Negotiations with Iran Are Reaching the Point of No Return

If the U.S. signs an agreement with Iran, argues Max Boot, the damage done will be irreversible, even by a Republican president disposed to “tear up the treaty”:

Iran, as its leaders have made clear, is expecting an immediate payoff from signing the [nuclear] accords—a payoff that President Obama has vowed to deliver. If leaks are accurate, the President is offering Iran a $50 billion “signing bonus” by offering to unfreeze a large portion of the Iranian oil funds held overseas. . . . While President Obama cannot formally repeal all U.S. sanctions without legislative action, he can suspend most of them, and our allies will eagerly follow suit.

President Obama assures us that if Iran is caught cheating, the sanctions will “snap back,” but it’s impossible to imagine this president ever admitting that his signature achievement—a nuclear accord with Iran—has unraveled. [And even if a subsequent president were to] decide to put all of the U.S. sanctions back into place, . . . Iran could then sprint ahead with a nuclear breakout and lay the blame on the U.S. in the court of international public opinion. In any case, the next president would not be able to reapply the multilateral sanctions that have been the most important element in applying pressure to Iran. . . .

The U.S. would then get the worst of both worlds: Iran already would have been enriched by hundreds of billions of dollars of sanctions relief—and it would be well on its way to fielding nuclear weapons with de-facto permission from the international community. . . .

That makes it all the more imperative to stop a bad agreement now—not two years from now.

Read more at Commentary

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

 

How Democrats Will Blame Israel for Their Defeat

Sometimes it takes a smart outside observer to see things about U.S. politics that Americans might miss. Stephen Daisley is one such observer:

Progressives in search of a scapegoat for their defeat will quickly arrive at Israel, specifically what they regard as the Biden administration and the Harris campaign’s support for Jerusalem in its fight against Hamas and Hizballah terrorists. Expect leftists to point to Harris’s loss of Michigan and especially the collapse of the Democrat vote in Dearborn, a city with significant Arab and Muslim populations. Expect them to say that a different approach, one supportive of the Palestinians rather than the Israelis, would have seen the Democrats hold on to Michigan.

It won’t matter that Michigan voted for Trump in 2020 and that his support there has much more to do with non-graduate white men than it does with Arab-American voting behavior. It won’t matter that Trump’s attitude towards Israel is far more sympathetic than Harris’s. It won’t matter that going down this path will bring resentment and hostility to bear on Arab Americans or Jews or both.

Progressives will see their chance to do something they have longed to do for decades: cleave the United States from Israel and leave the Jewish state vulnerable in a dangerous neighborhood. The surest way to do that is by adopting for the Democrat party the sort of views about Israel seen in center-left parties across the West.

Read more at Spectator

More about: 2024 Election, American Muslims, Democrats, U.S.-Israel relationship