Iran nonsense

Steve Hayes captures the Obama administration’s current line on Iran in the Weekly Standard editorial “Iran nonsense.” One fount of nonsense is President Obama’s intent, as I see it, to deliver an agreement with Iran that will secure and finance its nuclear program. President Obama wishes to clear the path to do so without any interference from Congress.

While President Obama continues to withdraw the United States from engagements with Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world, he adamantly denies the Islamic connection to the terrorism perpetrated by our enemies. He is an ardent defender of the faith. According to Obama, the terrorists are themselves at war with Islam. They misunderstand.

What about the Islamic Republic of Iran and the mullahs who run the show? Their genocidal anti-Semitism is an organic principle of the regime to which the mullahs have adhered with great fidelity since the revolution of 1979 that brought them to power. It seems to have something to do with Islam. I wish someone would ask Josh Earnest or Jen Psaki about it. We all stand to benefit from the administration’s understanding of this issue.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the foremost opponent of the Iranian regime in the West. He has long had a good handle on the challenges presented by the regime, not just to Israel, but to the West in general. Israel is the Little Satan; we are the Great Satan.

Among other things, Obama resents the damp rag that Netanyahu will throw over the forthcoming deal with Iran when he speaks to the joint session of Congress on March 3. The forthcoming deal is to be announced at the end of March. Netanyahu’s speech will make it slightly more difficult for Obama to present such an agreement as a triumph and a cause for celebration.

On January 21 Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a three-hour hearing. The hearing is posted in its entirety by C-SPAN here. We posted a video clip of Senator Robert Menendez questioning Blinken here.

Blinken makes it perfectly clear that the Obama administration will present any final agreement with Iran to Congress as a fait accompli. In his testimony Blinken dispensed a boatload of Iran nonsense (to borrow Steve Hayes’s formulation in the editorial linked above) to advance the administration’s plan.

The hearing really warrants viewing in its entirety. I used C-SPAN’s tools to clip the excerpt below from Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker’s questioning of Blinken during the first hour of the hearing; the excerpt runs only 7:42. If you want to understand what is happening here, I assure you it is well worth your time.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses