Thrown under the bus

American hostages, Iran - November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981

Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent. "He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas" Poor Richard's Almanac
Mike had an honest question at breakfast,"What's the matter with negotiating with your opponents or enemies?" He was responding to my lashing out at our administration's recent consorting with Iran. And the obvious answer is that there is nothing wrong with it. That is, if their motives are clear, their intentions are not too evil or contrary to your own and they aren't lying to you or trying to hose you.

Many of my liberal friends are questioning my progressive bona fide's these days, I even, horrors, posted a video from Fox News. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. 

Truth be told, I think that this administration's foreign policy and State Department is an utter disaster. Just like the last administration's was. A major vision deficiency. They have a very bad habit. They often try to solve short term problems by creating larger, long term ones.

Henry Kissinger warned last month that Iran is a great threat to mid east and global stability, greater  even than ISIS. I know that many of my liberal friends probably feel that it is actually Israel that is the greatest threat but that is a topic for another day.

Kissinger was the father of real politic, is probably wanted in at least ten scandinavian countries, has a tremendous amount of baggage, but he is, for all his faults, a brilliant student of history. And I think that he happens to be right in this case.

"There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire — this time under the Shia label.
From a geo-strategic point of view, I consider Iran a bigger problem than ISIS. ISIS is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can became a geo-strategic, permanent reality. I think a conflict with ISIS — important as it is — is more manageable than a confrontation with Iran."

Iran missed its deadline last September to provide information on its past nuclear work to the IAEA. Last week, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano said that they are still  refusing to answer questions about whether or not the Persian country has been trying to build a nuclear bomb.

Amano said at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC that his agency is waiting for information on "possible military dimensions," which Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has promised to deliver - and never gotten around to doing.
"What is needed now is action," said Amano, enumerating a list of around a dozen issues that Iran has refused to elaborate on for years, reports the New York Times.
"We cannot provide assurance that all material is for peaceful purposes," admitted the IAEA head. "The international community still has its doubts - it still wants clarification. That inquiry process will depend on Iran's level of cooperation." 

An expert on the issue who asked for anonymity told International Business Times that the problem is with IAEA's resources, as only three people from the agency are investigating the military aspects of Iran's nuclear program.

One of the three is investigating centrifuges, of which Iran has demanded enough to build 38 nuclear weapons each year, and two other investigators are looking into Iran's potential to weaponize nuclear material.

It is obvious that the IAEA and the world are getting stonewalled by the Iranians. So what do we do? We reward them.

Senior US and Arab officials were cited by the Wall Street Journal saying that in recent months, America and Iran have grown closer through cooperation against their "common enemy", the Islamic State (ISIS), as well as over a shared interest in "stability" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
American officials revealed to the paper that Obama's administration has been sending secretive messages to Iran through Iraq's new Shi'ite prime minister Haider al-Abadi, as well as through Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest ranking Shi'ite cleric in Iraq.
The statement confirms the assessment of a senior Israeli diplomatic source, who two weeks ago warned Obama may be holding secret talks with Iran - just as he was revealed last November to have been holding secret talks for over half a year prior to the recent controversial temporary nuclear agreement, and likewise reportedly had been easing sanctions on Iran for five months ahead of the deal.
It also raises greater concerns over US Secretary of State John Kerry's backtracking after rejecting military cooperation with Iran. According to reports though Iran initially rejected the notion of such cooperation against ISIS, Tehran later said it would consider it - in return for a good deal in the nuclear talks.
Obama's administration reportedly has been very cautious not to upset the Iranians, according to a senior US defense official working on Iraq who was quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
"They (the US) want to focus on ISIL (ISIS) and they are worried about antagonizing the Iranians...they are articulating in high-level interagency meetings that they don't want to do anything that's interpreted by the Iranians as threatening to the regime" of Iranian-ally Bashar Assad, the president of Syria, said the official.
As part of that pussyfooting around the Islamic regime, officials said the US military will play down the annual minesweeping exercise of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, as opposed to previous years when the drill was used to show opposition to growing Iranian naval aggression in the Persian Gulf.
Apparently Iran has been acting reciprocally, with officials saying Iranian Revolutionary Guards have ordered the terrorist groups under its proxy not to attack American sites in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cozying up to Hamas and Hezbollah too? The American mollycoddling of Iran has extended to its proxy terror organizations Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well, according to officials, who said that despite there being no official cooperation with any of the parties American positions have definitely shifted.
When it comes to Hezbollah, US and Arab officials said US intelligence agencies have given tips on threats by Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in the country to Lebanese security agencies close to or controlled by Hezbollah, including the General Security Directorate.
The revelation confirms statements last month by Lebanese experts, who said America is indirectly giving Hezbollah military aid, with new weapons being sent to the Lebanese army that coordinates with Hezbollah, and US intel reaching Hezbollah.
Hamas has also come in for a precedent setting shift in stance according to senior US officials, who noted that Kerry and other senior American diplomats indirectly negotiated with Hamas leaders such as Khaled Mashaal through Turkish and Qatari intermediaries during ceasefire talks in July.

The question of course is why would anybody trust Iran in the first place?

"The history of Iran’s nuclear diplomacy suggests that it will abandon the agreement when it has sufficient technological capacity to carry out a rapid surge of its program. Between 2003 and 2005, while the Europeans negotiated a suspension of Iran’s program, Tehran continued to accumulate nuclear materials and hone its research skills and, when it was ready, abandoned its pledges."

It sounds foolish to me to negotiate with such a partner. I could recite a litany of horrors and abuses of the Iranians around the globe, from the bombing of synagogues in South America to bombings in New Delhi and Kenya as well as the arming of the Taliban. Couldn't we have found a different dance partner?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

One need only look to the words of the Grand Poobah himself, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month.

"The conspiring enemy is aiming to stoke the fire of a civil strife among Muslims, to misdirect the motivation for resistance and jihad and to secure the Zionist regime and the servants of Arrogance (America - ed.) – who are the real enemies," said Khamenei."Contrary to the idiotic dreams of power and stability for this regime that the filthy officials of the Zionist regime dream, day-by-day this regime has moved closer to implosion and annihilation."Khamenei called for the Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorist groups in Gaza to "reinvigorate their endeavor, determination and resolve...Muslim nations should require their governments to lend real and serious support to Palestine."

This is nothing new for the Iranian leader.

In November, Khamenei said that Israel is a "regime doomed to collapse" and referred to the Jewish state as "the rabid dog of the region."
Several weeks before that, he called Israel an "illegitimate and bastard regime," and further called the United States a "smiling enemy" that is not to be trusted.

It is fine for the President to choose to side with the Iranians, Hamas and Hezbollah against the Israelis. Many people in this country, on the right and the left, would like nothing better than to see the government cut off all aid to Israel and be done with it. What I resent is Obama and Kerry pissing on our leg and then telling us that it is actually raining.

I believe that he hates Israel, that he has always loathed Israel and its leaders and now he is working directly with its most bitter enemies to help annihilate Israel. It is hard for me to believe anything at this point that comes out of his or his cabinet ministers' mouths. And I am a liberal.

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If we give the Obama group the benefit of the doubt it is not hard to imagine that they think that in President Rouhani they are dealing with a nascent moderate wing in Iran. But no one knows how things will shake down with the many hardliners there, in a society where dissidents and gays are routinely executed and rape victims murdered. And even so-called moderate Iranians would like to see Israel's citizenry extinguished.

Gay Iranians being lynched

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If you look at Obama's cabinet and state department you will understand better how we got where we are.

Samantha Power - United Nations Ambassador - Let's invade Israel and alienate you know who...

Susan Rice. - National Security Advisor -"The Benghazi attacks occurred spontaneously…"

Wendy Sherman - Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs - "...the only way the US deal could deal with North Korea's disputed programs and prevent them achieving a nuclear capability was through diplomacy, writing that," Kim Jong Il now "appears ready to make landmark commitments."

"Iran’s nuclear program would have to be "limited, discreet, constrained, monitored and verified."
If the Iranian nuclear enrichment program does not meet these conditions there will be no agreement."

Valerie Jarrett - Senior Advisor - ".. Israeli strikes near civilian havens in Gaza are indefensible."

Ben Rhodes -Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting- "An Iran nuclear deal will be the ObamaCare of our second term."

Here is an interesting piece on Rhodes, the apparent architect of much of Obama's new rapprochement.

In 2001 Rhodes worked for the campaign of a Democratic New York City Council candidate. The following year, he moved to Washington, DC to work for former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton (Democrat-Indiana). Rhodes helped Hamilton draft the final report of the 9/11 Commission, which the former congressman vice-chaired. Rhodes also assisted Hamilton and 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean in writing Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission.
When Hamilton was named co-chair of the Iraq Study Group in 2006, Rhodes helped him write that panel's landmark report as well. Most notably, Rhodes wrote a majority of the chapter advocating direct U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria, a recommendation that would have considerable influence on President Barack Obama beginning in 2009. Indeed, Obama ultimately adopted most of the report's 79 suggestions. Critics have noted that the report's “expert list” was heavily weighted with pro-Arab apologists who directed a number of rebukes pointedly at Israel. According to the American Thinker, “Some of the experts who were interviewed were appalled by the final written report because they felt it did not reflect facts, their testimony, or reality.”

Notice a lack of balance here?  The writing was on the wall long ago. Somebody was going to get thrown under the bus. Surprise!

 "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." Obama mentor Jeremiah Wright