“I am Yahweh. I do not change. I am why Jacob’s descendants are not destroyed.” (Malachi 3: 6)
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Iran Nuclear Deal Update
Merkel: We should broaden negotiating framework for Iran nuclear deal:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that the nuclear deal with Iran should not be canceled but its negotiating framework needed to be broadened.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave details on Monday of what he said was evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program, in a bid to encourage the United States to pull out this month of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Merkel said Iran’s missile program and its political influence in Syria needed to be discussed, adding that this was a widespread position in the European Union.
“We will continue with our argumentation, namely keeping the JCPOA (nuclear deal) plus expansion of the negotiating framework,” Merkel said.
Derisive response to PM’s exposé shows world still refusing to get real on Iran:
The largely derisive response in most international quarters to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s avalanche of evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons program on Monday night, notably from among the nations that negotiated the 2015 nuclear capitulation to Iran, merely underlines their incompetence, their failure, their disingenuousness, and the gravity of the ongoing Iranian threat that they so reprehensibly failed to defuse.
Showcasing the Mossad’s astonishing haul of Iran’s own nuclear weapons documentation, Netanyahu did not seek to claim that Israel had attained smoking gun evidence that Iran has breached the terms of the P5+1’s 2015 agreement with the ayatollahs. The critics sneering at his ostensible failure to produce a post-2015 smoking gun are — most deliberately, as is their wont — missing the point.
Israel does not contend that Iran is breaching the specific terms of that radically inadequate accord. Quite the contrary.
It is Israel’s deeply unhappy assessment that the deal is so negligent, so misconceived, so badly constructed, that the Iranians have no need whatsoever to breach it. (I set out many of the central flaws in the accord at the time it was finalized, in an article headlined “16 reasons nuke deal is an Iranian victory and a Western catastrophe.”)
Why Push Back on Iran, part 1: The Why:
Over the past several years, and especially since the signing of the nuclear deal in 2015, I have become increasingly convinced of the need for the United States to adopt a more confrontational policy toward Iran. I have written and spoken about it in various places. But I have never spelled out something close to my full thinking, either about why I think it necessary or how I think it should work in practice, both broadly and as specifically applied to key venues like Syria and Iraq. This omission has been driven home to me by numerous questions and requests to do just that. So over the course of the next six days, I am going to contribute a series of essays that flesh out the idea of pushing back on Iran. Today, I am going to start by explaining why I think such a strategy is necessary.
As a final caveat before plunging in, I recognize that the Trump administration has also advocated a similar approach to Iran. While I agree with the general idea and with some of the rationale that the administration has advanced, you will see that I disagree with them strongly on certain critical specifics (like abandoning both the nuclear deal and Syria). More than that, the administration still really hasn’t articulated a full-fledged strategy toward Iran, more just an intention to do so. So these posts are less commentaries on the Trump administration’s Iran policy, and more my own rationale for why and how the United States should pursue this strategy.
Because Iran treats us as an adversary
I do not advocate a more confrontational policy toward Iran lightly. I have no animus toward the Iranian people and would like nothing more than to see a peaceful relationship between our countries. Throughout my career, I have advocated engagement and even rapprochement whenever I believed that there was an Iranian leadership that might be interested in the same. While still in government, I hoped the Iranian presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani would allow for a thaw and cheered President George H.W. Bush’s famous overture to Iran that “goodwill begets goodwill.” In the late 1990s, I was President Clinton’s Director for Persian Gulf Affairs at the NSC and ardently supported his bid at rapprochement with Iran’s reformist president, Mohamed Khatami. Similarly, when the Obama administration sought not only a nuclear deal with Iran but a full-fledged transformation of the relationship, I publicly and privately supported them as well. I was admittedly more skeptical of the prospects than they were at first, but I believed that the US could get a good deal on the nuclear front and completely agreed with them that it was worth trying to see if such a deal could be the first step toward a wider reconciliation.
Iran’s Supreme Leader: U.S. “Feet Must Be Cut Off”:
Iran’s most powerful political and religious figure said the United States’ “feet must be cut off” in the Middle East as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed his criticism of Tehran in his tour of the region.
“Wherever US entered, it created instability, brought misery to people; that’s why US’s feet must be cut off from West Asia; US must exit this region,” Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, said in a tweet on Monday. Khamenei also accused the US of stoking tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Speaking in Saudi Arabia at a joint press conference with his Saudi counterpart on Sunday, Pompeo called Iran “the greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
The comments seemed to further signal that the US could pull out of the Iran nuclear deal within two weeks. US President Donald Trump has until May 12 to decide whether to continue waiving sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the Iran deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
SnyderTalk Comment:
Despite their naysayers and detractors, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are making great strides in their efforts to convince European leaders that the Iran deal as it is can’t work. Thankfully, they haven’t allowed themselves to be distracted. We owe both of them a debt of gratitude.
It’s obvious that Iranian leaders are terrified. Their belligerent talk is just what you would expect from a schoolyard bully that has been exposed for what he is. The process of building opposition to Iran is just beginning. Already, there is growing opposition to the ayatollah within the Iranian government. Before Trump and Netanyahu are through, Iran may have new leaders.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
