His conclusion is striking: "[the US has] handed over our leading role in the Middle East [to Iran]."
The unwisdom of such in light of Iran's global track record since 1979, is patent.
Caroline Glick, Editor of The Jerusalem Post, is equally sobering:
the damage caused to the nonproliferation system by American weakness toward Pakistan and North Korea is small potatoes in comparison to the destruction that Tuesday’s deal with Iran has wrought.
That deal doesn’t merely show that the US is unwilling to exact a price from states that illicitly develop nuclear weapons. The US and its allies just concluded a deal that requires them to facilitate Iran’s nuclear efforts.
Not only will the US and its allies remove the sanctions imposed on Iran over the past decade and so start the flow of some $150 billion to the ayatollahs’ treasury. They will help Iran develop advanced centrifuges.
They even committed themselves to protecting Iran’s nuclear facilities from attack and sabotage.
Under the deal, in five years, Iran will have unlimited access to the international conventional arms market. In eight years, Iran will be able to purchase and develop whatever missile systems it desires.
And in 10 years, most of the limitations on its nuclear program will be removed.
Because the deal permits Iran to develop advanced centrifuges, when the agreement ends in 10 years, Iran will be positioned to develop nuclear weapons immediately.
In other words, if Iran abides by the agreement, or isn’t punished for cheating on it, in 10 years, the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the world will be rich, in possession of a modernized military, a ballistic missile arsenal capable of carrying nuclear warheads to any spot on earth, and the nuclear warheads themselves.
Facing this new nuclear reality, the states of the region, including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and perhaps the emirates, will likely begin to develop nuclear arsenals. ISIS will likely use the remnants of the Iraqi and Syrian programs to build its own nuclear program . . . .
After all, now that the US has capitulated to Iran, its avowed foe and the greatest state sponsor of terrorism, who will take future American calls for sanctions against nuclear proliferators seriously? Who will be deterred by American threats that “all options are on the table” when the US has agreed to protect Iran’s nuclear installations and develop advanced centrifuges for the same ayatollahs who daily chant, “Death to America”? For Israel, the destruction of the West’s nonproliferation regime means that from here on out, we will be living in a region buzzing with nuclear activity. Until Tuesday, Israel relied on the West to deter most of its neighbors from developing nuclear weapons. And when the West failed, Israel dealt with the situation by sending in the air force. Now, on the one hand Israel has no West to rely on for sanctions or deterrence, and on the other hand, it has limited or no military options of its own against many of the actors that will now seek to develop nuclear arsenals . . . . Years from now, perhaps historians will point out the irony that Obama, who loudly proclaims his goal of making the world free of nuclear weapons, has ushered in an era of mass nuclear proliferation and chaos.Patently, the international system of stability is coming apart through a gross failure of leadership, as Charles Hill noted. This particularly holds for nuclear non-proliferation and other weapons of mass destruction. And the spread of such arms to irresponsible or unstable states should give any sober-minded person serious pause.
Israel can ill afford the luxury of pondering irony.
One day the nuclear Furies Obama has unleashed may find their way to New York City.
But their path to America runs through Israel. We need to ready ourselves to destroy them before they cross our border. [read it all]
Given the precedent of the collapse of the League of Nations in the 1930's in the face of rising aggressive states, that should give us sobering pause. Especially as the logic of other Western states is likely to be that if the US lacks the will, they can do little but follow the strategic surrender of initiative to Iran. Russia and China, likely, see themselves as profiting from a Western geo-strategic withdrawal.
The predictable consequence is war, including much amplified terrorism.
The difference is, this time, nukes are plainly in play in the same unstable Middle East that is the main oil supplier to the world.
The world is sowing nuclear dragon's teeth. END
