Why does Obama crave a grand bargain with Iran?

[Valin]

Power Line:

Paul Mirengoff

February 4, 2015

 

Michael Ledeen notes that important commentators have come around to the view that he (and I) have long expressed — that President Obama is in thrall to Iran and that the nuclear negotiations aren’t really about curbing Iran’s nuclear capacity, but rather about striking a grand bargain with the mullahs. * Michael Doran’s excellent essay in Mosaic, which was one of our Power Line “picks,” is a good example of recent commentary to this effect.

 

The unanswered question, says Ledeen, is why Obama wants a grand bargain with Iran. Ledeen admits he doesn’t know.

 

I don’t know either, but I have a theory. I believe Obama’s lust for a deal is down to a toxic combination of the traditional leftist approach to anti-American dictatorships and Obama’s special brand of intellectual arrogance.

 

Ledeen considers the possibility that Obama’s “blame America first” attitude is behind his approach to Iran. He concludes, however, that these “fairly widespread, basically secular, and quintessentially leftist convictions don’t. . .begin to explain the president’s passion to embrace the Islamic Republic, the world’s biggest killer of Americans, a regime that slaughters and imprisons and tortures its own citizens in record numbers, especially in light of its consistently anti-American behavior throughout the Obama years.”

 

(Snip)

 

But for Obama, this is no more than a statement of conventional wisdom. Truly historic figures, in Obama’s view, are those with the intellectual capacity to see beyond the conventional wisdom.

 

There is probably something to this concept of the truly historic figure. But Obama errs when he equates vision and genius with trading conventional wisdom for a combination of wishful thinking and old-fashioned appeasement of vicious anti-American dictators.

 

* Do Yourself A Real Favor!

[Cyber_Liberty]

I don't think Obama gives a fig if he gets any kind of :deal," either grand or petite. He just wants to kick this can down the road to the next guy. He's not holding out for "a deal," he's just holding out.

 

JMHO. YMMV.

[SrWoodchuck]

Why does Obama crave a grand bargain with Iran?

 

 

[Casino67]

[Valin]

On A Related Note

 

Iranian opposition leader's wife recounts their captivity

Masoud Lavasani

Feb 3 2015

 

Mehdi Karroubi, the two-time speaker of parliament, was among the closest members of the inner circle of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After serving prison sentences during the regime of the former shah of Iran, in 2011, he was again detained and imprisoned following a demonstration of members of the Iranian opposition in support of the people of Egypt and Tunisia. This month marks his fourth year under house arrest as he approaches his 80th birthday.

Karroubi’s followers consider him a leader of the Green Movement, the movement that was born out of opposition to the 2009 presidential elections, in which incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared victor.

 

Fatemeh Karroubi, who answered Al-Monitor’s questions via email, spent a period in detention alongside her husband but was later released. This is her first interview in four years. A former member of parliament herself, she revealed previously unpublicized details of the house arrest and said that while some aspects of her husband’s house arrest have improved slightly (such as access to newspapers and a visit by Iran’s new health minister), Mehdi Karroubi remains steadfast and continues to demand an open trial, something he so far has not been granted.

 

The full interview, translated from Persian, follows:

(Snip)

 

[Valin]

Lindsey Graham On Hugh Hewitt

 

Audio

 

(Transcript at Link)

[Valin]

The Roots of Obama’s Appeasement
The president’s disastrous foreign policy is as much a product of his own vanity as anything else.
Victor Davis Hanson

Feb 5 2015

 

Members of the Obama administration have insisted that the Taliban are not terrorists. Those responsible for the recent Paris killings are not radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Jihad is a “legitimate tenet of Islam.” And “violent extremism,” “workplace violence,” or “man-caused disaster” better describe radical Islamic terrorism. Domestic terrorism is just as likely caused by returning U.S. combat veterans, according to one report by a federal agency.

 

What is the point of such linguistic appeasement?

 

The word “appeasement” long ago became pejorative for giving in to bullies. One side was aggressive and undemocratic; the other consensual and eager to avoid trouble through supposedly reasonable concessions.

 

But appeasement usually weakened the democratic side and empowered the extremist one.

 

The architect of appeasement — for example, Neville Chamberlain, former prime minister of Great Britain — was predictably a narcissist. Chamberlain believed that his own powers of oratory, his insights into reason, and his undeniably superior morality would sway even a thug like Adolf Hitler.

 

(Snip)