Thursday, May 12, 2016

Credit Obama for a Regime change in Iran

Ever since I was a small boy going to Sunday school, it was etched in my memory that a big organization such as a church or a country, for example, will always choose the person most effective to lead it harmoniously during the prevailing times. In fact, no less than the Pope was chosen according to this criterion, we were told, and this is why we had Pope Pius XII as head of the Church at that time.

I became interested in the history that was unfolding before my eyes as I watched (1) UN soldiers board ships that took them to fight in Korea; (2) Friends of the family whose relatives were fighting in Vietnam flinch at the mention of the name Dien Bien Phu; (3) The early ups and downs of Nasser's Revolution in Egypt. And so I tried to match that history with what I had learned about leading a big organization. Alas, I did not have much success for, I was too young to fully understand what I was looking at.

I matured eventually and began to understand why Nasser was revered by his people following the Franco-British invasion of the Suez Canal Zone. Why the French sacked Guy Mollet afterward, and the British sacked Anthony Eden. Why America voted for Eisenhower to be President, why Lyndon Johnson did not run for reelection, and why Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. But nothing helped me understand the Sunday school lesson better than what used to churn in the old Soviet Union and later the new Russia.

I was not a Kremlin watcher in the sense that the term is commonly used, but from the days of Bulganin to the days of Putin, I watched with interest who or what the USSR-cum-Russia chose to be the man or triumvirate deemed best suited to lead the country for the time that the choice was made. And that's when the lesson I had learned as a small boy was finally validated.

How does that help me understand things now? Well, there is a difference between the Vatican, the Russian system and the Iranian system, of course, but all three have one thing in common as far as I can determine. It is that they choose the best suited person they put in charge at the helm of their ship of state to run the jurisdiction in harmony with the prevailing conditions, thus implement their agenda as fully as possible.

This is why I have something to say regarding the content of the column written by Clifford D. May under the title: “Obama's 'boy wonder'” and the subtitle “How Ben Rhodes helped the president betray the trust of the American people,” published on May 10, 2016 in The Washington Times. Because much has already been said about the Ben Rhodes episode, I shall not take up this matter. Instead, I shall concentrate on half a dozen paragraphs that touch on other topics. The paragraphs condense as follows:

“To sell the Iran deal, the public was told there was a new political reality in Iran which brought moderates to power in that country. The intelligence community understood that the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard ran the country with a strong arm. They faced no challenge from a rising moderate faction. Mr. Obama disregarded the intelligence. He and his top foreign policy adviser made up a fictitious narrative that they thought would sell better than the truth. They persuaded journalists that Iran's moderates were open to compromise and eager to improve relations. In fact, however, Obama's envoys had begun negotiating with Iran's rulers long before the elections. Indeed, from his first days in the White House, a time when Ahmadinejad was Iran's president, Mr. Obama's goal was a pivot toward Iran”.

Well, you don't have to be a genius of history to figure out what happened here. It is that Obama's overture to Iran convinced the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard that America was governed by a man who wanted to start an era of peaceful co-existence with them. In response, they did what a Pope or a Khrushchev would have done were they going through similar circumstances.

It is that the Iranians engineered a situation in which Ahmadinejad was eased out of office and replaced by someone who could talk to the Americans and deal with them on the basis of mutual respect. The negotiations began, and everyone proceeded with caution while keeping their powder dry. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry responded positively, the Iranians reciprocated and the deal was eventually made.

Now that this mission is accomplished, we can see that not only did Barack Obama fashion a nuclear deal with Iran, he brought about the regime change in that country many were clamoring for.

He did it without creating the horror show we are witnessing in the Levant at this time, a region where the Jewish style regime change was implemented by another President. This was the change that led to the opening of the gates of hell no one has yet figured out how to close.

Meanwhile, it can no longer be denied that Barack Obama has earned the peace prize awarded to him.