Unable to Be Straight With Himself – Or the American People
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2015/03/06/obama-misleads-the-public-about-irans-nuclear-program
President Obama underplays American concessions and overplays Iranian commitments in the nuclear talks.
In the confrontation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, we are seeing the consequences of the long game Obama initiated right in his inauguration six years ago: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” he declared, “know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” A regime might well be tyrannous and murderous, as Iran had been since the return of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, but the better angels of human nature might reassert themselves if embraced in a web of cooperation. It was a big bet, given the history of Iran where the very word ‘democracy’ was not used in Khomeini’s regime, with many hundreds executed and thousands targeted for assassination in other countries. And the new Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had maintained that monstrous program for a time, even doubling the rewards for assassinations. He interpreted Obama’s gesture as a weakness. Six months later, he was brutal in his suppression of the Green Revolution. He was confirmed in his evaluation when the Obama administration failed to do more than whimper.
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Obama is such a captive of his own illusions about Iran that he has been unable to be straight with the American people. In reporting belatedly on the November 2013 interim agreement, he boasted it had “halted” Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, major American concessions were traded for Iranian gestures of temporary restraint, concessions that will likely never be reversed. Instead of halting the Iranian program, the agreement froze only American actions. Iranian nuclear engineers continued their work to improve the efficiency of their centrifuges and to master the use of more effective centrifuges.
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(Entire article is at the link. Zim.)
Mad Poet Strikes Again.
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