With Iran Deal 2.0 we are fully in Looking Glass World
I’ve read a lot about what might be behind this deal, and I’ve even written about what might be behind it (see this as well as this).
But I’m still having trouble believing it, because it is so terrible. In that latter post I quoted a piece by Caroline Glick, who explains the motives behind the Iran deal in this way:
The Biden administration justifies its pro-Iranian and anti-Israel/Sunni Arab policy by claiming it is a means to disengage the U.S. from the Middle East at a time that Washington is keen to concentrate its resources and attention on Asia and the rising threat of China…
Biden’s policies are the polar opposite of Trump’s policies both conceptually and substantively. Biden’s policies represent a reinstatement and escalation of Barack Obama’s policies for Iran and the wider Middle East. In contrast to Trump, Obama, Biden and their advisors believe that the U.S.’s Middle Eastern allies – Israel and the Sunni Arab Gulf states – maliciously worked for decades to entangle the United States in the wars of the Middle East. To disentangle America from the region and its pernicious “allies” the Obama-Biden doctrine posits the U.S. must realign itself away from its allies and weaken them, and towards Iran, which it must empower.
That’s probably as good an explanation as any, in the sense of logic. Nevertheless I still can’t wrap my mind around it, even as an explanation for behavior I think is stupendously unwise and destructive to US interests. The logic exists only as a surface logic, because even if one were to accept the “Israel and the Arab Gulf states have maliciously worked to entangle the United States” part of the reasoning, the “so instead let’s embrace a country dedicated to our destruction and the spread of Islamic terrorism around the world” part doesn’t really follow as a good alternative. The only explanation for taking that road, it seems to me, is the desire to destroy the US and the West or at least weaken it immensely, and to empower the Iranian mullahs as well as the terrorists they sponsor.
Everything I’ve read so far about this new Iran Deal – one that’s apparently set to be announced every day now – is frightening and profoundly disturbing. Here’s some of the latest:
Russia’s top state-controlled energy company is set to cash in on a $10 billion contract to build out one of Iran’s most contested nuclear sites as part of concessions granted in the soon-to-be-announced nuclear agreement that will guarantee sanctions on both countries are lifted.
Russian and Iranian documents translated for the Washington Free Beacon show that Rosatom, Russia’s leading energy company, has a $10 billion contract with Iran’s atomic energy organization to expand Tehran’s Bushehr nuclear plant. Russia and the Biden administration confirmed on Tuesday that the new nuclear agreement includes carveouts that will waive sanctions on both countries so that Russia can make good on this contract.
There’s also this:
Days after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired missiles aimed at the U.S. consulate in northern Iraq, President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly planning to remove the Iranian outfit from the list of international terrorist organizations.
The decision to drop the IRGC — Iranian regime’s military arm — from the terror list, appears to be yet another concession made by the Biden White House to restore the Obama-era nuclear deal with Tehran.
This last point seems to have been what’s delaying the deal somewhat at the moment – but once again chances are that the Biden administration will concede on this, too, or already has done so. In fact, it may not even be over then, because there may be a continuing series of escalating demands from Iran, as it sees the utterly compliant Biden group willing to give them everything they ask for in order to get them to acquiesce.
It’s as though malevolent beings representing the US have hatched this plan in order to laugh maniacally at the world and to greatly harm the United States and the West. I don’t usually write in such extreme terms but that’s the way this appears to me, and I’m reduced to a desperate and almost certainly vain hope that the real thing will be nowhere near as bad as the advance reports predict.
So what happens if an administration – and the mostly unelected and unvetted by Congress “diplomats” who are doing the negotiating of a deal with a foreign power that is our enemy – are tantamount to Benedict Arnolds squared, on a global scale? Is there any recourse? The obvious one would be Congress somehow getting in the way or even impeaching and removing that president. But that won’t happen because it would need many Democrats to cooperate, and the requisite numbers will not be doing that. There are a few who will probably object, but they almost certainly can’t meet the 60-vote threshhold to invoke cloture. And wouldn’t Biden be able to veto any bill that might be passed, which would mean there would then be a 67-vote threshold?
What’s in it for Biden and company? What constituency does a deal like this appeal to, except for the Israel- and US-hating far left? How large is that group?
However large the public support may be – and I continue to think it’s significantly less than a majority – there are too many people in positions of power in this administration (just as in the Obama administration) who appear to be fully in favor of this insanity. Are they all moles? Are they all being blackmailed or paid off? And/or do they all want to harm the West and the US that much? Despite how cynical and skeptical and suspicious I’ve become over the years, I just can’t bring myself to answer “yes” to that last question, even though I think that’s likely to be the correct answer.
It feels like the crazy Queen of Hearts is president and that deck of playing cards her courtiers, and we – the American people – are Alice trying to wake from this nightmare:
Or maybe the president is the Mad Hatter and the rest of them are attendants at the mad tea party where logic gets twisted and things spin wildly out of control:
That’s funny. What’s happening now is not.
POTUS is such a big job that he/she must delegate and delegate. In the end Trump had a number of turncoats and TDS people he had working relatively closely with him at one point. I’m not saying that is the case with Biden, but it illustrates the problem with delegating.
Then there is the “mushroom” problem. With all those people working under the POTUS, he/she is almost exclusively informed by them. He could easily be “kept in the dark and fed s__t.”
I think it was Bob Gates’ confirmation as head of the CIA many years ago when there was discussion about the propensity of some in the CIA to tell the Whitehouse what “they” wanted to hear rather than the truth. Who is “they”? The president? Probably not.
The tenor of the deal described in Neo’s piece reeks of Obama-ism. Obama’s mother’s nickname was Anarchist Annie and she was very close to Frank Marshall Davis for awhile. She drug young Barry to Indonesia where he would later proclaim the beauty of the call to prayer. Certainly there are some people of this stripe who are feeding Biden information.
I think it was Kate a week or two ago who suggested that if one ignores the rhetoric and looks at the actions then you have to conclude that people in our government are trying to hurt America. Sorry if I misidentified or misrepresented you Kate.
“To disentangle America from the region and its pernicious “allies” the Obama-Biden doctrine posits the U.S. must realign itself away from its allies and weaken them, and towards Iran, which it must empower.”
It’s like if you had a neighborhood with a particularly problematic area, say there’s some crack houses and other condenmed buildings run by a violent drug gang, but the rest of the neighborhood is fairly reasonable in terms of crime with lots of hard working, law abiding citizens. So the Obama-Biden solution would be deciding to “empower” the violent drug gang and punish those pesky law abiding citizens because they’re annoying or something.
TommyJay:
Biden was fully in command of whatever meager cognitive powers he ever possessed when he was Obama’s vice-president and the first Iran Deal was negotiated and announced and then defended by that administration. Biden was very much a part of that and seemed to fully approve and cooperate. I conclude that whatever is left of him, cognitively – and I think it’s at least a considerable amount – is fully onboard with this one as well.
I’ve always wondered if Kerry led the “Death to America” chants in Tehran following Friday prayers. The current group certainly must.
Biden is fully on board because Obama told him to be. I’m fully convinced by my gut that Obama is the puppeteer. And if Biden gets too embarrassing, then Harris will become the new puppet.
The “Iran Deal” is a protection racket.
The arc of history bends up Obama’s rear end.
TommyJay, I’d have to look and see if I said that, but it is what I think.
Obama, and the people around Biden, think America is bad and should be taken down several notches at the very least. Biden, never a deep thinker, goes along with the crowd around him. “Human rights” for actual people are not part of their program, although they pay lip service to the idea. The right of a tiny minority people, Jews, to have a small country where their culture is normative is not considered a good thing.
neo, you answered your own question.
It is not “as though” it is “precisely that” “malevolent beings representing the US have hatched this plan in order to greatly harm the United States and the West.”
Barack Obama did not hide his hatred of England and any expansionism/colonialism he perceived the U.S. was involved in. He is his father’s son. He wrote a book on it, “Dreams from my Father.”
As I wrote a few days ago, many of our leaders and academics believe a balanced world is a less dangerous world and a more just world. They are working diligently to test this theory on the actual world, and us.
Kate is correct. This is their belief:
All nations that are not British style, western cultures have been kept down by British style colonialism and “Western culture.” Weaker cultures are actually morally and ethically superior to the British style nations and all the success of the British style nations comes at the expense and exploitation of the lesser nations.
The Somalis pirate because Western colonialism forces them to. The South Africans destroy their nation’s infrastructure because it was created by racist Dutch colonialists. The Palestinians destroy their economy and raise their children to be suicide bombers because of the Jews who inexplicably showed up in 1948.
Removing the West’s influence from the world will instantly restore all these cultures to their former, utopian greatness. They are noble savages and Capitalism and Judeo-Christianity inhibit them from practicing their superior methods of civilization and religion.
Planet Earth is one enormous, raspberry pie. The only way one slice can have more raspberries is if it takes raspberries from another slice. Fortunately we have the elites who know the ideal number of raspberries and are instituting the methods to see they are distributed evenly, across the Earth.
Utopia is just around the corner. There are just a few hundred Canadian truckdrivers who need to be eliminated, then the dream will be realized. Oh, and there are also some parents disrupting schoolboards. They’ll have to go too, but then Utopia will arrive. Oh, wait, there are also some military members who believe their oath to upholding the Constitution is sacrosanct. They’ll have to go too, but then; Utopia. You understand how it is with omelets. Just a few more dozen eggs and we’ll be there.
Related post at Tablet…if true. then Biden (in 2016) “strong-armed the Ukrainian president to vote for Security Council Resolution 2334, finding that Israel was in occupation of Palestinian land—which according to the resolution included historical Jewish holy sites. The Ukrainians asked to abstain, but Biden said no. Kyiv then asked for a delay. There was a large and influential Jewish community in Ukraine with family ties to Israel. And after all, what would the optics be of turning against Jerusalem just days after the Israelis had stood with Ukraine? That was not good enough for Biden. So the Ukrainians joined the other powers the Obama team had corralled into voting against Israel.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/biden-blames-jews-ukraine-policy
There is a quite substantial anti-Isral bloc in the Democratic Party…more than a few of them are outright anti-Semitic. We have seen on other issues how far Biden is willing to go to gain the approval of the extreme ‘progressives’, not unlikely that he is doing so on this matter as well.
Disengage with Saudia Arabia to focus more in China. I got news for them. SA looks like it will be engaged (to be married via currency) to China. Will damage the US, and really the world, but what the heck.
If Biden want to focus more on China, then build and MAINTAIN the Navy, get closer to Aust, NZ, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines.
EDIT: Went to Instapundit and found this.
The Dominance Of The U.S. Dollar Is Fading Right Before Our Eyes.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that I wrote an article arguing that the economic sanctions we have cast upon in Russia, due to its invasion of Ukraine, likely mark the beginning of a period where China and Russia would bifurcate the global monetary system, leading them to eventually challenge the U.S. dollar’s reserve status.
Now, Saudi Arabia is joining the fray, further threatening to tip the balance of the global monetary scales that have kept the U.S. dollar afloat for decades.
The fact that predictions of a “new economy” and “new monetary system” only exist on fringe blogs like mine and haven’t gone mainstream given the current economic situation with Russia (even amidst our abuses of printing the dollar over the last several decades) is baffling to me.
I believe that it is the work of a group of evil people, manipulating a stupid, foolish old man, that they can get anything they want out of , by praising him as the greatest statesman of all time.
Other than the destruction of the US, I don’t see what goal they could have, besides the personal rewards they believe will come due them, as leaders of the destruction.
Hudson Institute panel, moderator Peter Rough with Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, Jonathan Schachter and Michael Doran: “Reassessing America’s Middle East Policy”
https://youtu.be/D5IxGGz17Nc
It’s a grave if not grim discussion indeed, precisely because these men refuse to indulge in “through looking-glass” fantasies. For my part, I believe grievous evils are in train and will not be stopped, but worse, empowered.
The only explanation for taking that road, it seems to me, is the desire to destroy the US and the West or at least weaken it immensely, and to empower the Iranian mullahs as well as the terrorists they sponsor.
Well, for this to work, the Biden administration has to be a) cackling supervillains and b) competent.
I’m pretty sure the answer is just “corruption”. Lot of people in the US and in Europe can make money in Iran if we treat them like any other country.
re Alice in Wonderland…I was pleased to see that a woman that I knew back in high school is now pretty much on the right side, politically speaking. I messaged her:
‘When we were in high school, could you have even imagined that things could get this crazy?’
Her response:
‘I certainly didn’t think I’d be living in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’
So the Obama-Biden solution would be deciding to “empower” the violent drug gang and punish those pesky law abiding citizens because they’re annoying or something.
You mean like the Democratic party pushing to defund the police and let violent perps walk on a personal recognizance bonds until some trial date far in the future? Because your idea seems just like what they are doing.
As for detangling the US from the Middle East; the notion floated fails when you recall it was just last week the US begged Saudi Arabia for more oil. Oil independence and the Abraham Accords seemed a much more effective way.
It is hard to understand how global terrorism, war, and misery, under Biden and the Left, is to be preferred to global peace and prosperity, if Donald Trump was the agent that brought it about.
@SCOTTtheBADGER:It is hard to understand how global terrorism, war, and misery, under Biden and the Left…
Because a small number of people profit from these things and can insulate themselves from them. They don’t necessarily profit in money but also in power. (Money can sometimes buy power, but power can always get money.)
Is it better to be a one-eared sewer scrubber in Utopia, or King of Hell?
Could it be as simple as an extension of the “Anything connected to Trump, we hate” mindset? Trump rejected the Iran deal and, really, the entire foreign policy establishment’s approach to the Middle East. And he succeeded. Now, Biden and Co. are rejecting that success and are intent on proving they were right all along.
Mike
MBunge:
I thought about that possibility but rejected it because (1) Obama was fully committed to this approach long before Trump was in the picture, and (2) Biden was his VP and fully committed to it then as well, as were all the aides and negotiators.
In their heart of hearts, everyone knows what the Mullahs are about, as they’ve been consistently unapologetic in stating their beliefs.
On the left, there are two primary responses to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability. The majority see Iran as a useful bludgeon;
“The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” — George Soros
A minority seek to appease;
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.” Sir Winston Churchill
Appeasement always springs from moral cowardice.
I suppose that the premature evacuation from Afghanistan was intended to match the premature evacuation from Iraq and subsequent Spring series, which launched world war 3 from Tripoli to Cairo to Damascus to the Slavic Spring in Kiev, and other places he didn’t have time or couldn’t visit.
That’s a decent point Neo. Those two deals seem to have considerable similarities. Though I wasn’t claiming any great cognitive decline on Biden’s part in recent years. I am sure that at least a few of those people working in the Obama admin. are there in the Biden admin. and know a thing or two about “rolling” Biden with manipulative information.
The other thing is the Obama wasn’t just the most powerful man in the world, but he and his coterie was also the coolest man and team in the world. Why wouldn’t an intellectual clown like Joe Biden want to jump on board with that? Maybe Joe and Hunter were on the tarmac so that Hunter could remove a few stacks from the bales of money that were flown to Iran. The previous sentence sounds like a cheap shot, but that is the caliber of people we are talking about.
If we lost a war, what would our victors do differently?
I suppose we haven’t been bombed..yet.
SHIREHOME on March 18, 2022 at 4:41 pm
“U.S. Dollar Is Fading Right Before Our Eyes. … leading them to eventually challenge the U.S. dollar’s reserve status.” “Fading” and “eventually” may still take some time.
I just recently came across this chart suggesting the magnitude of the $ as the reserve currency is just overwhelming, at least for the short term. https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/will-us-dollar-lose-its-reserve-status although admittedly this is from Dec. 2020, and there is a decline from 70% in Dec 1999 to 65% in Dec 2020. So a longer term change may eventually eventuate.
But also surprising to me was this analysis from George Friedman at Geopolitical Futures discussing just how powerful our $ based global economy seems to be: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/learning-lessons-from-the-war-in-ukraine/?tpa=MDM4NzM4YTE4MTViYzk3ZjIyMjNmZTE2NDgxMzYwOTY4MGYzYjQ&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https://geopoliticalfutures.com/learning-lessons-from-the-war-in-ukraine/?tpa=MDM4NzM4YTE4MTViYzk3ZjIyMjNmZTE2NDgxMzYwOTY4MGYzYjQ&utm_content&utm_campaign=PAID%20-%20Everything%20as%20it%27s%20published
“The United States has demonstrated that perhaps the most powerful weapon in the world is the weaponized dollar. World trade requires U.S. dollars, either in hand or as the benchmark against which trading takes place. The euro is a distant second, and no one would sign onto a five-year construction project denominated in yuan.” I suppose MBS could alter that calculation, but not without some penalties elsewhere.
Of course with this administration, things might get upended more quickly than most of us expect, but I presume we also hope that “checks and balances” give us some protection from mad hatter evil or stupidity.
“Looking Glass” conjures up an image of an absurd world. For a few of us, Looking Glass conjures up an increasingly possbile world.
“Looking Glass” is a term that has many connotations. “Looking Glass” is a code word for the flying nuclear command aircraft that was part of a fleet of such aircraft that were on the move 24/7 during periods of stress during the Cold War. That term may have originated from the “Looking Glass Prairie” which is east of Scott Air Force Base in southwestern Illinois.
http://www.prairiemoon.com/triodanis-perfoliata-venus-looking-glass-prairie-moon-nursery.html
There are several folk entomologies if the name of that flower. One posits a similarity to a European flower that had larger “shiny” seeds. Another may be due to the visual impression of the lush growth and dense blooms in the Mid-West Prairies wet spots that reflected the sky color in the blue/purple blooms and indicated tough going for wagons.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6497654
Thus “Looking Glass” might evoke the aberrant environment of ” Alice in Wonderland”, lurking retribution, or a warning from the gods of hard going ahead. Take your pick. They all are sort of applicable.
“There is a quite substantial anti-Israel bloc in the Democratic Party…more than a few of them are outright anti-Semitic.”
Democrats true to themselves and to socialism.
“Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.”
“Looking Glass” was a band who performed in the early 70s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVx8L7a3MuE
Pingback:So how useful would MiG-29s be to Ukraine? Also: the pretzel logic behind the Iran deal; | Spin, strangeness, and charm