Jonathan S. Tobin wrote an article under the screaming
title: “Ignore the Foreign-Policy 'experts' Who Defend the Iran Deal,”
published on March 29, 2018 in National Review Online.
As if talking directly to President Donald Trump, Jonathan
Tobin begins his attack on the Iran
nuclear deal by saying something that goes like this: You know something, Mr.
President; that deal is bad, and I'll prove it to you. I won't give you a
fancy, shmanzy kind of talk about the demerits of the deal; I'll prove my point
by relying on what those who defend it are saying. Believe me, Sir, they
unwittingly “boost the case” for you to change the deal or nix it or do
something.
And so, Tobin goes on to give a long lecture that can be condensed
as follows:
“A closer look at their argument, summed up by Wendy
Sherman, reveals that the experts don't understand the nuclear pact. Among
their number is Thomas Pickering who is a lobbyist for Boeing, which, like many
European firms, profits from doing business with Iran . Removing sanctions on Iran has made
it richer. Iran 's
intervention in Syria
brought its forces near to Israel
and gave it a land bridge to Lebanon .
Sherman and her colleagues take issue with Trump's efforts to get the Europeans
to eliminate the sunset clauses. They think the West will have time to react if
Iran
moves to build a weapon. That premise is based on the notion that Western
intelligence knows everything that's going on in Iran . That's why Trump and Bolton are right to exert pressure to force the Europeans
to go along with more sanctions to regain more leverage. Nor does the U.S. have to wait for European approval since it
can implement secondary sanctions that would prevent any entity doing business
with Iran from conducting
transactions with U.S.
institutions”.
And we are left to wonder who to believe. Should it be Wendy
Sherman who sat with the Iranians for two years and negotiated the nuclear
deal? Or should it be Jonathan Tobin who sat in a New York
office during all that time, ruminating over the many ways he could think of to
promote Israel 's interests,
including the ways he can employ to discredit what the negotiators were doing
on behalf of America , Europe and the rest of the world?
To answer those questions, we'll have to do what Tobin
himself has tried to do. That is, we'll check to see if he inadvertently did
himself in while trying to discredit what Sherman and her colleagues have
accomplished.
He is moaning that Thomas Pickering as well as the European
firms, America 's own Boeing
Company and the nation of Iran
are doing brisk business; that they are profiting greatly and will continue to
profit as long as the nuclear deal is adhered to. This being the case, the
populations of Europe and America
are also profiting financially, he says, given that their national economies
are improving with the nuclear deal being left alone.
And this is why he is lamenting that the situation has made
it possible for Iran to grow
so big and so powerful, it has spread itself into the vicinity of Israel 's
neighborhood. Thus, what's at stake now, according to Jonathan Tobin, is that
the well-being of these peoples has come at the expense of Israel which
sees its own expansionist dreams in the region drastically curtailed if not eliminated.
To remedy the situation, Jonathan Tobin wants Donald Trump,
Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to fabricate a situation that will kill those
business deals even if such action will come at the expense of a rift between America and its
European allies. Not only does he want to see America implement sanctions on
Iran; he wants to see America pressure the Europeans, forcing them to follow
suit or suffer the consequences of sanctions being imposed on them by America.
That would be to slap restrictions on the ability of their
companies to do unrestricted banking transactions worldwide; this being an area
in which America
has some control. The thing, however, is that America 's power in this realm is
beginning to weaken. It happened because America
has abused the power – mostly to protect Israel
– and China
took advantage of the situation by creating a parallel system that's catching
like wild fire.