JED BABBIN: FEAR AND ANGER IN THE WHITE HOUSE
http://www.epictimes.com/londoncenter/2015/03/fear-and-anger-in-the-white-house/
Fear and anger are synergistic emotions. Combined, they can quickly overwhelm a person’s psyche, as President Obama’s is now. He so greatly fears what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will say to congress tomorrow about his Iranian nuclear weapons deal that he has stopped at nothing to prevent and discredit it.
Obama’s has aimed every political weapon he has at Netanyahu.
His fear and anger are the reasons he sent Jeremy Bird, one of his top political consultants, to Israel to help defeat Netanyahu in the election that will be held two weeks after the speech.
Fear and anger are why he sent National Security Adviser Susan Rice out to say that Netanyahu’s speech is “destructive of the fabric” of America’s relationship with Israel. They are why Secretary of State Kerry said that Netanyahu’s judgment is defective on such matters, giving as proof the fact that the Israeli PM supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. (Kerry was careful to not mention that he voted for the Iraq invasion as a senator and reaffirmed the vote in his 2004 presidential campaign.)
Fear and anger are why Obama has tried to get congressional Democrats to boycott the speech. Some will, but most won’t. And it’s why Obama is sending Vice President Biden out of the country so he can’t attend and preside over the joint session of congress with Speaker Boehner. Obama’s fear is justified by the fact that we know enough, from intentional leaks by his team and other information we can gather easily, to judge that the nuclear weapons deal should never be made. For Netanyahu to deliver his speech directly to the American people, with the blessing of the majorities in congress, will be very damaging to Obama’s plan and, we must hope, be fatal to it.
First and foremost the agreement will not even mention, far less limit, Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile program. Less than two weeks ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency – the UN’s usually purblind nuclear watchdog — reported that it was “concerned” that Iran has hidden its development of nuclear warheads capable of being delivered by ICBM.
Second, as we can deduce from the IAEA report and more than thirty years of Iranian conduct, Iran has consistently cheated, lied and deceived the West about its nuclear weapon and ICBM programs. Last week, the National Council of Resistance of Iran – which has previously been the source of much of the reliable intelligence we have on Iran’s nuclear weapons program – issued a report that disproves, redundantly, the ayatollahs’ claim that they are divulging the details of their nuclear programs.
The NCRI revealed the existence of the “Lavizan-3” nuclear site that they say is being used for uranium enrichment and research. The report says that Lavizan-3 is the site of enrichment by highly-advanced new centrifuges.
Iran is an enormous country. According to the CIA World Factbook, it covers some 640,000 square miles, about 95% of the size of Alaska. If Iran won’t disclose all of its nuclear facilities – and it won’t – and even if Obama’s agreement provides for unlimited, no-notice inspections anywhere in the country — a meaningless promise given Iran’s track record – Obama’s deal will give Iran license to produce nuclear weapons under a cloak of secrecy whenever it likes.
Third, the agreement will give Iran relief from international sanctions for ten or fifteen years in exchange for inspection protocols that don’t prevent it from concealing its nuclear weapons development sites. At the end of that period, Iran will be free to produce, deploy – and use – any nuclear weapon it has the technology to produce. It already has the technology and capability of producing nuclear weapons of various sizes and yields. What else will it gain in a decade?
In those ten or fifteen years, Iran – under the Obama/Kerry proposal – will keep most of its nuclear infrastructure and with it the ability to enrich uranium to a fissionable level. Ten or fifteen years is a very long time. How far can it take its ICBM development in that much time?
Only Netanyahu and some of his ministers and speech writers know for sure what he will say, but he’s probably going to say all of that and a lot more.
The Israeli PM is likely to say that we are at or near the point of no return on Iran, the time at which neither Israel nor the United States can use military action to prevent Iran from producing and deploying nuclear weapons. Israel is, almost daily, threatened with destruction by Iran. Israel is so small that a single nuclear weapon delivered by Iran could end its existence. Congress will be told that Israel cannot allow Iranian nuclear weapons to kill its people.
Netanyahu will also speak strongly about the deadly threat Iranian nuclear weapons pose to America and Europe. Congress will fail in its Constitutional duty if it fails to recognize that threat and act on it.
The biggest risk to Obama’s plan is that the senate will rouse itself from lethargy and demand that the deal be submitted for ratification. Obama will refuse because he tolerates no congressional interference. When he does the senate must subject the agreement to the ratification process because it has the Constitutional duty to do so.
Presidential agreements don’t always have to be submitted for ratification. First, if an agreement is pursuant to a previous treaty; second, if an agreement is pursuant to a valid act of congress; and third, if an agreement is within the president’s inherent powers it can be valid without ratification.
But none of these conditions pertain to a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran. Obama’s initiative would tie America’s hands for ten or fifteen years in respect to a threat that directly imperils our national security. It’s the equivalent of a deal that Obama would trade Ukraine, Latvia and maybe a chunk of Hungary in return for a promise of peace with Russia for ten years.
Senators might be tempted to sue Obama to require ratification, but that would be entirely feckless. The courts, under the “political question” doctrine, won’t take jurisdiction over that kind of dispute between congress and a president.
Whatever the agreement turns out to be, the senate should hold intensive public hearings – and secret executive hearings – on its terms. Secretaries Kerry and Carter should be called to testify on its terms and justify, if they can, how the deal benefits American national security.
After that, the agreement should be voted up or down in the same manner that a proposed treaty would. If it is voted down, it would be invalidated under our constitutional law.
But the senate, thanks to Republican lethargy and timidity, is as much controlled by Harry Reid as it was before the last election. Perhaps there are enough conservatives with sufficient courage to demand that the Iran deal be taken up for ratification. If Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio are serious about running for president, they have to do precisely that.
There are significant problems with Netanyahu’s speech. Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu risks making Israel’s security a partisan issue in America which it has never been before. They worry that Netanyahu is making the speech only to benefit his election chances. Those concerns are legitimate. Netanyahu’s speech should have been delayed beyond the election two weeks from tomorrow. If Netanyahu wins, his position would be vastly stronger. If he doesn’t, his words tomorrow will have been wasted.
What may be the final testament to the enormous mistakes Obama is making in reaching this deal with Iran is Obama’s fear that Netanyahu’s speech could derail the negotiations. If the deal is so fragile that it cannot withstand a speech by an American ally – one whose existence is threatened by the deal – it shouldn’t be made at all.
Yesterday, Kerry was reduced to pleading that diplomacy might work so Obama’s deal should be given the benefit of the doubt. The plain fact is that since the ayatollahs came to power, not once has diplomacy changed their course of action. By its consistent conduct, Iran has given up the right to the benefit of any doubt.
Obama is choosing to endanger America and Israel in return for promises he knows Iran will not keep. When Chamberlain returned from Munich promising “peace in our time,” Churchill said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”
Obama is making a worse choice: not merely dishonor, but the inevitability of war – perhaps nuclear war – directly resulting from his decision.
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