As part of the Obama administration’s unprecedented opposition to Israel’s Prime Minister’s address to Congress on March 3rd, the White House claimed his speech would negatively impact a deal with Tehran. But on Friday, February 28th, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest suggested the speech would have no influence on the negotiations.
If this is the case, why has the Administration gone out of its way to vilify Netanyahu?
Congressional objection to the deal would unlikely prevent this President from signing an executive agreement to legitimize the super-terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran, to facilitate its nuclear agenda and to propel it’s activities towards the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.
Obama is not worried that his deal with America’s sworn enemy would undermine his own country’s national security. After all, he announced his intentions to normalize relations with Iran on the day he was first sworn into office, in January 2009. He has courted Iran’s Supreme Leader ever since.
In his first inaugural address, Obama announced his “willingness to open contacts with Iran and other untrusted governments,” and spoke of a new direction towards Tehran. The new direction included Obama’s abandonment of previous U.S. policy and commitment to stop Iran’s nuclear agenda. For the past five years he continued his periodic “warnings” to Iran, but has done little or nothing to stop its nuclear enrichment program. The enforcement of sanctions regime has had more holes than a Swiss Emmentaler cheese, and exemptions have allowed Iran to continue trading and exporting oil. The revenues from these activities sufficed not only to pay for the nuclear program, but also to overcome a few cyber-hacking setbacks.
Iran’s support of Shia insurgencies in Arab Sunni states, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and its consolidation of its influence over Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sana’a, do not seem to worry him. Instead of confronting the Mullahs’ ambition to create a Shiite Crescent in the Middle East, the Obama administration, rhetoric aside, has been accommodating and sometimes even seemed as aiding the regime, suggesting ‘the Islamic Republic of Iran is a “force for stability” in the Middle East of today and tomorrow.’
Instead of insisting on no-nuclear Iran, Obama contradicted, not for the first time, his commitment to Congress, the American people and Israel. He accepted the Iranians demands, allegedly “to allow the Iranians to save face.” What else have the Mullahs received in return to participating in the Oscar deserving illusionary scheme that Obama weaved to justify his adaptation of Chamberlain’s “peace in our time”?
It would befit Iran’s Supreme Leader to invite him to the 36th anniversary of the takeover of the American Embassy, aka the “Conquest of the American Spy Den.“ When Obama finally makes it to Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could give him, as a token of appreciation, a signed pink toy replica of the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) the Iranians hijacked in December 2011.
* Rachel Ehrenfeld is director of the American Center for Democracy and author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed- and How to Stop It.