Iran's Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali-Khamenei |
By Alan
Caruba
What
Americans have a hard time understanding is that, for all the Iranian
negotiators, the outcome of the nuclear arms deal that the United States is
leading all comes down to just one man, Sayyed Ali-Khamenei, otherwise known as
the Supreme Leader of Iran.
In the 21st
century, it is hard to comprehend that a nation could be ruled by a man whose
powers supersede that nation’s president, its civil government, its judiciary
and its military. Iran has had only one other Supreme Leader since its founding
in 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini who held the position until his death in 1989. The
1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah in order to secure greater
freedom, but the Iranians ended up more servile than before.
This is
who Obama and P5+1 team (France, Great Britain, Russia, China, plus Germany) is
negotiating with as they move toward the March 31 deadline for the talks.
Khamenei has already said that the only thing he wants is the immediately
lifting of the economic sanctions that are credited with bringing the Iranians
to the negotiation table.
The
negotiations have to be seen in the context of Iran’s daily cries of “Death to
America” and “Death to Israel.” They
have to be seen in the context of a history of Iranian aggression against
America and Israel that has included the bombing of our Marine barracks in
Beirut in 1983, attacks on U.S. embassies and countless other examples of their
bad intentions, not the least of which has been its sponsorship of two
anti-Israel groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and, to a lessor extent, Hamas in
Gaza.
Any nuclear deal that permits Iran to
continue to enrich enough uranium to make its own nuclear weapons is a very bad
deal. Netanyahu came to the U.S. at the invitation of Congress to make that
point as the leader of the nation the Supreme Leader intends to destroy. We
would be next.
All this
is just slightly insane when one considers that President Obama has been
obsessed with reaching an agreement with Iran before and since he took office
in 2009. He has done everything possible to demonstrate his desire to remove
the obstacles to conferring approval on Iran. In the process, he has made us
look and be weak.
It is
hopeful news, therefore, as reported in The
Hill that “Congress is growing hostile to the emerging nuclear deal with
Iran, leaving President Obama with little political cover as he approaches a
critical deadline in the talks. Should a deal be reached, it would transform
U.S. and Iranian relations and potentially give Obama the most important
foreign policy achievement of his second term.”
His most
significant foreign policy failure, however, has been his betrayal of Israel,
the only ally in the Mideast that the U.S. truly has had. Declassifying
information about Israel’s nuclear arms was pure treachery. That said, it was
no secret and no doubt has protected Israel against apocalyptic destruction.
Consider
the Middle Eastern foreign policy failures Obama has had to date. The Saudis
and other Gulf States have abandoned hope that Obama would resist the Iranian
proxies taking over Yemen. They are pursuing their own military operation
there. Egypt which replaced the Muslim Brotherhood with a U.S.-friendly president
has not seen any renewal of the former friendly relations that existed. Iraq is
in turmoil thanks to Obama’s removal of U.S. troops in 2011 and even has
Iranian military units fighting ISIS. Syria has been in a civil war that has
killed thousands. It’s a long list but it comes down to Obama’s ending of the
U.S. role in the Mideast.
Just as
the Iranians are controlled by their Supreme Leader, we have a President who
sees himself and his role in a similar way. He has demonstrated his
dissatisfaction with the Constitution and the limits it puts on the Executive
branch. He has ignored Congress and has been experiencing reversals of policy
by the judicial branch. In the case of the Iran negotiations Congress has been
kept in the dark along with the rest of the American people.
The
Secretary of State, John Kerry, has declared that any outcome of the
negotiations would legally non-binding. If so, why are they being pursued? Such
negotiations at the treaty level have always required the consent of the Senate,
but the Obama regime is seeking to by-pass that mandatory factor.
On the
other side of the table, it has been reported that the main stumbling block to
agreement has been Iran’s failure to cooperate with a United Nations probe into
whether it tried to build atomic weapons in the past. If United Nations
inspectors, in the future as in the past, are unable to verify that Iran is not
continuing its nuclear weapons program, there is no way an agreement of any
kind could be achieved.
On March
26, the Washington Examiner reported “The Obama administration is giving in to
Iranian demands about the scope of its nuclear program as negotiators work to
finalize a framework agreement in the coming days, according to sources
familiar with the administration’s position in the negotiations.”
You can be
very sure that the Supreme Leader is watching this closely. If he can continue
to get the kind of negotiations—an accord—that will result in Iran becoming a
sanctions-free, nuclear-armed nation, he will permit the deal to proceed.
The
Iranians, as always, will cheat on any deal to achieve this goal. Sadly,
everyone at the table knows that, but Russia and China have strong economic
reasons to pretend otherwise.
If the Supreme
Leader gets what he wants the prospect for war in the Middle East would
increase immeasurably. The threat level to the U.S. and Israel would be off the
charts.
© Alan
Caruba, 2015
2 comments:
When I saw the title of this piece, I thought the Supreme Leader you were referring to was Obama. Funny thing is, your final statement applies to both leaders.
I cannot understand how Obama doesn't see that what he's doing could easily lead to another World War.
Some people think Obama is an evil genius. I think he is a fool, a zealot, an ideologue. This keeps him from addressing reality. The outcome could be very ugly.
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