Israel Matzav

Dershowitz: There were better options on Iran - Obama gave them away

Yes, he's even lost Democratic stalwart Alan Dershowitz. President Hussein Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry keep telling us that there were 'no better options available' to their sellout to Iran. But Alan Dershowitz - an all-in Democrat - says there were better options, but Obama gave them away.

The reality is that there were always alternatives, though they became less realistic as the negotiations progressed. We could have stuck to the original redlines – non-negotiable demands – from the beginning. These included on-the-spot inspections of all facilities rather than the nearly month-long notice that will allow the Iranians to hide what they are doing; shutting down all facilities specifically designed for nuclear weapons production; maintaining the embargo on missiles and other sophisticated weapons rather than allowing it to gradually be lifted; and most crucially, a written assurance that the international community will never allow Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal. The current assortment of indeterminate and varying timelines agreed to will allow Iranians to believe — and proclaim — they will soon be free of any constraints on their nuclear adventurism.

Instead, we caved early and often because the Iranians knew we desperately need a deal to implement President Obama’s world vision and to enhance his legacy.

This approach to the deal — surrendering leverage from the outset — violated the most basic principles of negotiation 101. We were playing checkers against the people who invented chess, and their ayatollah checkmated our president.

But the real losers were those countries — our allies — who were not even allowed to participate in the negotiations. Virtually every Middle Eastern leader, with the exception of Syria’s Assad, opposes this deal. Nor do they feel bound by it, since they did not have a vote.

The deal was imposed on them, in much the same way the Chamberlain-Hitler deal was imposed on Czechoslovakia in 1938. The difference is that Czechoslovakia did not have the means to defend itself, whereas Israel and some of its Sunni neighbors do have the capacity to try to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal — which the mullahs would use to increase their hegemony over the area and to threaten Israel’s security through its surrogates, Hezbollah and Hamas. Those groups would become even more aggressive under the protection of an Iranian nuclear umbrella.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Adolph Hitler, Alan Dershowitz, Barack Hussein Obama, Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, Neville Chamberlain, P 5+1

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:31 PM