The Deal With Iran: Is It Kiddush or Kaddish ?

Guess the author of this reaction to the American (and P5 Plus 1) led treaty with Iran to be signed in June:

“This is a dangerous agreement, particularly for Saudi Arabia…It provides Iran with what it needs most to pursue its wars and expansionism against the Arabs…Lifting the sanctions is America’s way of backing the dangerous and direct wars against Arabs…”

Now you might be forgiven for thinking that this might be an Israeli diplomat or even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been appearing everywhere denouncing the treaty as a bad deal. But, in fact, you would be completely mistaken. The writer is no other than Salah al-Mukhtar, a Jordanian columnist who writes for the Ammon News.
If that’s not enough, continue reading the next concern:

“The United States surely does not want to see a more powerful Iranian hegemony in the region, but at the same time, it does not appear to mind some kind of Iranian influence in the region…” Israeli propaganda ? You couldn’t be any further from the truth. This was written by Nasser Ahmed bin Ghaith, from the United Arab Emirates.

Finally (no more questions), take a look at what Hassan al-Barari wrote in Qatar’s paper “Al-Sharq”:

“Iran has tried to intervene in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria and it is seeing that it is not paying any price; on the contrary, there are attempts by the big powers to reach understandings with Iran. There is also a feeling in Tehran that the United States is avoiding a military confrontation with the Iranians and their proxies…Any kind of appeasement with Iran will only lead it to ask for more and probably meddle in the internal affairs of the Arab countries and increase its arrogance. ”

It seems that Netanyahu is not the only one with stratospheric concerns about Iran’s apocalyptic plans. The entire area is very nervous about the true intent of the Iranians and their plans in the area. Especially since Ali Younesi, senior adviser to Iranian President Rouhani, and former head of Iranian intelligence, spoke as follows at a conference in Tehran:

“Since its inception, Iran has always had a global dimension. It was born an empire. Iran’s leaders, officials and administrators have always thought in the global dimension..” This empire would reach from the border of China and include the Indian subcontinent, the north and south Caucasus and the Persian Gulf. He continued as follows:

“We must try to once again spread the banner of Islamic-Iranian unity and peace in the region. Iran must bear this responsibility, as it did in the past.”

If Iran was the kind of international player who plays by the Queensbury Rules, and elicited an aura of trust, the concerns would be diminished, and the fears would be neutralized. But that is not the case. For as the discussion around Iran’s nuclear capabilities extended on for years, it has since, directly or through its proxies, taken over four Arab capitals in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Lebanon. As talks focused on the sole concerns of limiting Iran’s centrifuges, underground nuclear laboratories, supplies of uranium and all the other details and minutiae that would burn your mind, Iran has been allowed to interfere, direct and extend its influence through powerful terrorist groups whose viciousness, mayhem and thirst for autocratic Islamist fundamentalist power knows no bounds. And all this while ISIS and its allies, such as Boko Haran in Nigeria, Al-Shabaab in Yemen, Al-Nusra and other fronts are charting their own paths of destruction and murder of innocent civilians, creating huge population changes as innocents are forced to flee and find safety in other countries who lack the resources to care for them.

President Obama, to his credit, does realize the threat Iran poses to the entire region, if not to the world, and has taken action that kept him focused for years to secure this deal. And to get some kind of consensus going, he had to get China and Russia on board, countries who never see eye to eye on American foreign policy issues anywhere. But how much has he sacrificed in order to secure this deal ? In his words, it was either this, or another Middle East war. But, that is exactly what the Middle East is experiencing right now…and not just one war, but plenty of them, all being fought simultaneously all over the Middle East, from Libya to Syria, from Iraq to Yemen. What Middle East war is the President afraid of that doesn’t already hold the entire Middle East region in a chasm of chaos and hopelessness ?

It would seem Iran went for this deal not only to secure the best possible terms for itself but also because it would be able to claim the end of the crippling level of sanctions which has really cracked its economic infrastructure and caused great suffering to its economy. And with the billions of dollars that it would now be able to accrue, it would direct and focus the funds to continue its aims of regional hegemony at any cost.

Finally (if such a term can truly be said to apply to this agreement), there is the question of trust. Would you believe anything Iran says given the fact that it:

1: concealed its enrichment facilities that it was obligated to declare under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty;
2: failed to provide full access to suspected sites that the International Atomic Agency sought to inspect; and
3: tampered with the Parchin weapons, as well as poured asphalt over large areas to make ground samples difficult to obtain.

And who even knows if Iran has other nuclear sites developing weapons unbeknownst to anyone…but themselves ?

An old story has it that a scorpion asks a fox (that higher intelligent species of animal ) if he would be good enough to give it a ride across the Suez Canal. The fox responds by saying that the scorpion will then go ahead and sting the fox, hence killing it. To which the scorpion replies that if it went ahead and stung the fox, then both of them would drown, and why would the scorpion want to do this ? The fox eventually agrees, and the scorpion rides on the fox’s back. Half way across, the scorpion stings the fox. The fox, in shock, responds: Now we shall both drown. Why did you do that ? And the scorpion replies: Because this is the Middle East.

This isn’t funny if the world is carrying Iran long on its back in the belief that it is going to be a peaceful partner to the talks. For Iran will certainly sting, and then the rest of the world will suffer the poisonous consequences of that trust … particularly the “Zionist entity” of Israel, and the Great Satan of America.

Respectfully submitted

Chaim Landau

land6@verizon.net