Why Is the White House Acting as Iran’s Lawyer?

So asks Lee Smith, who notes that time and again the Obama administration has defended and excused the Islamic Republic’s lies, its devious behavior, and its escalating demands:

In both making Tehran’s case to U.S. allies (from the White House’s P5+1 negotiating partners, to Middle East friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia), and shaping public perception of Iranian actions, the White House has made itself an indispensable friend to the clerical regime. Iran doesn’t have to worry about justifying its behavior—like its failure to meet obligations under the interim nuclear agreement and its outright lies—because it knows the [Obama] administration will do all the heavy lifting. . . .

The Iranians . . . violated the Joint Plan of Action [JPOA, the preliminary deal made in November 2013] by busting through the one-million-barrels-per-day monthly limit that the agreement puts on their energy exports. . . . The State Department used to rationalize this violation by predicting that in the subsequent month Iran’s exports would drop, thereby balancing out the average of their monthly exports. But as it became clear that the monthly exports were not ever going to balance out, the administration argued that Iran wasn’t really cheating because the JPOA has a loophole for condensates. . . .

The administration has also politicized intelligence so that Iran’s misbehavior never comes to light. . . . In short, it’s hard not to see the administration as Iran’s lawyer. Maybe it’s for the best of all possible reasons. Maybe the Obama administration really will get a good agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. But if it does, it will probably be years—maybe even decades—before the world knows for sure. Right now, the Iranians refuse to come clean about their nuclear activities, while the White House, instead of compelling Tehran to uphold its part of the deal, is helping them cover it up.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Barack Obama, Iran, Iran nuclear program, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society