Obama "Crushes" the Neocons

By Michael Tomasky

November 25th 2013--Well, the ayatollah appears to have lent his provisional support to the historic U.S.-Iran accord announced Saturday night.

In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said the deal “can be the basis for further action.”

We just need sign-off from our American ayatollahs.

But early indications are that the Republicans, eager to perform Bibi Netanyahu’s bidding—not that they need a second reason to oppose something President Obama did—will do everything within their power to stop the thing going forward.

We shouldn’t get too carried away in praising this accord just yet.

It’s only a six-month arrangement while the long-term one is worked out.

Those talks are going to be harder than these, and it is not a stretch to envision them collapsing at some point.

Iran must agree to regular inspections, making it difficult to enrich weapons-grade uranium.

They agreed to this to buy time to get to $4.2 billion in frozen oil revenues.

But whether Iran is going to agree to inspections like that is another question.

Still, it is an historic step.

Thirty-four years of not speaking is a long time.

So, it’s impressive that this got done at all, and even more impressive are some of the inner details, like the fact that Americans and Iranians have been in direct and very secret negotiations for a year.

Rouhani’s election seems to have made a significant difference—four of five secret meetings centered in Oman have been held since Rouhani took office; a clear indication that he wants a long-term deal.

This is potentially a breakthrough that could have numerous positive reverberations in the region—not least among them is the virtual elimination of the chance that the United States and Iran would end up at war.

And what a refutation of those harrumphing warmongers!

I’d love to have had a tap on John Bolton’s phone over the weekend, or Doug Feith’s, or Cheney’s, and heard the combination of perfervid* sputtering and haughty head shaking as they lament Obama’s choice.

*adjective. very fervent; extremely ardent; impassioned: perfervid patriotism. 

Well, then, let’s compare choices.

They chose war against a country that never attacked us, had no capability whatsoever to attack us, and had nothing to do with the allegedly precipitating event, 9/11.

We fought that war because 9/11 handed the neocons the excuse they needed to dupe the public into supporting a unilateral war of hegemony.

It has cost us more than $2 trillion.

It has taken the lives of more than 100,000 people.

It has been the author of the trauma of thousands of our soldiers, their limbs left over there, their families sundered.

And on the subject of Iran, the war of course did more to strengthen Iran in the region than Obama could dream of doing at his most Machiavellian-Manchurian.

Fine, the world is well rid of Saddam Hussein.

But these prices were far too steep.

Then along came Obama in 2008, saying he’d negotiate with Iran.

I’d love to have a nickel for every time he was called “naive” by John McCain or Sarah Palin (after the differences between Iran and Iraq were explained to her) or any of dozens of others (and yeah, even Hillary Clinton).

I’d settle for a penny.

I’d still be rich. You might think that watching this past decade unfold, taking an honest measure of where the Bush administration’s hideous decisions have left us, that some of them might allow that maybe negotiation was worth a shot.

Of course that will never happen.

Marco Rubio was fast out of the gates Sunday, but he will be joined today by many others.

Some will be Democrats, yes, from states with large Jewish votes.

Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez have already spoken circumspectly of the deal (although interestingly, Dianne Feinstein, as AIPAC-friendly as they come, spoke strongly in favor of it).

There will be a push for new sanctions, and that push will be to some extent bipartisan.

But the difference will be that if Democrats have a sense that the deal is real and can be had, they won’t do anything to subvert it, whereas for the Republicans, this will all be about what it’s always about with them—the politics of playing to their Obama-hating base.

 But there will be two added motivations.

There is the a short-sighted and tragic view of what constitutes security for Israel, thereby maintaining a condition of near-catastrophe and putting people like Netanyahu in power, ensuring that nothing will ever change.

And perhaps most important of all in psychic terms to the neocons, there is contemplation of the hideous reality that Obama and the path of negotiation just might work.

This is the thing the neocons can’t come to terms with at all.

If President Obama succeeds, their entire worldview is discredited.

Check that; even more discredited.

Rouhani appears to be moving his right wing a bit. Ours, alas, isn’t nearly so flexible.