Tuesday, April 14, 2015

The threat is not immediate. The emergency is.



We have entered a state of emergency. The Obama administration is pursuing policies that effectively serve the purposes of one of America’s greatest foes and treat one of America’s dearest friends as though it were an adversary. The White House has implicitly taken up the cause of normalizing Iran and has become at the very least complicit in the international goal of isolating Israel.

Barack Obama has decided the key to his legacy is a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran that will enshrine its nuclear capacity but delay its ability to build and deploy a bomb for a time—that is, assuming Iran doesn’t cheat, which is an assumption that requires a leap of geopolitical faith Blaise Pascal would have blanched at. Meanwhile, 970 miles from Tehran, the State of Israel finds itself the unwanted focus of another Obama legacy effort: the effort to drive a wedge between the two countries and thereby realign America’s interests in the Middle East away from Israel’s interests.

In making clear his desire to establish a working relationship with a nation that does not abide by any standards of civilized conduct, a nation that oppresses in medieval fashion at home and that is the worst state sponsor of terrorism abroad, the president is tacitly accepting the everyday behavior and casting a blind eye on the plain language of one of the world’s most monstrous regimes.