Obama Foreign Policy

Killing the worst deal ever (5)

Featured image The media continue studiously to ignore the meaning and revelations of the Israeli intelligence coup announced this week. The media were of course willing tools of the Obama administration’s promotion of the deal. There is no reason they might want to reconsider their role in the context of the Trump administration’s great undoing. I want to pause over this episode in a few more posts. To the extent attention has »

Killing the worst deal ever (4)

Featured image The Obamabot line (and therefore that of the media, including the execrable Conor Powell of FOX News) is that there is nothing new in the Iranian nuclear archive as presented by Prime Minister Netanyahu. The line has it that Netanyahu’s presentation demonstrates the rationale of the Iran deal. Who better than Monsieur John Kerry to reiterate the case for the deal (as in the tweet below)? Every detail PM Netanyahu »

Killing the worst deal ever (3)

Featured image As the media studiously ignore the incredible Israeli contribution to our understanding of the mullahs’ beloved nuclear program, I want to continues this series of quick hits bearing on the raid. Today’s Jerusalem Post carries a story with this additional revelation (via “senior Israeli officials”) from the Iranian archive: “Among the critical documents is a map of five secret nuclear test sites. One official quipped that any tests Iran might »

Killing the worst deal ever (2)

Featured image There seems to be a studied inattention to the implications of the trove of documents obtained by Israeli intelligence documenting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. At this point all we have is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s presentation to go on, but it is worth watching in its entirety. I posted the video of Netanyahu’s Power Point presentation here. It is posted on YouTube here. The Prime Minister’s office has also posted the »

Killing the worst deal ever (1)

Featured image This is the first in a series of quick hits prompted by Israel’s breathtaking success in obtaining the archival cache of Iran’s nuclear program. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s dramatic announcement of the intelligence feat yesterday must serve as the predicate to our withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), accurately characterized by President Trump as “the worst deal ever.” Not even Neville Chamberlain funded Hitler’s aggression to secure his »

The Obama Disaster, and the Tweet of the Day

Featured image With today’s bombshell about Iran’s ongoing nuclear weapons program, the wreckage of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is coming into focus. Syria: the “red line” fiasco, with hundreds of thousands killed. North Korea: a do-nothing policy that brought America’s West Coast perilously close to coming under nuclear threat. Iran: a deal that would have been foolish even if the mullahs hadn’t cheated, $100 billion and sanctions relief now, in exchange for »

Netanyahu’s big announcement

Featured image Speaking in English, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyhau announced the recovery of a massive cache documenting Iran’s nuclear program: a half ton of documents and related materials removed from Iran. Video of the announcement is embedded below via the Prime Minister’s office; the text is posted here. Alexandra Fulbright reports on the announcement for the Times of Israel here. Noa Landau reports on it for Haaretz here. Twitchy collects instant reactions »

An “unbelievably small, limited” strike?

Featured image In 2013, when the Obama administration was trying to convince Congress to authorize an attack on Syria to enforce its “red line’ against Assad using chemical weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry promised that the attack would be an “unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.” He often used the word “degrade,” rather than “destroy,” to describe the impact of the contemplated attack on Syria’s chemical weapons program. Kerry received plenty »

Two 2013 letters

Featured image Omri Ceren’s tweet below is at the same time a valuable piece of media criticism and history. The letter to Khameni cited by Omri is described well in the Wall Street Journal story by Jay Solomon and Carol Lee. We are living in strange, strange times, and the press is a virtually insuperable obstacle to understanding them. Omri’s tweet is a valuable reminder on that score as well. In 2013 »

“Samantha Power lied to my face”

Featured image Samantha Power made a name for herself with a book proclaiming our obligation to stop genocide abroad. Once she took office in the Obama administration, she became an apologist for Obama’s detachment from the catastrophe in Syria and his deal with the genocidal maniacs in Iran, among other things. It’s almost enough to make one question her bona fides, or even to suspect she may be a complete fraud. Today »

Everybody knows, BBC/CNN edition

Featured image In the spirit of the frankly cynical verses of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” (e.g., the one beginning “Everybody knows that you love me baby”), Professor Richard Landes calls his study of BBC and CNN International media coverage of the Middle East “Everyone Agrees: The BBC and CNN on UNSC Resolution #2334 and Kerry’s Speech.” It is a study of how the BBC and CNN covered (extensively) the passage of UNSC »

Is Obama responsible for the Iranian protests?

Featured image Close readers of Power Line won’t be completely surprised by the wave of protests in Iran. A few months ago, we reported that the Iranian émigrée communities in the U.S. and France were buzzing about reports of anti-regime protest activity in Iran. Even so, I did not expect protests as intense, widespread and (so far) persistent as the ones that have broken out recently. It can be argued that, in »

How Obama let up on Hezbollah

Featured image Late yesterday afternoon Politico posted Josh Meyer’s deeply reported account of our struggle with Hezbollah and its betrayal by the Obama administration. Politico gave this précis of the story by email: “In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.” Some »

Claudia Rosett on Obama’s Russia “collusion”

Featured image My father, an anti-communist, liked to tell this joke from the 1930s: Why is Earl Browder (head of the American communist party) like the Brooklyn Bridge? Because both are suspended by a cable. For Browder, the cable came from Moscow. It told American communists what to think and what to say. To cite the most memorable example, one cable would tell them that Germany is an enemy. Later, another would »

Will There Ever Be An Accounting On North Korea?

Featured image Today North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that stayed airborne for close to an hour and flew farther than any previously tested by that country. Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters that the Kim regime now has the ability to to hit “everywhere in the world basically.” And, of course, the regime has nuclear weapons. Further: The US believes Pyongyang may be able to put a miniaturized warhead on »

Valerie Wilson’s war

Featured image Many of us who had long since forgotten Valerie Plame Wilson were not pleased to be reminded of her by means of her anti-Semitic stylings and related lies on Twitter yesterday, explored here by Paul Mirengoff. It was particularly unpleasing to be reminded of her in this fashion on Rosh Hashanah. Is there anything left to be said? I recommend Allahpundit’s Hot Air post and the explanatory context added by »

Barack Obama’s Legacy of Lies and Broken Promises on Afghanistan

Featured image In last night’s speech on Afghanistan, President Trump said: No one denies that we have inherited a challenging and troubling situation in Afghanistan and South Asia, but we do not have the luxury of going back in time and making different or better decisions. When I became President, I was given a bad and very complex hand, but I fully knew what I was getting into: big and intricate problems. »