When the Iran nuclear deal was signed last summer, the Obama administration celebrated it as a diplomatic triumph. Many supporters of the accord endorsed it on the grounds that it could delay Iran’s nuclear program. At the time I argued in The Federalist that the case for the deal hinged in large part on willfully disregarding Tehran’s malignant ideological character and goals. A militant theocracy, the Iranian regime actively funds jihadist groups and calls for our destruction.
Ten years ago last week, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons related to Islam. The aim was to gauge a seemingly growing climate of self-censorship in Europe. The ensuing crisis went global.
When Obama swept into office, on a tidal wave of Hope and the promise of Change, he vowed to reset America’s orientation to the world. Frankly, after eight years of George W. Bush’s destructive foreign policy, you can see why many people would heave a sigh of relief and welcome an ABB (Anything But Bush) commander-in-chief. From today’s vantage — and on the week marking 14 years since 9/11 — how should we judge Obama’s record? Can we judge Obama’s policy without weighing the Bush legacy? Is the Iran deal, as many believe, a crowning achievement? How, more broadly, should we evaluate Obama’s Middle East policy? These are some of the questions I’ll cover when I guest host The Yaron Brook Show this Saturday, September 12.
Unless you visit a college campus regularly, chances are that this may be the first time you’ve heard of the so-called boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to pressure Israel to change its policies toward Palestinians.
When Obama announced the Iran nuclear deal, he explained the rationale for taking the diplomatic path. There were, he said, three options: negotiate as good a deal as we can get; pull out of the talks; or else take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, igniting another Middle East war. Turns out these boil down to only two options, really, since pulling out of talks, according to Obama, would also end up leading to military action. So, if the options are diplomacy versus going to war, you can see why Obama’s case has swayed some people. But that argument hinges on a tendentious framing of the possibilities.
Imagine you’re a foreign journalist in Israel, and one day, visiting Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, you observe this scene: men clad all in black stand in military formation, lifting their right arms in a Nazi-style salute. They stand with their boots on Israeli flags, draped on the ground. Nearby, actors play dead Israeli soldiers. Behind the first formation, another row of men carry banners of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The rally, in support of that jihadist group, draws hundreds of university students. Some of them return the Nazi-style salute. Al-Quds University, a mainstream institution, has had partnerships with Brandeis and Bard Universities.
Last summer, you might remember the street protests, the op-eds, the academic denunciations, the UN statements all rebuking Israel’s retaliation against Hamas-controlled Gaza. Rewind a couple of years to an earlier Israel-Hamas war, and the international reaction was similarly vociferous. Going back many years, the pattern holds firm. But if you go back far enough, the picture is radically different.
The first rule of contemporary diplomacy: if you say something is true, that makes it so. The second rule: never doubt the first rule. You can see these precepts operating in President Obama’s State of the Union speech: “Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”
The aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack has brought an encouraging reaction. You can see it on the streets of Paris and other cities. Last week, tens of thousands of people joined vigils in solidarity for the murdered journalists. Upwards of a million Parisians took the streets on Sunday. “Je Suis Charlie” read the signs. Online the corresponding hashtag has swept across social media. Some news outlets — more than I expected — have reprinted Charlie Hebdo cartoons. But what's more, the outlets that have refused to publish the images (or pixelated them) have been deservedly bashed. They shame themselves by cowering.
Following the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine, Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at ARI, writes that “When foreign governments, religious leaders and their faithful followers threaten and murder individuals for daring to speak, anyone who values his own life and freedom must stand with, and speak for, the victims.”
