-backers to change their view. Is Tehran funding genocide in Syria? Yes, but the nuclear deal implicitly allows them to continue this behavior. Is the Khamenei regime funding Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations around the Middle East and the world? Yes, but we mustn’t “disengage.”

Iran deal proponents have come to resemble a police department that places security cameras all over town so that it can watch crimes being committed but can’t or won’t do anything about what it watches. We see Iran pursuing its nuclear program in flagrant violation of the 2015 agreement, but we can’t muster the will to do anything about it.

This is well said. Indeed, it supports President Trump’s characterization of Kerry’s handiwork on behalf of President Obama as “the worst deal ever.” I would add only that not even Neville Chamberlain funded Hitler’s aggression in order to secure “peace for our time” in the Munich Agreement.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/killing-the-worst-deal-ever-4.php