This is The “Art of the Deal?”

This is The “Art of the Deal?”

By Howard Barbanel

Is Barack Obama running foreign policy in the second Trump Administration? It sure seems like it. Recall Obama sending actual pallets of cash to Iran in the waning days and hours of his second term? Recall his acceding to most of Iran’s demands just to get an agreement – any agreement? Recall his horrible agreement which enabled Iran to build thousands of ballistic missiles and continue to enrich uranium?

Now comes along one of the most maddening accords ever agreed to. Have you read the 14 points in the memorandum? You’re not alone. Practically nobody has. It’s being done on the QT via executive order without any Congressional oversight (sounds like Obama too). it’s not even a treaty or even a contract, it’s really just the umpteenth ceasefire sweetened by tons of black and green sugar. By that I mean oil and money, which seem to speak louder than right and wrong.

Supposedly, some $24 to $25 billion in frozen assets will be released to Iran during the 60-day negotiation period to devise a treaty and theoretically dispose of Iran’s enriched uranium. Meanwhile, Iran is looking for $300 billion in reparations to rebuild everything the US and Israel destroyed and you can bet your bottom dollar that will include the terrorist infrastructure surrounding Israel. The Strait of Hormuz has been ceded to Iran’s ultimate control and you can bet this sword of Damacles will be wielded whenever it suits the mullahs to take the world economy hostage.

More significantly, the rumor is the US is agreeing not to foment regime change in Teheran and interfere in their internal affairs. Iran will agree not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, but they’ve been making this promise for decades, insisting their program is for civilian use. If that’s not enough, the US will lift its blockade of Iranian ports and oil exports, thereby effectively rearming Iran with billions in oil sales each month – money that will not go not to the Iranian people but to procure weapons from China and Russia and strengthen the repression of their population. You can also bet that funds will find round-about routes to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

Israel’s hand is being checked and its arms tied behind its back as Trump caved to Iranian demands that Lebanon be linked to any deal with Iran. Hamstringing Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon is unconscionable and will create friction with Washington.

That this awful deal was negotiated by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner is another disgrace. Two New York Jewish real estate guys reporting to another real estate guy (Trump) with everyone hot for a deal – any deal – just to make a deal. Witkoff is naïve and inexperienced to the extreme and Kushner ought to know better.

On September 30, 1938, British prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich accords with Hitler, a low point of Western weakness and appeasement for a “pledge of peace.” The footage of Chamberlain landing back in Britain, waving a piece of paper gloating about “peace in our time” is an iconic image of the foolishness of believing and trusting in dictators – all because the West lacked the backbone to enforce the Versailles treaty. Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Rippentropp told Hitler that he should sign Chamberlain’s document because it’s just a piece of paper and that Nazi Germany will ultimately do whatever it wants. We know what happened next.

At the end of the day the derisive term “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) has held true here. Instead of ridding the earth of the dangerous fanatical regime in Iran, he’s opted for the photo op. Trump has zero stomach for any dead soldiers, even one is too much. Can’t handle the blood. The Iranians know this. They also know high oil prices and inflation are jeopardizing the Republicans’ chances of retaining the House and Senate in the midterms – and Trump blinked first, gambling that $3 a gallon gas and low inflation could bolster the GOPs chances in November.

The US Marines could have taken Karg Island and the Strait in a few days but probably many would be killed or injured, so instead of guts and glory, Trump raised the white flag and is embellishing that flag with all kinds of money for the mullahs. Disgraceful. And I don’t believe for a second that Iran will agree to the seizure and disposal of its enriched uranium and the kind of inspections and enforcement to keep them from a bomb.

It pains me to say this, but had Trump been President during World War II, he’d be berating Churchill not to fight and looking for a “deal” with the Nazis on the eve of D-Day leaving them in control of France because he wouldn’t be able to stomach the 2,500-plus US casualties on day one of a Normandy invasion.

The prophet Ezekiel (chapter 13, verse 10) famously says to the leaders of Judea, " because they have misled My people, saying, 'Peace,' when there is no peace; and when the people build a flimsy wall, behold, they plaster it with whitewash."

This just kicks the can down the road which like in 1938 will lead to a more deadly confrontation down the road, perhaps horrifically with nuclear weapons.

The Zeitgeist

A Nazi Crematorium

Baking Jews with Mike Huckabee:

When is an Oven an Oven?

Last weekend former Arkansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee opened the oven door on President Obama’s Iran Nuclear deal and let out a big blast of heat and blowback.

On Sunday, July 26^th in an interview with Breitbart News, Huckabee said “this president's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven." The metaphor used by Huckabee is that of the Nazi crematoria of World War II which were employed in the extermination of six million Jews.

The next day Huckabee was all over broadcast and cable TV defending his criticism of the Iran deal in those terms and saw his poll numbers rise appreciably against the 17-candidate GOP pack.

No end of vituperative criticism and righteous indignant invective was inveighed against Huckabee by President Obama, others within his administration, prominent Democrats, prominent American Jewish Liberals and the gaggle of cable talking heads. “How could you and how dare you compare the Iran nuclear deal to the Holocaust” was the general refrain. Somehow Huckabee had sacrilegiously besmirched the hallowed memory of the Nazis’ victims. But did he really?

It begs the question, what is an oven exactly? We’re all familiar with coal and wood fired ovens, which often make the best pizza. There are electric ovens and convection ovens, toaster ovens, gas-fired ovens and microwave ovens all employing differing levels of technology to achieve the desired result of cooking whatever dish might be placed within and sometimes you can burn a roast or casserole if the oven is too hot. The Nazis burned people in really big ovens. The main target of Nazi burning were Europe’s Jews who they killed with industrial efficiency with an eye towards genocide, at which they were nearly completely successful.

Hitler and his minions were unabashed and unapologetic about their stated goal of eradicating Europe’s (and even the world’s) Jews. At great cost to their war effort they pursued this goal practically until the bitter end. It was really kind of a rabid hate.

The Ayatollahs along with the political and military leaders of Iran have made no bones about their admiration for the Nazis’ effort (which paradoxically they deny ever happened) and their oft publicly stated desire to complete Hitler’s work by eradicating the State of Israel and all of the six million Jews in it. This is no secret, it’s shouted in the streets of Iran, in their press, tweets and broadcasts. They provide extensive monetary and strategic backing to various heavily armed proxy terrorist groups encircling Israel with the aim of enabling them to murder as many Israelis as possible and as an advance guard for the big, final push somewhere down the road.

This is why there is a wall to wall consensus in Israel from the far left to the far right against President Obama’s Iran nuke deal. After the experience of World War II and decades of ethno-religious hatred against them in the Middle East, Israelis take threats of genocide seriously and don’t pooh-pooh them as fantastical.

By allowing Iran to keep their nuclear program and permitting any pretense of inspections to expire in a decade along with the repeal of economic sanctions, the return of $150 billion in frozen assets, the lifting of prohibitions against selling Iran arms and intercontinental missiles, isn’t the deal in fact enabling Iran to burn more Jews in the short term and possibly realize their stated goal of genocide against the Jewish people perhaps 10 years on?

In the only two instances where atomic weapons were used against civilian populations (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) we saw the power of the atom to burn and incinerate. While the Nazis had to turn one body at a time into powder and ash, atomic weapons can do that to tens and hundreds of thousands in an instant and cause delayed death from radiation shortly after for the survivors of such a blast. If you incinerate thousands of bodies a day manually or perhaps a million instantaneously is not the end result the same?

The real desecration of the Holocaust victims’ memory is allowing such a thing to happen again, enabling would-be genocide by caving into the demands of dictatorial bullies who are fueled by religious and racial hatred. Holocaust survivors and most Jews generally ascribe to the philosophy of “Never Again” to a Holocaust against them.

Mike Huckabee used some very blunt language to disparage a deal that puts millions of Jews in harm’s way and Israel between a rock and a very hard place defensively.  When it comes to saving millions of lives perhaps diplomatic politesse is precisely the wrong tack to take and some plain speaking will both clear the air and shed more light.

For the diplomats in the White House and at Foggy Bottom this is all one big process and they’ll move on to the next treaty. For Israel and the Jewish people this is about life and death. Jews are very familiar with ovens of every caliber and would prefer not to be exposed to the heat in the Iranians’ kitchen.

The Zeitgeist

 

The Chief Mutant Human Clergyman worshipping the "Holy Weapon of Peace" in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (left) and a typical shoulder ground to air missile launcher.

How Malaysian Flight 17 and the Gaza Situation are Connected

What does the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza and the downing of Malaysian Flight 17 over Ukraine have in common? Seemingly, it would seem nothing, but in actuality, everything.

Over the past two weeks hundreds of missiles have rained down on Israel from Gaza, with some of them actually reaching Israel’s major cities. The level of rockets fired by Hamas are an upgrade from their last fusillade of a few years ago but still not fully at first world standards – not because Hamas doesn’t want better weapons, but because of Israel’s continued interdiction of Iranian arms shipments. The lack of Hamas missile lethality is a credit to Israel’s missile defense systems, not a diminution of Hamas’ intentions.

Last Thursday over the Eastern Ukraine, in an area being held by an ad-hoc group of so-called ethnic Russian freedom fighters (but really in the main by Russian special forces units in Vietcong-style camouflage) a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard (including three infants) was shot clear out of 33,000 feet of sky by a sophisticated ground to air missile supposedly launched by these ethnic Russian patriots. Ukraine doesn’t have an Iron Dome missile defense system so the wreckage of Flight 17 became a horrific debris field of body parts and mechanical detritus.

Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport (and its only major airport) is a scant 11 miles from the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city. But really, Tel Aviv is a megalopolis like Los Angeles or Miami with dozens of governmentally independent municipalities comprising a sprawling metropolitan area where about three million of the country’s seven million people live. Most significantly, Ben Gurion is situated a mere four miles from the Palestinian Arab town of Rantis in the disputed West Bank. It wouldn’t take sophisticated weaponry as was used to down Malaysian Flight 17 to wreak havoc with Israel’s commercial and civilian air travel. Gaza-caliber missiles fired from West Bank rooftops would effectively shut down air travel into and out of Israel and in a horrific specter, shoulder-launched ground to air missiles could take down civilian aircraft with men, women and children aboard in a matter of seconds. US airlines have already suspended flights just out of concern from Gaza missiles.

The Gaza war was undoubtedly initiated by Hamas at Iran’s urging to get the Iranian nuclear negotiations with the West wiped off the front pages and major newscasts. And it worked.  The Iranians (who supply materiél and money to Hamas and Hezbollah in the North)  convinced the U.S. and the West to give them more time to negotiate over their uranium enrichment program. Time is money – with economic sanctions eased considerably in consideration for yammering with the Western diplomats, the Iranians can enrich more uranium, install more centrifuges and make life better for their people all at the same time. The Iranians have made it crystal clear that their ultimate objective is world domination and the obliteration of Israel as part and parcel of that process. Hamas is a proxy in this effort.

The public blandishments by the Iranians about their supposed peaceful nuclear program reminds me of the 1970 sci-fi film Beneath the Planet of the Apes starring James  Franciscus, in which the subterranean mutant human survivors of a 20^th Century nuclear conflagration are the guardians of a doomsday hydrogen bomb that their chief clergyman calls a “holy weapon of peace” and a “divine bomb.” Upon hearing this, Franciscus, as the astronaut Brent can’t restrain his emotions of derision, disdain and ludicrousness and stammers in a mocking way, “holy weapon of peace!” while half-laughing. But the bomb was no joke and in the end of the film (spoiler alert here if you’ve not seen it in the last 44 years) the Earth is destroyed by it.

The Iranians are on that track and if they had their druthers they’d propel Hamas to control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (just as Hamas forcefully ousted Fatah from Gaza) and would supply them with thousands of missiles with which to shut down central Israel, sow terror on land, sea and air and actively fulminate for a second Holocaust against the millions of Jews in Israel.

Hence the Israeli government’s determination not to have El Al, Delta, United, Air France, British Airways and other airlines’ flights blown to bits in the air over central Israel or bombed while on the tarmac by allowing the proliferation of dangerous missiles adjacent to its very narrow territory and its equal determination not to allow more genocidal extremist regimes to camp out on its doorstep.

While the so-called Russian separatists in Ukraine are not exactly Hamas, the net result of their recent actions and ambitions are the same and in a sense the struggle of the Ukrainians and the Israelis for freedom and security in the face of bloodthirsty bullies are very much in alignment.