When the histories of President Obama’s administration are written, his speech yesterday at the American University in Washington, D.C. on the Iran nuclear deal will deserve a great deal of attention. More than any other of his addresses, this particular defense of the fruits of his outreach toward Iran marks the culmination of a process during which he has changed from the man who sought to lead us to a post-partisan era to perhaps the most bitterly partisan president the country has known since Richard Nixon. But, for the moment, it is more important we concentrate on one key aspect of the speech that clarifies whether it deserves support. It is whether one believes that Iran is not an aggressive, terrorist-supporting state seeking regional hegemony as well as Israel’s destruction. If you agree with President Obama that those who chant “death to America” don’t represent the reality of Iran or its future, then his appeasement of the regime can be defended as a reasonable gamble. If, however, you disagree with the notion that this terrorist theocracy is on the cusp of a sea change that will be put into motion by the magic of Barack Obama’s diplomatic magic, then, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, you must oppose the deal.
The historic context of the speech provides compelling evidence about the way six and one-half years in office have altered the president’s ideas about presenting his policies. If he entered the national stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 by appealing to a nation that was neither red nor blue, it is now obvious that he is incapable of even pretending to rise above his anger at the temerity of critics that question his policies. His demonization of his all those who oppose the Iran deal as warmongers, his questioning of their sincerity and even their patriotism by subtly raising the question of dual loyalty to Israel, and his relentless harping on the origins of the Iraq (while ignoring his own culpability for the collapse of the country due to his abandonment of it after inheriting a war that had been won by the U.S.) and the lie that only Israel opposes the deal (when the Arab world is, in fact, also united in its distaste for an agreement that empowers an Iran they view as an enemy) are all worthy of extensive analysis. The sheer nastiness of his comments and the unwillingness to treat opposing arguments seriously on an issue that has divided his own party illustrates that life in the White House bubble has, as it did for Nixon, made an already thin-skinned man utterly intolerant of opposing views.
But all that is secondary to the way the speech highlighted a point I’ve been trying to make throughout this debate. The arguments about the details of the Iran deal are fascinating and all point toward its weakness. It leaves in place Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, protects their right to enrich uranium and conduct advanced research while providing less than intrusive inspections without also forcing them to divulge the extent of their past military research. If that wasn’t bad enough, it will expire in a decade leaving its leaders free then to build as many bombs as they like after being enriched by the relaxation of sanctions and the release of $100 billion in frozen assets that can be used to assist terrorist groups or build ballistic missiles, neither of which are prohibited by the deal.
But all of that would be irrelevant if, as Obama seems to think, Iran is not the extremist threat to the world that Israel and the Arab states perceive. Though the president concedes, Iran will do things he doesn’t like, he believes it is changing and that the supposed debate it is having about this resembles the ones he has with his political opponents:
Just because Iranian hardliners chant “Death to America” does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe. [Applause.]
In fact, it’s those hardliners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s those hardliners chanting “Death to America” who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus. [Laughter and applause.]
But what Obama left out of his comedy routine in which his followers are prompted to think of Republicans as being no different than members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is the fact that the leader of the “death” chants are not some grubby malcontents but the Supreme Leader of the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is his word alone that counts. It is he who gives the orders to both the funders of terrorists and the nuclear negotiators that hoodwinked Obama and Secretary of State Kerry.
As Kerry confessed to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, despite the lip service paid to Israel’s security by this administration, neither the president nor the secretary take the terrorism and the commitment to Israel’s destruction seriously. They believe the principles that have guided Iran’s theocratic tyranny for decades are mere poses.
Some of their supporters, like Peter Beinart, take it a bit more seriously. In The Atlantic, Beinart disagrees with Mike Huckabee’s comments about Iran seeking another Holocaust, but only to say that its regime is more like Stalinist Russia than Nazi Germany. Does the idea of empowering Iran to the point where it poses the kind of deadly threat to the world that Stalin represented comfort anyone? What’s also curious about that piece is that, like the infamous series of columns seeking to whitewash Iran’s anti-Semitism written by Roger Cohen in the New York Times; Beinart also tries to argue that Iran isn’t so bad to Jews. But by analogizing Iran to the world’s most anti-Semitic regime after the fall of Hitler, Beinart debunks his own thesis.
But all of this leads to only one question. Is Iran a threat or not? The more Obama speaks about it, the more obvious it becomes that the point of the agreement isn’t about nukes but about détente with a government that he has longed to engage since before he became president. Obama’s Nixonian rhetoric shouldn’t obscure the Nixonian Iran detente he is championing. Anyone who truly believes that the “death” chants are meaningless should vote for the deal and hope along with Obama that the world is on its way to becoming a better, happier place. But if, like most sensible observers, you understand that Iran’s despotic and dangerous regime is being strengthened rather than weakened by appeasement, then, regardless of the details, the deal must be opposed. It is on that question and that one alone that Democrats with a conscience must reject Obama’s bitter partisanship and vote no on the deal.
