Israel Matzav

Change: Obama keeps his word

President Obama promised that he would not sign a bad deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons capability. And for once, he has kept his word. But, writes David Horovitz, leaving a bad deal unsigned could be even worse than signing it.

They didn’t sign a bad framework deal in Lausanne, Switzerland, last week. They just agreed on one in principle, and left it unsigned, allowing for multiple conflicting interpretations.

It was immediately plain that the US-led negotiators had mislaid their moral compass, and indeed any clear sight of their own self-interest, when they agreed to conduct the negotiations as scheduled even as Iran’s ruthless, arrogant leader Ali Khamenei was intoning his “Death to America” mantra, and one of his military chiefs was declaring that Israel’s destruction is “nonnegotiable.”

What is becoming increasingly plain is the extent to which the Obama team and their colleagues were played for fools by the Iranians in the talks themselves.

Iran was dragged to the negotiating table by the accumulated impact of a painstakingly constructed sanctions regime. It was allowed to leave the table with much of its nuclear weapons program intact, and with the promise of those sanctions being removed.

Unsurprisingly, Iran was not required to acknowledge its nuclear weaponization efforts to date.

Unsurprisingly, it was not required to halt its missile development program. Unsurprisingly, sanctions removal was not conditioned on its abandonment of terrorism, a halt to its financing and arming of Hezbollah, Hamas and other Islamic extremist groups, or an end to its relentless incitement against Israel. Nobody who had followed the Obama administration’s abject handling of the negotiations prior to Lausanne had expected anything in these areas.

But the deal is far worse than even our relentlessly lowered expectations had given us reason to anticipate. The Arak heavy water plant is not to be dismantled. Why not? Because this was the best deal we could get. The Fordo enrichment facility, built secretly into a mountain, is not to be shuttered. Why not? Because this was the best deal we could get. Thousands of centrifuges are to be allowed to keep on spinning. Thousands more will remain intact. For heaven’s sake, why? Because this was the best deal we could get.

All this according to the — so far — undisputed elements of the unsigned agreement.

Less than a week after those sickening scenes of back-slapping in Lausanne, however, more and more of the central elements of the framework are being disputed.

Labels: Arak heavy water production plant, Barack Hussein Obama, breakout capacity, centrifuges, Fordow nuclear plant, Hamas, Hezbullah, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Natanz, P 5+1, uranium enrichment

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:17 PM