On the heels of the proposed nuclear deal with Iran, Elan Journo asks: “Why are seemingly sensible people cheering the Iran deal, given the regime’s notorious brutality and belligerence?”
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.
In this interview, ARI’s Elan Journo assesses America’s deal with Iran. Among other things, he discusses the futility of trying to contain Iran’s nuclear program without addressing the broader threat of the Iranian regime, the need to recognize the ideological goals of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Obama administration’s false alternative between diplomacy and war.
A little more than a week ago, the Obama administration reached a historic agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear program. How should we evaluate this deal? ARI’s Elan Journo argues not only that this is a “bad deal,” but also that it’s irrational to negotiate with Iran. Why?
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 attack on Charlie Hebdo reminds us that Islamic terrorism remains a very dangerous phenomenon in the world. The reaction to the attack, and particularly the expressions of support for freedom of speech, are cause for some hope, but attitudes about Islamist doctrine and the terrorism it spawns still range from dangerously naïve to frighteningly sympathetic.
There’s something entirely fitting in the fact that the most sensible thing said about Sony’s decision not to release The Interview comes from a place not known for saying sensible things — Hollywood itself — while the most risible comments come from a place that is supposed to have serious responses to things like foreign nations threatening American citizens for exercising their constitutional rights. That’s Washington, D.C. (in case you’ve forgotten that it’s supposed to be a serious place). Comparing the two views expressed is illuminating and goes a long way toward explaining why North Korea felt free to threaten Sony — indeed, all of us—in the first place.
