Munich then and now

It appears that President Obama and his Team of Nitwits are about to deliver Iran from the severity of the sanctions regime it is currently under, or to loosen the sanctions further outright rather than indirectly through “secret détente.” Having briefed Prime Minister Netanyahu on the coming deal, Kerry did not stick around in Israel for a joint press conference. Netanyahu denounced the deal by himself without diplomatic nicety in the remarkable statement captured in the video below.

What happened in Kerry’s meeting with Netanyahu? It can’t have been pretty. The Times of Israel summarizes Israeli news reports in “Crisis of faith between Israel and US over Iran deal.” Whatever wrinkles remain in arriving at a deal with Iran will undoubtedly be ironed out, probably sooner rather than later. What difference at this point does it make?

Looking back at production leading to the 1938 Munich Agreement that delivered “peace in our time” for ten months, I can see two obvious points of “difference.”

First, as David Faber notes in Munich, 1938, when the British and French ambassadors roused Czech President Beneš from bed at 2:00 a.m. to demand that he accede to the terms of the agreement, Beneš “had the impression” (as he wrote) “that both of them were ashamed to the bottom of their hearts of the mission they had to discharge.” At every rung, however, the Obama administration is shameless. Second, as one can deduce from Netanyahu’s statement, unlike the government of Czechoslovakia, the government of Israel will not publicly capitulate to the agreement.

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