But isn’t that really the primary concern, that Iran is seeking hegemony over the Middle East: dominion over the Sunni Arab nations and over Israel. And once that were to happen, it would have a devastating impact on the rest of the world as well.
Not to mention the issue of Iran’s desire for, and the JCPOA granting it the right to attain in just eight years, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. One doesn’t need to have ICBMs to bully enemies in your own back yard. Hello California!
IT’S MY DEAL OR WAR
So, after dispensing with all the criticism directed against the deal, Obama once again doubled down on his primary threat. It is either this deal, or it is war. And, need the President remind his listeners, war is ugly, it is expensive, it guarantees human suffering and it may not even achieve what this deal is intended to achieve.
He threatened that if the deal is rejected by Congress, the United States will be isolated and our economy would suffer serious consequences. Putting aside, apparently, the fact that when the U.S. had sanctions against Iran, we allowed carve outs for China and Russia (and other favored trading partners). But today the President threatened that “we’d have to cut off countries like China from the American financial system,” and that could result in economic catastrophe.
A point the President delivered with great force was that were Congress to kill the deal, “we will lose more than just constraints on Iran’s nuclear deal or the sanctions we have painstakingly build. We will have lost something more precious: America’s credibility as a leader of diplomacy. America’s credibility is the anchor of the international system.”
But whose fault is that?
The last time we checked the U.S. Constitution, the President is given the right to negotiate treaties but they can only become binding if the Senate consents to their ratification. So for the most solemn and important international agreements – which this one, all agree, surely is – the Founders built into the Constition precisely the disjunction that President Obama is kvetching about between presidential negotiation and Congressional approval. And by the way, the United States is far from alone in distinguishing between executive negotiation and legislative consent to ratification.
ONLY THE HARDLINERS HATE AMERICA (THAT’S WHO WE ARE TRUSTING TO ENFORCE THIS DEAL)
Some in the audience might have been wondering to themselves, but how can we trust the Iranians at least cut back on their acts and support of terrorism and their constant incitement and provocations?
To that segment, the President also had an answer.
Just because Iranian hardliners chant ‘Death to America’ does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe. In fact, it’s those hardliners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s those hardliners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican Caucus.
No questions were allowed after the speech, or some cheeky reporter might have mentioned that it is the Ayatollah himself who is shouting Death to America, it is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who are shouting Death to America. It is the hardliners who are running the Iranian government, and they are the ones who will be entrusted to enforce the deal the President wants Congress to approve. So who is it that is ignorant of Iranian society?