Will Obama Allow Iran to Become a Nuclear Power?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

It’s clear that the post-1960s generation, a cohort that includes Barack Obama, is now in control of American foreign policy.

Obama is more than a left-wing multiculturalist – he is America’s first “Edward Said” president, a “Third Worldist” who believes western culture has oppressed people of colour throughout the centuries and must stop doing so. Said’s seminal 1978 work, “Orientalism,” the foundational text for the academic field of “post-colonialist studies,” is his guide.

Obama is now going to allow the world’s most dangerous state, run by theocrats, to develop nuclear weapons, even though Iran has been a major backer of terrorism for decades, and has American blood on its hands in Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere, via the actions of proxies like Hezbollah.

In a letter last month to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Obama urged Iran’s supreme leader to seize the opportunity to negotiate a nuclear agreement with the West.

This comes as the Nov. 24 deadline in nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, as well as five other world powers, gets closer. An interim deal last year gave Iran some relief from sanctions in return for curbs on nuclear activity.

Obama noted that the United States and Iran had common interests in fighting the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, and reassured Iran’s leaders that, in the words of one administration official, “you should let us do it, because it will help you.”

The U.S. did not inform countries like Saudi Arabia or Israel, who will interpret this as proof Obama is acting with little regard for his allies as he pursues a deal with Iran.

Obama seems to feel that he needs Tehran to contain ISIS. But the latter are a ragtag Sunni Muslim group of fanatics that can be dispatched quickly with enough force, while Shia Iran is a powerful state of almost 80 million people, whose leaders wish to gain hegemony throughout the Muslim world (and maybe beyond).

Does Obama actually think that when Iranians shout “death to Israel” and call the “Zionist entity” a “cancer,” this is merely rhetoric? Does he believe the mullahs when they maintain that that they need nuclear energy for peaceful purposes only? Apparently.

Lee Smith, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard and author of The Consequences of Syria, asserts that the White House wants a larger regional accommodation with Tehran. 

“As Obama has explained,” he writes, “Iran is a rational actor that pursues its interests. If you fight the Islamic Republic, it’ll just make it angrier and more dangerous, so it’s best to try to get on its good side. A world where the United States and Iran are friends and allies will be a safer, more peaceful place.”

Are we heading for a reprise of Neville Chamberlain returning to Britain from Munich in September 1938 waving a piece of paper signed by Hitler and Mussolini, and declaring that the Munich Agreement meant “peace for our time?”

Obama never has to face an electorate again. Even though the Republicans now control Congress, as head of state he has wide latitude when it comes to foreign policy. Stay tuned.