The Great Con: The Iran Deal

We live in a time of government by con men, women, and those of flexible and reassignable gender. In the last few days this bitter truth has become even more obvious than it was after Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Syrian Red Lines, Obamacare, gay wedding cakes, and Rebel flags.

In these past few dark days, we have seen two enormous cons run on the world by our "leaders." These cons will have direct and negative impact upon the lives of tens-of-millions of people around the world. One, of course, is the Greek Deal which avoids all the issues of how Greece and the world's fiscal and monetary policy have fallen into the abyss, and merely perpetuates the EU's Three Card Monte game. In the end, of course, Greece must default, walk away from the euro, and let the market set the true value of its currency and economy. Nothing else will work, but that's not the way, at least for now.

The Greek Con, however, fades into Junior Varsity status, into high school amateur theatrics, when compared to The Greatest of The Cons announced, appropriately, enough just in time for Bastille Day--commemorating another of history's Great Cons, the French Revolution. I speak, of course, of  the Iran Deal. I have written before about the negotiations with Iran (here, here, and here), and nothing stated then seems to have proven wrong.

I have read the entire Deal. You can, too, right here. It proves a grim and enfuriating read. Go ahead, you'll see.

The Deal is a fiasco for the West.

Having negotiated a lot of stuff during my time at State, I note, simply put, nothing this complex and convoluted is enforceable in the real world. Which means, therefore, that it is not meant to be enforced.

Let me start with a minor technicality. It is not clear the Deal is a treaty. I can almost guarantee that the Obama misadministration will go back and forth on that. Sort of akin to Obamacare: was it a penalty or a tax? When convenient, e.g., for public opinion's sake, the Obamistas will call it a treaty; when not, e.g., Senate ratification, they will call it a Joint Plan of Action or some other name implying Congress has no legal and binding role. In a way, that does not matter; Congress will have little to nothing it can do about this Deal. The UN Security Council will rubber-stamp it, and once all the other countries start freeing Iran's frozen assets, lifting sanctions, and making deals . . . game over. The U.S. Congress can rant all it wants.

Even all that, however, does not comprise the biggest problem. Assuming Iran complies with everything in this convoluted hash of a document--and Iran does not comply with international agreements--even then, Iran gets the bomb--assuming it doesn't have it already. Yes, that is correct, Iran gets the bomb no matter what; a little later perhaps if it fully complies with the Deal, but Iran gets the bomb--not to mention ICBM capabilities, and gets years of NPT violations swept under the rug, gets a pardon for its sponsorship of terror, doesn't have to give up its stated objective of destroying Israel, and . . . any wonder the Iranians celebrate? Some, however, might find convincing the graphic below put out by the White House yesterday. It, after all, is an intellectually powerful document; hard to refute its tight logic . . . well, maybe, for a not very bright six-year-old, raised as a vegan, maybe, just maybe.

Wow! Is that convincing or what?

Yes, my friends, despite the powerful imagery presented above, under the most optimistic of all circumstances, thanks to The Great Deal, the Iran of crazed Ayatollahs gets the bomb--and does it all real nice and legal and respectful. No fuss. No mess.

Iran will get perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen assets released to it, and will use those funds to build up its economy and military, and sponsor terrorism--then after a few years the deal expires anyway, and Iran can build its bomb quite openly. Iran being Iran, of course, it will not comply with the deal and will get the bomb much sooner than that. The Deal's inspection provisions are a joke. The process for dealing with any detected violation is so obtuse, complex, and drawn out that we will never see an effective condemnation. Forget about "snap back" sanctions. With its new  billions in unfrozen assets, Iran will build lobbying interests in key countries. Once, for example, Iran orders 200 Airbus planes, ten thousand Mercedes trucks, ten thousand Komatsu bulldozers, one hundred thousand Apple laptops, etc., who will argue for cracking down on some "minor and irrelevant" violation of The Great Deal? From what powerful sectors will those calls come? The Iranians know that the West will not do anything. The West has gone into retreat mode.

The Great Con guarantees war, a big war in the near future. The Israelis and the Sunni Arabs, Iran's most immediate foes, got cut out of the negotiations, their vital security interests ignored, and will not take the result quietly. I wrote some time ago that given Obama's calamitous Middle East policy we would see Israelis and Saudis coming together in a bid to stop Iran. That is happening. I will go further. Do not be shocked if Israel and Saudi Arabia end up backing ISIS against Iran. They rightly see Iran, not ISIS, as the biggest threat to the region and the world. Let's also not forget, dear friends, that Israel is a potent nuclear power, right now, not 30 months from now, not ten years from now, but right now, today. Please keep in mind that Israel is not a country predisposed to suicide, even for the White House. In addition, of course, expect the oil rich Sunni Arabs to go for their own bomb--probably purchased from Pakistan or some other willing vendor. The Non-Proliferarion regime of the past many decades is dead. A new and very dangerous nuclear age looms.

All of this confusion of games within games will produce war. It bears repeating: We will have war, and it will be horrendous.

As I was finishing this piece, I found Israeli Ambassador Dermer's speech on the Iran deal. It is worth reading. He points out, for example, that Iran's insistence on ICBM technology and capability is not so much a threat to Israel as it is to Europe and America. Iran does not need ICBMs to hit Israel. In particular, I was struck by the following portion of his address,

And when Israel and the Arab states are on the same page - which happens about once a century – pay attention. 

Ask yourself why Israel and its neighbors are so opposed to this deal. 

After all, we have the most to gain by peacefully resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. 

We have the most to gain by a deal which truly blocks Iran’s path to the bomb. 

The reason why we oppose this deal is because it doesn’t resolve anything, because it doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb. 

It makes Iran’s illegal nuclear program legal. 

It provides billions in sanctions relief for Iran to fuel the fires of war that it is spreading across the Middle East. 

And it rolls out the red carpet for Iran to become a military nuclear power – a power that would threaten Israel with annihilation and threaten the peace and security of the entire world.