By Richard Fernandez in PJ Media and
the Belmont Club blog
It’s been announced that the Obama administration has reached an “historic” deal with Iran over its nuclear
weapons development program. President Obama “warned Congress against taking
action that could upend work toward a final deal”, in the words of Julie Pace
of the Associated Press.
“The issues at stake here are bigger
than politics,” Obama said during remarks in the White House Rose Garden.
“These are matters of war and peace, and they should be evaluated based on the
facts.”
Obama spoke hours after negotiators
in Switzerland reached a framework agreement outlining limits on Iran’s nuclear
program and setting the stage for work on a final deal over the next three
months.
The president called the agreement
“a good deal, a deal that meets our core objectives.” He said verification
mechanisms built into the framework agreed to in Switzerland hours earlier
would ensure that “if Iran cheats, the world will know it.”
The world will know if Iran cheats
for about 12 months. According to CNN’s description of the
deal’s parameters that is all the warning time the
deal likely provides. Tehran agrees to keep 6,104 centrifuges, put its
remaining facilities under IAEA inspection. Iran will receive sanctions relief,
if it verifiably abides by its commitments. ”Iran’s breakout
timeline — the time that it would take for Iran to acquire enough fissile
material for one weapon — is currently assessed to be 2 to 3 months. That
timeline will be extended to at least one year, for a duration of at least ten
years, under this framework.”
It will be argued that the deal is
‘better than nothing’ — a word which necessarily means “all Obama could get”.
But a better description might be “something rather than nothing”. For a
Nothing was what it threatened to be. The agreement was always like a movie
McGuffin, “a device or plot element in a movie that is deliberately placed to
catch the viewer’s attention and/or drive the logic of the plot, but which
actually serves no further purpose – it won’t pop up again later.”
And if it does you will learn
that “historic” now means a year’s warning. Time was when
“historic” meant centuries, like the pyramids that look down on the Gaza plain.
History under the Obama administration now means a year’s grace looking up to
you from the paper.
The real drama in the negotiations
that regional actors were watching was just how far the “international
community” would go to forestall a bomb. The real question was never Tehran’s
ambition. That remains manifest throughout the battlefields of the region.
The outcome that everyone wanted to
know was: ‘what level of resolve does the leader of the Free world have?’ Now
the answer is back: not much. He has it to the extent shown on the
agreement. From Riyadh to Damascus, from Jerusalem to Tehran the deal will probably
be seen as a face-saving surrender by a beaten fighter trying to insist he won
the bout from the floor of the ring. Iran wanted a Green Light. Obama insisted
a Red Light. But everyone knew an Amber caution signal was all he would show,
or Green after a decent interval. John Kerry has a Forrest Gump like
affinity for showing up at the wrong time. First at Paris as young man
after Vietnam, now at Lausanne in his dotage after the collapse in the Middle
East. Now that’s a movie you could make.
The problem was always how to make
the McGuffin seem real. But everyone knew that seeming was always the
point already. The president has been a broken reed for some time, by either
inclination or necessity. Still there were some who actually thought he
could pull off some magic. John Kerry has done the world a favor by ending the
fake suspense and showing us where we stand. On the edge of a precipice.
What has changed? The civil war
between Sunni and Shia will rage on. A new arms race will likely start in the
Middle East. Israel must now face critical security challenges. After all that
waiting at the phone, there was after all, no pardon, just a reprieve. Or
worse yet, a wrong number. “No this is not the pizza store.”
Nothing has changed; it has only
been represented as having changed. And because there is nothing really
to crow about president Obama shouldn’t go around warning all and sundry not to
interfere with his empty magnum opus. What’s Congress supposed “not to
interfere” with?
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