#oili

[mazverdan]

Some kind of.. genie/ghost girl?

[eretzyisrael]

Total, unmitigated defeat

 Op-ed: Obama abandoned US allies' security concerns by believing appeasing Iran is only way to avoid war

by Shoula Romano Horing

President Obama had to choose between dishonor and war, and he chose dishonor. Now we will have war. He has dishonored US allies in the Middle East, including Israel and the Persian Gulf states, by abandoning their security concerns regarding a nuclear Iran by believing that appeasing Iran is the only way to avoid war.

These words are those of Churchill after the Munich Agreement was signed, when Britain and France believed that handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler was the only way to save the world from another war. It is regarded as the shameful culmination of the Allies refusal to confront Nazi aggression and gave Hitler what he wanted in exchange for his verbal promise of "peace in our time" as Chamberlain called it.

After the Munich Agreement, Churchill gave a speech in the House of Commons on the future consequences to Europe and the world of the agreement which he called “total and unmitigated defeat." Following the Geneva agreement, these warnings ring as true now as they did then.

We cannot consider the abandonment of US allies only in the light of what happened the last few weeks. This agreement in Geneva is the culmination of the uninterrupted retreat of US power under Obama for the last five years in the Middle East. For five years, the president has been betraying Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE but accommodating enemies and tyrants like Syria’s Assad, Iran’s Khamenei, and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

There has been five years of eager searching for any perceived moderate leader in Iran and the naïve belief that he has found the one in the smiling new Iranian President Rohani despite the fact that past evidence proves that Rohani has been a liar and a cheat in previous negotiations with the west about suspending uranium enrichment.

Let us be clear. The agreement is a total US defeat and Iranian victory. It is the first step of the new US policy of containment of Iran’s nuclear program. Despite the desperate propaganda by Obama, in reality the US and the West gave the Iranians the implied right to enrich its uranium when it agreed to let Iran continue enriching its uranium to 3.5%

US will not be trusted again

Obama, Kerry and other White House official’s panicky statements during the last two weeks that threatening to impose additional sanctions on Iran will be a "march to war" reassured the Iranians that Obama was desperate for any deal. US officials' defamatory attacks against legitimate Israeli concerns about a potential bad deal by calling them "war mongers" and keeping many of the details of the negotiations from them, as well as US reluctance to attack Syria, has told the Israelis that there is no longer any credible US military option against Iran.

Israel is not Czechoslovakia. Israel was abandoned by its ally but it is not broken and will never be silent. Israel is a nuclear power and can attack Iran on its own like it did against the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors. The only obstacle is that Obama has tied Israeli hands for the next six months of negotiations. By then Iran will be a month away from building a bomb.

Knowing that Obama will never attack Iran militarily and will do his best to delay Israel from attacking Iran in time will have disastrous consequences to the Middle East. Many countries in the Middle East like Qatar and Iraq will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Iran in the hope of protection from annihilation. Many others like Egypt and Turkey will gravitate to the Russians and the Chinese for military cooperation and nuclear reactors. Others like Saudi Arabia, and UAE, will turn to the Pakistanis for a nuclear bomb.

The nuclear arms race has just begun. Rather than peace in our time Obama and his allies have given us a potential nuclear war in our time. The Middle East is not Europe and Iran is not the ex-Soviet Union. It is a suicidal Shiite state alongside suicidal Sunni states in the powder keg called the Middle East which is not susceptible to the cold war discipline of deterrence.

Meanwhile, Iranian influence and stature will grow while US influence and stature as a reliable ally will diminish. Eventually under this president, the US will retreat leaving a mess behind and even after Obama the US will not be trusted again.

Obama and the other nations in Geneva do not understand the dangers of accepting Iranian status as a threshold nuclear state. Having a nuclear Iran is not only disastrous to Israel, but also to the US and the world. Just imagine what would have happened if Hitler had acquired a nuclear weapon before Germany was defeated militarily. Iran, just as Hitler at the time, has a design not only to kill Jews, but also to rule the world by controlling the oil rich Gulf nations which control 50% of the world‘s oil supply.

The promise of "containing" a nuclear Iran by convincing them not to use the nuclear weapon will not work since the threat of nuclear attack will be enough for Iran to dictate oil prices, as well as the oil supply to the US and Europe. Then, the only option available to the US and the world will be to fight Iran, perhaps resulting in a nuclear war which could destroy the oil supply and many countries in the process.

Shoula Romano Horing is an attorney.                                                       Her website:www.shoularomanohoring.com