The Day After
What a nuclear deal with Iran will set in motion
IN Persian folklore, the “sticky dervish” is a beggar who sits at your door and won’t leave until you give him something. This is how Iranian satirists see US Secretary of State John Kerry these days.
Ordered by President Obama not to return home without some kind of nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, Kerry, having agreed to extend the twoyearold negotiations with Iran beyond the June 30 deadline, plans to stay in Vienna until July 7 pending “a final agreement.”
The Iranian side has understood that Obama wants a deal more desperately than they do and are determined to squeeze even more concessions from him.
Iranian demands will keep coming, and Obama is determined to surrender across the board.
The problem is that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wants him to surrender in utter humiliation. Obama will probably accept even that.
So, sometime in the near future, an “agreement” will be announced.
What matters now is what happens the day after the announcement of the jewel in the crown for Obama’s legacy.
Here are some of the things that will happen:
Iran will continue its nuclear project pretty much as before, with a bit of windowdressing about redesigning the Arak plutonium plant and reducing the number of centrifuges at Fordow, one of six places where uranium is enriched in the Islamic Republic.
A process of producing diplomatic fudge will be set in motion with a draft resolution presented to the UN Security Council, cancelling the six previous ones that have helped force Tehran to the negotiating table.
Once that text is adopted, talks will start on “modalities of implementation” that could continue for months if not years.
The perception that the United States has accepted Iran as a wannabe nuclear power will intensify the arms race that’s already started in the Middle East, with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and perhaps even Iraq speeding up nuclear projects for which they’re partnering with France, Russia and China, among others.
Obama’s legacy surrender will send yet another signal to Washington’s traditional allies that at least as long as this administration is in place, the United States cannot be counted on as a friend.
Obama’s legacy agreement will not terminate the Islamic Republic’s active role in sponsoring terrorism across the globe. Training, financing and arming Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and similar groups will continue and may even be intensified.
Obama certainly knows that Teh ran is the one world capital in which almost all terrorist organizations, including nonIslamist ones from Latin America, maintain offices and hold an annual conference every February.
Tehran will continue a tradition that started in the very first few months of the Islamic Republic: holding some American hostages either inside Iran or by Khomeinist agents in other parts of the Middle East. Since 1979, not a single day has passed without some Americans being held hostage by Khomeinists. Right now, four are being held captive by Tehran.
Obama’s surrender will encourage the most radical elements of a vicious regime already preparing for a more intense nationwide crackdown on all forms of dissent.
In the past few weeks, scores of humanrights activists, trade unionists and activists of religious and ethnic minorities have been arrested, while a new campaign known as “Islamic Chastity” is promoting new measures against women. (One of the regime’s grandees, Ayatollah Alam alHoda, has even threatened that women who show their hair from under their hijab should have not only their hair but also their heads cut off.) Right now 7,000 Iraqi Sunnis are in jail with a death sentence with Tehran publicly pressing Baghdad for their execution in the context of the sectarian war in the Middle East.
Iraqi President Fouad Massoum has stopped the executions by refusing to sign the final death orders. The Obama deal would reinforce Iran’s position as the dominant power in Iraq, making it hard to resist the mullahs’ demands for mass execution of Iraqi dissidents.
Obama hopes that his legacy surrender will help the supposedly “moderate” RafsanjaniRouhani faction, which he sees as proAmerican, win next year’s crucial elections and lead Iran toward some sort of normality.
In fact, the surrender will almost certainly have the opposite effect.
The most virulent antiAmerican factions will be able to claim total victory over the “Great Satan” and be further encouraged in their mad dreams of conquest in the name of Islam. (Last time around, President Bill Clinton’s minisurrender to Iranian demands led to the destruction of Mohammed Khatami’s presidency and the advent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)
Gaining access to billions in sanctions relief, Iran would be able to pursue with greater vigor its lowcost imperialism in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Afghanistan and Yemen, among other places.
Obama had a choice between the people of Iran and their oppressors; he chose the latter.
He had a choice between a doomed reactionary regime and an Iranian nation thirsting for democracy and progress.
He made the wrong choice.