Tuesday, December 10, 2013

The coming Obamabomb: While the president dissembles, Iran assembles its nuclear program

(WT) President Obama’s infamous Obamacare lie that “you can keep your doctor, period” is clearly not the exception — it’s the rule. The pattern is especially worrisome with respect to his practice of what amounts to serial national-security fraud.

Consider, for example, the latest on the Iran nuclear-weapons front. Mr. Obama insists that his interim deal “freezes” the mullahs’ nuclear program for six months. He may be the only one who believes that whopper. Certainly, the Iranian regime does not, and neither should we.

Yet the president insisted at a Brookings Institution symposium on Saturday that, “There’s nothing in this agreement or document that grants Iran a right to enrich.” In fact, as the Iranians have noted, the United States and the other so-called “P5+1” members (Russia, China, France and United Kingdom, plus Germany) clearly accepted in two different places in the so-called interim accord that Iran would continue the enrichment of uranium.

Whether we call this arrangement an acknowledgment of an Iranian “right” or not is beside the point. What matters is that the long lead-time item in Iran’s scheme to acquire sufficient nuclear weapons-grade uranium has been legitimated by Mr. Obama’s treacherous diplomacy.

The magnitude of the treachery being exhibited by a man who continues to profess that he will not let Iran get the bomb is evident in another comment made in the course of his remarks at Brookings. Mr. Obama floated for the first time the idea that the final agreement, which supposedly will be fashioned in the next six months, will allow Iran to enrich uranium in perpetuity: “It is my strong belief that we can envision an end state that gives us an assurance that, even if they have some modest enrichment capability, it is so constrained and the inspections are so intrusive that they, as a practical matter, do not have [a] breakout capability.”

Forget about the weasel-word caveats and the president’s empty platitudes about “the military option” remaining on the table. He has thus cleared the way for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, probably on his watch. Just as his health care fraud is properly known as Obamacare, the fruit of the mullah’s nuclear-weapons program he has just green-lighted should be known as “Obamabomb.”

It seems that the real purpose of the interim deal was less to “freeze” Iran’s burgeoning nuclear capability than it was to block the one military option that may actually remain viable: Israel‘s.

There is no small irony to the fact that Mr. Obama chose as the venue for his latest lies about his commitment to the security of the Jewish state — which he described as “sacrosanct” — the Brookings event sponsored by Israeli billionaire Haim Saban. In response to questions posed by Mr. Saban, the president insisted, for example: “Our support of Israel’s security has never been stronger . And that’s not just my opinion; I think that’s something that can be verified.”

Actually, it can be readily verified that no president has done more to jeopardize Israel’s security. The bill of particulars may start, but does not end, with Mr. Obama clearing the way for Iran to have the capability to act on its threats to “wipe Israel off the map.” Even before the interim deal, his administration had acted to impede, if not foreclose, Israeli options to prevent that existential danger. For instance, it compromised, and thereby ended, a secret bilateral arrangement with Azerbaijan to provide post-strike recovery airfields for Israel’s jets.

Insult was added to injury when the president lied to Israel’s Mr. Saban: “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and I have had constant consultations on these issues throughout the last five years.” The truth is that Mr. Obama completely blindsided Mr. Netanyahu about his secret negotiations with Iran over the past year.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Obama has also bludgeoned Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians that would be perilous for the Jewish state. He declared that Israel must withdraw to earlier, indefensible boundaries correctly described as the “Auschwitz borders.” He has publicly demeaned and humiliated Mr. Netanyahu. Secretary of State John Kerry has encouraged European boycotts of Israel and threatened “a third intifada” (or Palestinian terrorist war).

Most recently, Team Obama has let it be known that the United States would “impose” a solution on Israel next year if the Jewish state does not make the concessions necessary to satisfy the Palestinians. Mr. Obama nonetheless lied to Mr. Saban: “What I’ve consistently said is that the only way this is going to be resolved is if the people of Israel and the Palestinian people make a determination that their futures and the futures of their children and grandchildren will be better off with peace than with conflict.”

The people of the United States, and the futures of their children and grandchildren, are being imperiled by a president whose disastrous national-security policies are being exacerbated by his lies about them. These constitute high crimes, and should be treated as such by the Congress.