It looks as if the president and his secretary of state are on a mission to praise, protect and defend their enemies, to despise and punish their allies, and to diminish America
Almost two years of “negotiations,“the final “deal"appears as a total surrender of the Obama government to all the demands of the Ayatollahs who boasted that all their red lines have been met. The deal will put them on the path to become a nuclear power, not as a pariah but legitimized by the US and Europe;they will continue to enrich uranium and to develop their ICBM program; the lifting of the sanctions will give them 150 billion dollars to improve their economy and their military capabilities which include, of course, strengthening Hizbollah, Hamas, and other purveyors of terror in the troubled Middle-East.
The bazaar merchants have trounced the feeble and naïve negotiators led by the team Obama-Kerry. You would think they have defeated America militarily and are now dictating their terms, as the allies in Versailles with Germany or McArthur in Japan. Years ago, Obama asked the Iranian mullahs to “unclench their fists ” and normalize relations with America. They didn’t but he did; he opened his hands, he raised his hands and said “Don’t shoot ! We give you what you want.”
The flaws in the preliminaries:
Some observers think that the original sin was not to limit the negotiators to US vs Iran but to include what is called P5+1 with Russia and China a sort of fifth column siding with Iran.
This was, indeed, a flaw, but a deliberate one, not a mistake.I think the Obama team knew in advance that they wanted a deal at any price, and intentionally enlarged the forum so that they could use the “other partners” as excuses for the multiple concessions they knew they had to make . How many times we heard Kerry say, apologetically, that “we are not alone;we had no choice if we wanted to keep our partners…”
Another flaw was pointed out by James Jeffrey , former ambassador to Iraq, who said after the “Interim agreement:” Those who studied the art of negotiating found two big mistakes that should be avoided :never show that you are desperate to obtain a deal and never take off the table a credible threat of use of military force if the talks collapse.” The shrewd Iranians knew that Obama was desperate for a deal and swore off the use of force, and they ratched up their demands.
Rather than set a time limit, the negotiations continued on and off indefinitely. The give-and-take which is the essence of any negotiation, was a one-way activity: we gave and they took, slowly but surely, extension after extension, concession after concession, red line after red line crossed. That is a huge flaw, for what is in discussion here? Obama started with bombastic declarations, often repeated, that “we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon…I don’t mean to only contain ...” It was a very simple proposition: First Iran should dismantle her nuclear paraphernalia, (as did Qaddafi of Libya after America attacked Iraq), and then discuss the modalities and the compensations. But Iran never said it would dismantle the nuclear facilities, above and underground—known and secret—in Natanz, Fordow, Parchin and other places. So they negotiated the “time line,” when and how it will be permitted to acquire the bomb.
