Total, Unmitigated Defeat

Op-ed: Obama abandoned US allies' security concerns by 
believing appeasing Iran is only way to avoid war

Shoula Romano Horing

November 24, 2013
Ynet

President Obama had to choose between dishonor and war, 
and he chose dishonor. Now we will have war. He has dishonored 
US allies in the Middle East, including Israel and the Persian Gulf 
states, by abandoning their security concerns regarding a nuclear 
Iran by believing that appeasing Iran is the only way to avoid war.

These words are those of Churchill after the Munich Agreement 
was signed, when Britain and France believed that handing 
Czechoslovakia to Hitler was the only way to save the world 
from another war. It is regarded as the shameful culmination 
of the Allies refusal to confront Nazi aggression and gave Hitler 
what he wanted in exchange for his verbal promise of 
"peace in our time" as Chamberlain called it.

After the Munich Agreement, Churchill gave a speech in the 
House of Commons on the future consequences to Europe 
and the world of the agreement which he called "total and 
unmitigated defeat." Following the Geneva agreement, 
these warnings ring as true now as they did then.

We cannot consider the abandonment of US allies only in the 
light of what happened the last few weeks. This agreement in 
Geneva is the culmination of the uninterrupted retreat of US power 
under Obama for the last five years in the Middle East. 
For five years, the president has been betraying Israel, Egypt, 
Saudi Arabia and the UAE but accommodating enemies and 
tyrants like Syria's Assad, Iran's Khamenei, and Egypt's 
Muslim Brotherhood.

There has been five years of eager searching for any perceived 
moderate leader in Iran and the naive belief that he has found 
the one in the smiling new Iranian President Rohani despite 
the fact that past evidence proves that Rohani has been a liar 
and a cheat in previous negotiations with the west about 
suspending uranium enrichment.

Let us be clear. The agreement is a total US defeat and Iranian 
victory. It is the first step of the new US policy of containment 
of Iran's nuclear program. Despite the desperate propaganda 
by Obama, in reality the US and the West gave the Iranians 
the implied right to enrich its uranium when it agreed to let Iran 
continue enriching its uranium to 3.5%.

The Iranians will be able to maintain their nuclear program and 
continue to enrich uranium while the Americans and their allies 
loosen their economic suffocation of Iran and allow them to 
have access to at least $10 billion of assets which can be used 
to continue financing terrorist activities in Syria, Lebanon, 
Gaza and Iraq as well as to sustain their tyrannical regime. 
Moreover, once the sanctions are loosened, and the Europeans 
and China resume making money from Iran, it is unrealistic 
to believe they will be reinstated.

US will not be trusted again

Obama, Kerry and other White House official's panicky statements 
during the last two weeks that threatening to impose additional 
sanctions on Iran will be a "march to war" reassured the Iranians 
that Obama was desperate for any deal. US officials' defamatory 
attacks against legitimate Israeli concerns about a potential bad deal 
by calling them "war mongers" and keeping many of the details of 
the negotiations from them, as well as US reluctance to attack Syria, 
has told the Israelis that there is no longer any credible US military 
option against Iran.

Israel is not Czechoslovakia. Israel was abandoned by its ally 
but it is not broken and will never be silent. Israel is a nuclear power 
and can attack Iran on its own like it did against the Iraqi and 
Syrian nuclear reactors. The only obstacle is that Obama has 
tied Israeli hands for the next six months of negotiations. 
By then Iran will be a month away from building a bomb.

Knowing that Obama will never attack Iran militarily and will do 
his best to delay Israel from attacking Iran in time will have 
disastrous consequences to the Middle East. Many countries in 
the Middle East like Qatar and Iraq will make the best terms 
they can with the triumphant Iran in the hope of protection 
from annihilation. Many others like Egypt and Turkey will 
gravitate to the Russians and the Chinese for military cooperation 
and nuclear reactors. Others like Saudi Arabia, and UAE, will turn 
to the Pakistanis for a nuclear bomb.

The nuclear arms race has just begun. Rather than peace in our time 
Obama and his allies have given us a potential nuclear war in our time. 
The Middle East is not Europe and Iran is not the ex-Soviet Union. 
It is a suicidal Shiite state alongside suicidal Sunni states in the 
powder keg called the Middle East which is not susceptible to the 
cold war discipline of deterrence.

Meanwhile, Iranian influence and stature will grow while US influence 
and stature as a reliable ally will diminish. Eventually under this president, 
the US will retreat leaving a mess behind and even after Obama 
the US will not be trusted again.

Obama and the other nations in Geneva do not understand the dangers 
of accepting Iranian status as a threshold nuclear state. Having a nuclear Iran 
is not only disastrous to Israel, but also to the US and the world. 
Just imagine what would have happened if Hitler had acquired a nuclear 
weapon before Germany was defeated militarily. Iran, just as Hitler 
at the time, has a design not only to kill Jews, but also to rule the world 
by controlling the oil rich Gulf nations which control 50% of the 
world's oil supply.

The promise of "containing" a nuclear Iran by convincing them not to use 
the nuclear weapon will not work since the threat of nuclear attack 
will be enough for Iran to dictate oil prices, as well as the oil supply 
to the US and Europe. Then, the only option available to the US and 
the world will be to fight Iran, perhaps resulting in a nuclear war which 
could destroy the oil supply and many countries in the process.