It’s been a rough few weeks in the Middle East.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come and gone, leaving
behind in his wake a stream of petulant objections: Should he or should he not
have been invited by partisan Republicans to address the US Congress concerning
Iran’s machinations in the Middle East? Democrats in the Congress, we are to
understand, are never partisan. One wonders, what is the point in having a
party if its members are not permitted to be partisan?
Appearing on Morning Joe shortly after Mr. Netanyahu’s
address, US Senator Dick Blumenthal allowed that although the invitation itself
was inappropriate, he never-the-less had decided not to boycott Mr. Netanyahu,
because Israel and the United States traditionally have been allies. This was a
grown-up view of interpersonal relations. Why should a longstanding
relationship between two countries fall victim to personal pique? Mr.
Blumenthal noted that there was some disagreement as to whether the White House
had been advised of the invitation. It had.
To Netanyahu’s assertion that any deal between the US and
Iran that would leave in place Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons would
be a “bad deal,” Mr. Obama frigidly replied that this determination must await
a signed agreement. Even though the provisional agreement has not been
submitted to Congress, Mr. Obama has suggested, it would still be binding on
the country once the deal has been affirmed by the United Nations. No one yet
has asked any of the members of Connecticut’s all Democratic US Congressional
Delegation how they feel about a diplomatic hopscotch that dispenses with
Constitutional prescriptions. The US Congress is constitutionally obligated to
consent to international treaties: No consent, no treaty.
Mr. Obama has strongly hinted that he need not present the
deal to the Congress for affirmation, presumably because the agreement is not a
treaty, though it certainly is treaty-like. Some have pointed out that any
private arrangement between Mr. Obama and – ultimately -- Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ali Khamenei rests on shifting sands, because even public deals
affirmed by Mr. Khamenei are provisional. The Koran permits leaders like Mr. Khamenei
to lie to non-Muslims in order to
advance Koranic prime directives, which include deceiving or killing agents of “the
Great Satan.”
The leadership in Iran has had a hate-on for America ever
since Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, King of Iran from 1941 through 1979, was
overthrown by hotheaded Islamic revolutionists. Asked recently whether the “Hate
America” doctrine was still in force now that Iran was negotiating an
agreement with The Great Satan, Mr. Khamenei is reported to have said – of
course “Death to America,” a patriotic outcropping that may have disappointed but certainly did not dampen
either Mr. Kerry or Mr. Obama’s eagerness to strike a deal at any cost with
Iran. Mr. Kerry, who once threw some military metals – though not his own –
over the White House fence in protest of the Vietnam War, continues to be every
bit as hopeful as Mr. Netanyahu is doubtful that the deal struck with Iran will
leave the world a safer and merrier place.
When some upstart Republicans notified Iran indirectly that
any deal not submitted to the Congress for approval necessarily would not be
binding on Congress, they were roundly denounced as saboteurs of the mysterious
agreement and fitted with dunce caps.
Ambrose Bierce once defined “diplomacy” as “the patriotic
art of lying for one’s country,” and artful Iranian diplomatists certainly are
patriotic. Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry, true internationalists, both have been
accused of transcending patriotism, a rare high-wire act that in the past has
involved lying TO one’s country. If war is – as Clausewitz said it was – “the
continuation of politics by other means,” one or another of our
internationalist leaders should take note that Iran in particular has
outflanked the United States MILITARILY in the Middle East. For purposes of
striking a deal with Iran, Mr. Obama has decoupled Iran’s promotion, though its
agents, of a Shia-Sunni conflict in the Middle East and the questionable deal
with Iran that supposedly would make it impossible for Iran to develop nuclear
weapons. The two are intimately connected. Iran or its surrogates now control
virtually all the countries touching Saudi Arabia. Who wins the war determines the deal. The crescent of countries now surrounding
Saudi Arabia – like Israel, traditionally friendly to the United States – bear
the diplomatic impress of Iran, traditionally an enemy of the United States and
a client state of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, also traditionally an enemy of the
United States.
Mr. Obama’s unrealpolitik in the Middle East appears to be to
treat friends as if they were enemies and enemies as if they were friends, all
part of the internationalist art of lying TO one’s country. One wonders what
Mr. Blumenthal really thinks about the new configuration in the Middle East,
North Africa, Ukraine, the Baltic states, a disempowered NATO and Democrats in
the Congress who smile wryly when Obama and his retinue gives them the
Constitutional cold shoulder. Perhaps
Morning Joe should ask him.
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