A Stunning Historical Error

Iranian wags jubilant at the success of their country's negotiators take especial delight in Benjamin Netanyahu's concern for the welfare of his nation with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran which has threatened the existence of Israel.

Iran is jubilant, Israel is irate. Israel does have plenty of company. And Iran is congratulated by Syria's Bashar al-Assad and by the leaders of Hezbollah. President Barack Obama insists there was no other option to deal with the international community's collective wish to ensure that Iran's search for a nuclear bomb be  hindered. By his reckoning gaining a decade of breathing-space before a nuclear breakout for Iran gained the world 'peace in our time'.

Sorry Mr. #Netanyahu! #IranDeal is done. #IranWinsPeace

President Obama is big on living up to his Nobel Peace prize. It was prematurely awarded him with the prospect of hope that his presidency would somehow make a turbulent world growing more chaotic, somehow quiescent. The fact that Americans voted a biracial man of reputed integrity and high intelligence to administer the affairs of the world's sole superpower gave impetus to the Nobel Committee's decision.

And ever since, Mr. Obama has been scrambling to earn that distinction. Offering doves and laurels instead of ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. Which means when he issues a threat claiming that there are 'red lines' that his country will not tolerate being crossed, he is also amenable to collapsing his intent in favour of 'diplomacy'. The misfortune is that the kind of diplomacy practised by this administration is viewed as weakness and cowardice by his opponents.

So that when America steps down from its warning against committing bestial acts of terrorism on the part of state actors in response to their own citizens' pleas for equal treatment in a geography beset with tribal and sectarian hatreds that succumb to Islamist jihad where barbarous atrocities based on historical medieval practices leading to conquests are considered the most effective type of persuasion, standing back is assumed to be assent.

He does not quite express the opinion of all Americans: "[Obama's approach to Iran is] dangerously naive. I think he's misjudging what the Iranians want. And the best evidence of what they want is what they're doing right now to destabilize the region without nuclear weapons", said Senator Lindsey Graham. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei heads an aggressive, revolutionary power-state.

The Islamic Republic of Iran rallies, arms and directs military forces in Shiite-led countries such as Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Lifting the arms embargo against Iran is certain to spell out to regional Sunni allies supine American capitulation to Iranian spheres of military influence region-wide, as a reflection of verifiable reality brought home by the agreement which Iran lauds and the rest of the world deplores.

Despite the vigour with which Barack Obama defended his administration's surrender to Iran's demands and the watering down of all the measures meant to ensure that the country did not any time soon ascend to a nuclear power status, there was one fairly assured method whereby Iran's nuclear aspirations might have been successfully deterred, and that was to continue to enforce and to add to the already-successful economic sanctions.

That, coupled with continued efforts to disrupt the nuclear program by implanting deterrents like Stuxnet would have been far more effective than releasing to the Iranian Republic hundreds of billions in oil revenues and other investment incomes to enable them to get on with their program of regional disruption, internal oppression, and threats to world stability.

Instead, a hostile tyranny comprised of megalomaniacs obsessed with nuclear power has been given overt permission to proceed with its abhorrent agenda.