Saturday Emails -- Obama Believes Iran's Lies - Congress, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel Do Not

It's time for our Saturday report on your emails. This week, the key topic continues to be Iran, Israel and the Middle East. Last week, you focused on the likelihood of a deal with Iran and the Israel-US relationship. But with the Lausanne negotiations moving ahead and the Israeli elections behind us, you are now focused on the potential damage an Iran deal will cause, and the threats being issued from the White House in Benjamin Netanyahu's direction. These are hefty topics. Let's try to handle them. ~~~~~ First, as you so rightly say, there will be an Obama-Iran deal. The US President has cleverly surrounded his pre-ordained decision with what he calls the P5+1 -- countries either publicly on Iran's side (Russia and China) or European countries whose dependence on the US-supported NATO for military cover and whose anti-semitism and dislike of Israel makes them perfect yes-men (Britain, Germany and France, which is possibly the only independent voice in the entire negotiating team). So, it should have been no surprise that this past week in Lausanne, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif negotiated alone while the rest of the P5+1 were briefed after the sessions. In Obama's inexplicable eagerness to sign any deal with Iran, he is willing to allow it to achieve nuclear capability, and the US State Department has removed Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah -- two of the world's most open promoters of terror -- from its Terror Threat Report. The European Union did its part, removing Hamas, the Moslem Brotherhood's Palestinian branch, from its list of designated terrorist organizations. Yet, barely a week ago, Egypt designated the entire Hamas movement a terrorist organization. Hamas supports ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula and within Egypt itself, attacking government, security and civilian targets. Was all this whitewashing done at Iran's request? It would be a small gesture compared to Obama's decision to permit it to build its nuclear bomb "for peaceful purposes," - a first, even for diplomats - while at the same time, Obama is looking the other way while Iran takes over Yemen and completes its new nuclear-capable "defensive" missiles that will be able to reach Europe and be fired from submarines. ~~~~~ To get to your second point, nobody's happy except Obama and the Ayatollah. This has led to the extraordinary circumstance in which Arab leaders, the US Congress and Israel have "gone public" to try to stop what they see as a gathering storm of catastrophe. Republican Senators sent a letter to Iran warning that any agreement with the US would have to be endorsed by Congress. The Iranians used it to claim that the United States is so weak it is about to fall apart. The king of Saudi Arabia said that if the US did not halt Iran's nuclear program, Saudi Arabia would begin enriching its own uranium, to acquire a nuclear potential equal to that of Iran. The members of the Arab League met in Riyadh to warn America of the approaching disaster. And, even the president of the Christian human rights organization Voice of the Copts, has entered the debate by asking House Speaker John Boehner to invite Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to address Congress and warn America of the mistake it clearly intends to make. ~~~~~ That's a lot of public commentary from countries and leaders who rarely say anything in public. Why is the world so fearful? That's your third question. Fear is everywhere because the agreement between Iran and the United States will not only abandon traditional US allies - the sunni Arab states and Israel - to their fates, it also makes inevitable a nuclear arms race involving sunni states, carried out in the tenuous hope that they will be able to contain the shiites before they launch a nuclear Armageddon on the Middle East. And - something seldom mentioned in Western media - there is also the rumored approaching death of Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei. Thus, instead of focusing on the role of Congress, which will be reasoned and thoughtful, the sunnis and Israel focus on what they know -- that any agreement signed with the Iranians now won't be worth the paper it is printed on, because no one knows who will replace Khamenei or whether his replacement will agree to honor any commitments signed by the previous regime. The sunni Arabs and Israel know what Obama refuses to believe -- Iran has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie about the status of its nuclear program and its goal of suppressing the sunnis, annihilating Israel and creating a shiite hegemony in the Middle East. Arab fears run so deep that some of them agree with a theory making the rounds in the Middle East -- that Obama's behavior supports the rumor that he is a secret Moslem Brotherhood supporter. Why do they give credence to such a rumor? Well, instead of supporting sunni states, such as Egypt and the Gulf States, which are exploring an innovative moderate, contemporary Islam, Obama has chosen to support the Moslem Brotherhood, which tells him and the West it is not doing its utmost to weaken those moderate states. ~~~~~ And finally, Obama labels Israel's failure to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians as the only important problem in the Middle East, using Europe and the P5+1 to turn Israel into a pariah state, as if it is Israel's bound duty to bring the Palestinians to the table and force them to sign a peace agreement -- even if the Palestinians refuse to talk, lob rockets into Israel and send their agents to every corner of the earth to smear Israel's reputation with insinuations and lies. Sunni Arabs may have political and cultural reasons to keep Israel at arm's length. But they respect Netanyahu, who was willing to accept personal, political and diplomatic risks in order look after his people's security by speaking before Congress. As one analyst in the Middle East said : "Throughout history, prophets have often been without honor in their own countries and have been rejected by the very people who should pay attention to them. There is, it seems, in every culture, a deep and real wish to kill the messenger. The West would do well to understand that anyone really interested in fighting terrorism needs to outlaw the Moslem Brotherhood movement -- all its branches, wherever they are. Even more, it needs to paralyze Iran, rather than appease it." ~~~~~ Dear readers, the times are heavy with foreboding about the disaster that will be set in motion by the Obama deal with Iran. It's sad that Western leaders -- whether naive or deliberately bad actors -- are going to agree to a deal that appeases Iran, just as a deal was made to appease Hitler in 1938. It is striking how often the analogy to the Chamberlain Munich agreement of 1938 is used today to describe Obama's determination to appease Iran. What is shocking is that Europeans -- who paid severely for believing in the efficacy of appeasement in 1938 -- should make the same mistake in 2015. Only Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel are standing up to Obama's folly and its promise of a Middle East war that could easily engulf the world. We should respect their courage and speak up for them whenever we can, because our future may very well depend on their success. (Hope to hear from you before next Saturday...join the discussion any time...French and Spanish welcome...at casey.popshots@yahoo.com )