Obama
spins lies while Iran spins centrifuges.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David
Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Obama loves to
play dress up. Sometimes he likes to play FDR, but his favorite costume is JFK.
By claiming to be FDR or JFK, he convinces Democrats that he is part of a
historical continuity, instead of a horrible aberration, and that he is doing
exactly what FDR or JFK would do if they were alive today.
The costumes
make Obama seem American instead of Un-American.
Now Obama put
on his JFK costume to play the leader who believes in a “practical” and
“attainable peace.” His analogy of the USSR to Iran is both terrible and
telling.
Nuclear war
was not averted because of arms control. The USSR, like Iran, cheated
blatantly. Unlike Iran, its leaders weren’t crazy enough to want to see the
world burn.
The same can’t
be said of the Supreme Leader of Iran who chants “Death to America” and means
it.
Treaties
did not end the Cold War. The collapse of the USSR, under the pressure of its
economic failures, did. Had Obama kept the sanctions in place, Iran’s regime
might have also collapsed.
Instead Obama
chose to bailout Iran’s regime to the tune of anywhere from 50 to 150 billion
dollars; just as he spat on the legacy of JFK by bailing out Castro when the
Cuban regime was on its last legs.
By talking
about multilateral arms control and the USSR, Obama implicitly admits that this
isn’t about preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but about opening
communications with the Mullahs.
His accusation
that opponents of the deal are like those who want “to take military action
against the Soviets” is dishonest after he had just admitted that even taking
out Iran’s nuclear program would not lead to a war between Iran and the United
States.
But Obama’s
whole speech is a collection of lies.
He insists
that the nuclear deal is “a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits
Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”.
There’s
nothing “permanent” about it. Even Obama admitted that by Year 13, “breakout times would have
shrunk almost down to zero.” In the same speech in which he makes that
claim, he admits (optimistically) that Iran might get a nuke in fifteen years.
That’s not what permanent means.
Later he again insists that, “Iran is never allowed to
build a nuclear weapon” and puffs up his chest and declares, “Let me
repeat: The prohibition on Iran having a nuclear weapon is permanent.”
This sounds
impressive to audiences at home, but it’s completely meaningless.
Iran is
an NPT signatory so it was never allowed to build nuclear weapons to begin
with. That hasn’t stopped it from trying to do so.
The deal will
be as useless as the NPT when it comes to actually stopping Iran from going
nuclear.
Obama and
Kerry have tried to sell the deal by confusing existing international
obligations and laws with an effective enforceable agreement. When Obama says
that Iran is not allowed to build a nuke, that means as much as Kerry telling PBS that Iran is “not allowed” to use the
sanctions relief to aid terrorists.
The 9/11 hijackers
were also “not allowed” to fly planes into the World Trade Center.
In this
speech, Obama admits that even though it’s “not allowed” to, Iran will use the
money to fund terrorists and he has already admitted that Iran can go nuclear
even though it’s “never allowed” to.
Both men are
deliberately misleading audiences that aren’t well versed in lawyerly
technicalities.
Obama claimed
that the deal, which lets Iran build up its nuclear program, "cuts off all
of Iran’s pathways to a bomb." In reality, the deal lets Iran conduct
enrichment, run centrifuges and do everything but have official permission to
nuke New York or Tel Aviv.
He already
admitted that the breakout time drops to zero. If there were no pathway to a
bomb, there would be no breakout time, let alone a breakout time of zero.
Obama insisted
that the deal "contains the most comprehensive inspection and verification
regime ever negotiated" when Iran has stated that not even Obama knows
what its military site inspection arrangements with the IAEA will involve.
Essentially
the real agreement has been outsourced to the IAEA based on secret side
agreements that the Senate and that even the White House may not be privy to.
And the IAEA’s director-general is already complaining
that Iran
is refusing access to nuclear scientists and military officers.
This deal maintains Iran’s nuclear program while promising that this time the
IAEA will have more access for inspections than it did before, assuming Iran
doesn’t break this agreement, like it broke the NPT.
That’s it.
Obama insists
that if Iran goes back to defying the IAEA, as it has all these years, the
sanctions will “snap back”. He even goes further, claiming that, “We won’t need
the support of other members of the U.N. Security Council; America can trigger
snapback on our own.” America can go to the Security Council. It can’t however
restore the full set of sanctions now in place on its own. This is one of those
cases where Obama is so deliberately misleading audiences that it’s downright
criminal.
Since the
facts aren’t on his side, Obama falls back to accusing critics of being
warmongers who want to invade Iran just like they wanted to invade Iraq. Does
that include his Secretary of State, who carried these negotiations, and who
stated, “I was in favor of disarming Saddam Hussein, and I’m glad we did.”
Obama
mentioned Iraq twelve times in his speech. He ominously warned that “Many of
the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against
the Iran nuclear deal.”
Does that
include Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden?
Obama speaks
of ending “a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over
diplomacy.” When he attacks George W. Bush as a warmonger who liked
unilateral invasions, lying to Americans about the cost of war and imposing his
will on “a part of the world with a profoundly different culture”, he forgets
his illegal invasion of Libya, the murder of four Americans and the rise of
ISIS in Libya.
But Obama
isn’t just a liar, he’s also a hypocrite.
“The deal
we'll accept is they end their nuclear program,” Obama said, during a
presidential debate with Romney.
In this
speech, he sneered at his own campaign promise, reframing the idea of
dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, as coming from critics who are “are either
ignorant of Iranian society, or they’re just not being straight with the
American people”.
“Sanctions
alone are not going to force Iran to completely dismantle all vestiges of its
nuclear infrastructure,” Obama claims.
He seems to
have forgotten how he boasted that, “The work that we’ve done with respect to
sanctions now offers Iran a choice. They can take the diplomatic route and end
their nuclear program or they will have to face a united world and a United
States president, me, who said we’re not going to take any options off the
table.”
The only
options Obama won’t be taking off the table are surrendering and then lying
about it.
This is
exactly the type of rhetoric that he just now condemned as ignorant, dishonest
and impossible to achieve. So was Obama being ignorant or dishonest then? Or is
he being dishonest now?
Obama insists
that we face a choice between diplomacy and war. As Churchill told Chamberlain,
you can have both. “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You
chose dishonor, and you will have war.” Appeasement of an aggressive conqueror
doesn’t prevent war. It makes it inevitable.
The
Appeaser-in-Chief tells the audience that it shouldn’t overreact to the
“hardliners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the
deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.”
These
“hardliners” include the Supreme Leader of Iran. The man Obama has made common
cause with.
While Obama
never misses an opportunity to accuse Republican opponents of treason, when he
isn’t accusing them of warmongering, he is the traitor. He has made common
cause with those who chant, “Death to America.” And sometimes it’s hard
not to wonder whether he agrees with them.
All Obama has
to offer in this speech, and in every speech, is a selection of the same
dishonest arguments that have been disproven even by his own allies in the
Senate and in the media.
He’ll smugly
repeat the same lies about Iran’s tiny military budget (the secret one is much
bigger), about its “permanent” inability to get a bomb (until it does get one)
and the sanctions that can snap back with a snap of his fingers, but will
vanish the moment Congress votes down this deal.
There’s
nothing new here and there’s nothing truthful here.
Even while
Obama spins lies, Iran spins centrifuges. Even as he promises rigorous
inspections, Iran covers up its nuclear activities at Parchin.
Obama has
violated his own promises on Iran. He mocks the same arguments that he used to
advance. He keeps talking about a military option when he won’t even stand up
to Iran as it threatens American ships and helicopters, as it takes over Yemen
and Iraq, And when in doubt, he begins bashing Bush without ever being honest
about his own terrible legacy of military and political interventions.
It’s a petty performance from a man who likes to
dress up as FDR and JFK, but who when it comes to Iran can’t even measure up to
Jimmy Carter.
