Blumenthal, Connecticut’s US Congressional Delegation, and Iran

  

As the Middle East and President Barack Obama’s foreign policy of non-interference in the region dramatically disintegrate, President of Russia Vladimir Putin is gleefully pulling Uncle Sam by the beard.

Most recently, Mr. Putin has supplied Iran, a traditional enemy of the United States, with defense missiles that grossly interfere with the non-nuclear weapons pact presently being negotiated between Mr. Obama and Iran. It should be understood that Iran is a theological oligarchy and not a democracy such as Israel. For all practical purposes, “Iran” is the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Here is a headline lifted from the Office of the Supreme Leader:

“Leader's Remarks On Anti-Iran Sanctions

 “Iran's Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says all anti-Iran sanctions must be completely lifted on the day of a final nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.”

According to Iran, Western sanctions on the country are to be removed the moment the agreement between Mr. Obama and Mr. Khamenei is inked; and, oh yes, some sites in Iran will not be open to inspection. These are, according to Mr. Khamenei, Iran’s non-negotiable demands. It would appear from these demands that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks before the U.S. Congress issued from a prophet loved only in his own country. While relations between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama are in a deep freeze, largely because Mr. Netanyahu impertinently upstaged Mr. Obama on his home court, the relationship between Mr. Obama and President of Russia Vladimir Putin, breaker of Ukraine, are much warmer; so torrid, in fact, that some  are wondering why the two love-birds don’t get a room together. It appears to some that US Middle East foreign policy, at least in part, is now being written in Moscow.

Mr. Blumenthal has taken what might be called by the pacifist ward of the progressive movement “a hard line” on Iran U.S. pact negotiations.

“The more we see of it,” Mr. Blumenthal has said, “the less there seems to be agreement on. The Ayatollah Khamenei is saying that the sanctions will be lifted as soon as the agreement is signed. The President says it will be only when it’s implemented – maybe a year afterward. There is no real specificity on how this deal will be enforced or verified or inspected … Any agreement, any law, is worthless unless it’s strictly and vigilantly enforced …And that’s why I believe that congress has a role to play. And I’m supporting the Corker-Menendez bill.”

The Corker-Menendez bill simply reifies U.S. policy of the last 36 years with respect to sanctions on Iran, first imposed after the Iranian revolution in 1979. That policy has been vindicated by current events. Wars drive policy as much as diplomacy, which is why, come to think of it, the pre-World War Two diplomacy conducted between Prime Minister of Britain Neville Chamberlain and the Führer of Nazi Germany Adolph Hitler failed so conspicuously. War is a not inconsequential tool in the diplomatic toolbox. For the purpose of negotiations, Mr. Obama is pretending that military engagements in a hot war on the one hand and diplomacy on the other are unrelated. Mr. Khamenei knows better, as does Mr. Putin; both appear to have read Carl von Clausewitz's On War.

War, Clausewitz wrote, is “a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means... That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the Art of War in general and the Commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.”

The military posture of Iran gives Mr. Khamenei the hammer he needs to exact ruinous policy concessions from the Obama administration, and everyone knows this – including Mr. Blumenthal and other members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation. The real policy question the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation have not answered is this: Will the delegation throw Israel and former friends of the US under the Obama foreign policy bus to placate the peace wing of our country’s progressive/populist movement?