DR. MICHAEL LEDEEN
April 9, 2014
Somebody on Twitter posted an upbeat message saying the US
delegation to the latest round of talks with Iranian officials was
quite optimistic. Don't get me wrong, I'm a born optimist and I love
optimism, but I'd rather revel in victory than hope for good news, and
the Iranians have every reason to revel. The Obama crowd has just ok'd
something the Tehran tyrants have desperately wanted since the
eighties:
spare parts
for their long-grounded American passenger aircraft. Boeing and
General Electric were given export licenses by the Treasury Department
and everyone involved has been chanting "we take aircraft security very
seriously," in order to cloak this latest gift to the Khamenei-Rouhani
regime in humanitarian hues.
Frankly I'd rather they took national security very seriously. Iran
uses its commercial aircraft for military purposes (one of the reasons
that eery flight between Tehran and Caracas is so worrisome), and the
mullahs have been limited by the degradation of the national fleet. The
Boeing planes and GE engines date to the 1970s, and very few of them
are in service. Back in the mid-eighties, when I spent quite a bit of
time with Iranian officials, they repeatedly asked for spare parts, both
for the passenger planes and for the aging military craft, the F4s and
F5s. Secretary of Defense Weinberger of course vetoed any such
discussions, and the embargo has held until just now.
Now we're arming Iran.
Meanwhile, as my buddy/boss/colleague Mark Dubowitz explains, the
Russians and Iranians are working on ways to bust the oil sanctions on
Tehran. They're gonna swap stuff: Russian goodies (probably including
military equipment such as submarines, torpedoes and antiaircraft
missiles) for Iranian oil. This will not be the first time. Iran has
done swaps with India and, most recently and outrageously, with the
Turks (Iranian natural gas for Turkish gold, along with a plethora of
other deals).
Mark rightly insists that if this deal is consummated, we should come
down on the Russians with all four claws, but how likely is that? As I
write, Soviet - no, make that Russian - special forces are hard at
work in Ukraine, stirring up ethnic conflict, the better to justify
forceful action against Ukrainian territory. We're clucking our
tongues and sending some fighter planes to Romania, but Putin won't
worry much about that sort of gesture; he doesn't believe Obama has
the courage or the will to confront Russia.
Commentators are looking for ways to describe the current situation,
and John Schindler, a smart man with a real talent for telling it
straight, is calling it Cold War II. I love his words
here:
"While it's certainly true that the U.S. and NATO don't seek
confrontation with Russia, it's worthwhile remembering Trotsky's line
that you might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
And so it is, indeed the war has been on for some time, and it's a
bit hotter than Cold War 1.0 was for most of the twentieth century.
Kiev burned, and may burn again soon. Caracas is burning, as are many
of Venezuela's cities and towns. Crimea has been annexed, and Syria is
still aflame, as is Iraq, and also Yemen. Estonia and Finland are
seriously frightened, as well they should be. If we pull back from the
crisis
du jour, we can see it's a global conflict. Iran and
Russia are fighting in Syria, sometimes with and sometimes against the
jihadi marauders. Cuba is fighting in Venezuela,
a country the Castros largely command,
and Hezbollah is in there, too. And for those of you who follow
Africa, know that the Iranians are up to their necks in Nigeria, buying
influence and supporting the mass murderers in Boko Haram.
Our enemies are indeed vulnerable. I keep pointing to their fear of
their own people. Assad in Damascus, Khamenei in Tehran and Maduro in
Caracas are all cases in point. We could do a lot in those places,
probably bring down the dictators without firing a shot. But for that
to happen, we need a president that believes in America. As Schindler
says, "We will have many allies in resisting Russian aggression if we
focus on issues of freedom and sovereignty, standing up for the rights
of smaller countries to choose their own destiny."
The same applies to Putin's comrades from Pyongyang to Nicaragua.
But, as the Ukrainian revolutionaries have found, and as the
aftermath of our victory in Iraq has demonstrated, the battle against
evil is not going to end on this earth, and if you fail to challenge the
heart of the current darkness, you may well find things worse than
they were before. Our enemies are bursting with confidence. They
think they've got us.
Bret Stephens: "Mr. Putin knows Mr. Obama. He knows that the U.S. president has the digestive fortitude of a tourist in Tijuana."
As Mr Obama runs for the Pepto Bismol, he's arming our enemies for the next round. So it's gonna get worse.
(Artwork created using a modified element from Shutterstock.com.)
Read more:
Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/arming-the-mullahs?f=must_reads#ixzz2yO56BFaW
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