"Obama's Gamble with Iran's Theocratic Regime" published by the Gatestone Institute

Pleased to share my latest article which was published today by the Gatestone Institute, a New York-based think tank. I am honoured to be published by the Gatestone Institute for the first time, alongside many distinguished writers, thinkers and political leaders.

The Iran deal represents a disconcerting transaction between the West and the radical Shi'a Islamist regime in Tehran. Please read and share widely. Special thank you to Nina Rosenwald for her assistance on the final draft. - R.O.

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"Obama's Gamble with Iran's Theocratic Regime"
Gatestone Institute - July 28, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6237/obama-iran-gamble

• Obama's Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.

• Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make. By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, Obama has bound the U.S. under international law without Senate consent.

• The gravest consequence of Obama's Iran deal is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic's radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Shi'a Islamism.

• A total reversal of the Iranian regime's behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. An end to Iran's financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.

• There is still time for a better deal that can be had.

As President Obama and Secretary Kerry dominated the airwaves with rounds of media interviews to defend the Iran deal last week, German Vice Chancellor and Economic Minister Sigmar Gabriel flew straight to Tehran for the first of what are certain to be countless meetings by P5+1 leaders to capitalize on new business opportunities in Iran.

In Europe, it seems, there is no debate to be had over the Iran deal; rather, it is a fait accompli.

But in the United States, the domestic debate is heating up, fueled by a Presidential primary campaign and increasingly justified bipartisan anxiety over the bill.

Independent of these political realities, however, the immediacy and tenacity of the White House's defense of the Iran deal (which now has its own @TheIranDeal Twitter account, no less), betrays an acute unspoken discomfort by many Democrats with the practical flaws and global security dangers that the deal presents.

Obama's Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.

Haunted by his electorally-motivated premature withdrawal from Iraq in 2011; his refusal in 2013 to confront Syria's Bashar Assad when he used chemical weapons on his own people; his betrayal by Russia's Vladimir Putin to whom he had offered a reset button, and his impotence in failing to respond to the aggressive expansionist moves of Russia, ISIS, Iran and China, the President and Democrat Party, in signing the Iran deal, seem to be trying to absolve the United States of its role at the forefront of the global fight against Islamic radicalism and other threats.

Citing the failed EU-led negotiations with Iran in 2005, which resulted in Iran's massive expansion of centrifuge production, defenders of the deal, such as Fareed Zakaria, have painted a bleak and zero-sum counterfactual argument. It is claimed that the result of Congress's opposition will be an international community that forges ahead on renewed trade relations with Iran, while leaving the United States outside the prevailing global reconciliation and supposed love-in with the Islamic Republic.

There are several serious problems with this defense, and similarly with the White House's blitzkrieg public relations campaign to fend off detractors of the Iran deal, with Secretary of State John Kerry commanding the preemptive, and often totally inaccurate, strikes against Congress. In consideration of the colossal failure represented by the North Korea nuclear precedent, let us consider the issues unique to Iran.

Foremost, opponents of the Iran deal are not universally suggesting the Iran deal be killed outright or immediately resort to "war." This is simply disingenuous. Instead, the opponents' fundamental premise is that a better deal was left on the table, and thus remains available. The very fact that the Iranian regime was at the negotiating table was indeed a sign of Iran's weakness; any timelines for the P5+1 to "close" the deal were artificial constraints that surely erased further achievable concessions.

Second, much ink has already been spilled about the technical weaknesses of the Iran deal. Namely: that Iran's vast nuclear infrastructure remains in place; that the most important restrictions expire in 10 years (a mere blip for humanity); that Iran's uncivilized domestic and regional behavior was a naughty unmentionable; and finally, that the deal undoubtedly initiated a regional nuclear arms race while supercharging the Iranian regime's finances.

Third, the gravest consequence of Obama's Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic's radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi'a Islamism.

This capitulation occurred precisely at a time when the West and the broader Middle East are facing off against the Islamic State -- a terrorist force which, when stripped of its social media allure, is ultimately a Sunni-branded spin-off of the extremist Shi'a Islamism that has ruled in Iran since 1979.

The Iranians may be convenient allies as enemies of our enemies today, but not for one second have Iran's rulers suggested their ultimate intent is anything other than the all too familiar "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" propaganda seen for the past 36 years. In what is objectively and wholly a strange deadly obsession, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been rousing crowds with calls for the destruction of two nation-states both during and after nuclear negotiations.

In spite of this public malice, defenders of the deal suggest that "the [Obama] administration is making a calculated bet that Iran will be constrained by international pressure." Why exactly then is Khamenei making clear the opposite?



President Obama's willingness to concede Iran's new-found normalized membership in the community of nations on the basis of this nuclear deal is an affront to the liberal, free, democratic principles that have stood against the forces of tyranny throughout American history.

It is also an affront the American political system and to the members of both parties who are now being cornered by the President into supporting, or not supporting, such an intrinsically dangerous and needlessly flawed bargain with an avowed enemy.

Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As a number of critics have pointed out, the Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make.

By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, President Obama has bound the United States under international law without Senate consent.

If the United States is to remain the vanguard of human liberty, President Obama must distinguish between the vain pursuit of his legacy, and the civilized world's deepest need at this consequential hour for the American President to defend comprehensively the fundamental principles that underpin the modern order. Unless his desired legacy is actually to destroy it.

As opponents of the Iran deal have noted, there is still time for a better deal that can be had.

To start, a total reversal of the Iranian regime's behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. Congress can lobby for this change, and should maintain American sanctions and applicable provisions in the U.S. Treasury Department's SWIFT terrorist tracking finance program.

Next, while Iran's regional malignancy may run deep in the regime's veins (through the many twisted arms of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), an end to Iran's financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.

Third, those who argue that Iran's human rights record was not "on the table" in Geneva have needlessly abdicated the West's moral and intellectual high ground to the forces of barbarism and hate that are now waging war across the region. Respect for international humanitarian norms should never be discarded in such negotiations.

At the end of the day, the deeper questions for Obama and the entire P5+1 are this: By whose standards were negotiations conducted? And whose worldview will rule the 21st century?

In defense of Obama's approach, the deal's supporters point out that the Iranians are a "proud, nationalistic people," which is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant, just as it was for the leadership of Germany's Third Reich.

The Iranian regime, by virtue of its radical religious nature, weak economy and political experiment with theocracy, should have borne the burden of coming to the negotiating table with the most to lose. Instead, President Obama, on behalf of the free world, is allowing this pariah state to guarantee its place among the nations, lavishly rewarded for having violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in all its about-to-be-well-funded lethality.

• Robert D. Onley is a lawyer in Ottawa, Co-Founder of the Young Diplomats of Canada and a "Global Shaper" in the World Economic Forum.
• Follow Robert D. Onley on Twitter

Report: Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites

By: Robert D. Onley



This week the United Nations Security Council passed the latest round of sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran. UN Resolution 1929 imposes severe restrictions on the Iranian regime's ability to conduct trade in supplies for their nuclear program. However almost immediately, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced the sanctions as a "used hankerchief" and threatened to eject UN weapons inspectors from Iran's nuclear sites.

Today, The Times Online reports that Saudi Arabia --another of Iran's avowed enemies-- has given Israel "clear skies" to attack Iranian nuclear sites and stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia is arguably more threatened by a nuclear Iran than even Israel, but as the world's largest supplier of oil has much more economic interest at stake than Israel. Letting Israel do the "dirty work" and draw international condemnation is therefore a favourable move by the Saudi government.

Meanwhile Israel has been repeatedly threatened with destruction by the leaders in Iran. US President Obama has not ruled out American military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, possibly conducted in coordination with Israel, but appears very hesitant to shake up the Middle East worse than his predecessor. All of this puts enormous pressure on tiny Israel to conduct the largest scale unilateral pre-emptive military strike in its history.

In the past I've written here about the prospect of an Israeli unilateral strike against Iran. The consequences of such a strike will be undeniably severe for Israel and for the world, but the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is far more troubling. The fact that the Iranian leader so flippantly dismissed the latest round of sanctions suggests that Iran's nuclear weapons program is perhaps far enough along to be unaffected; in other words, it's already too late.


How long will Israel wait for these latest sanctions to take effect? How can any nation measure the effectiveness of sanctions anyway? Iran has shown nothing but reckless disregard toward the well-founded concerns of the international community, and proved its callousness once again this week. There is no shortage of proof that the Iranian regime is racing toward nuclear weapons capability - Resolution 1929 bears that out.


The million-dollar question then is this: when will the international community (notably the United States) admit that diplomacy has failed to stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons? At what point will the world's leaders acknowledge that the only effective way to stop Iran is through targeted military strikes?


In the West it is almost taboo to suggest that it will be necessary to use to air strikes to stop Iran's nuclear program. Indeed after the Iraq War, Barack Obama's Cairo speech and his promises for "change" across the diplomatic spectrum, opening up another theatre in the Middle East seems like a Bush-era pipe dream. This sentiment conveniently ignores the fact that right now, under the leadership of President Obama, the U.S. Air Force is conducting more drone air strikes than ever before. The only thing that has "changed" is the volume of missiles raining from the skies over Afghanistan and Pakistan. 


Thus while many commentators are slow to admit that air strikes may be the only remaining option for stopping Iran's nuclear visions, the pragmatic reality is that the equipment to do so is already in the region and technologically is more precise than ever before.


More critical for Israel, Obama's love-to-hate ally, is the fact that a pre-emptive strike represents a viable option buffeted by successful precedents. Two nations in the Middle East have had their nuclear programs stopped short by Israel. One of them, Syria, is a proud ally of Iran. In 2007, Syria's covert nuclear reactor was destroyed Israeli jets, while back in 1981, Iraq's nuclear program was forcefully stopped by pin-point Israeli air strikes. As I covered in another piece, Israel is not afraid to take such aggressive action. 


While those two raids were surgical successes, Iran's hidden nuclear sites present a far greater challenge for the Israeli Air Force, if in fact the IAF were to conduct such a mission. However given that Saudi Arabia is now reportedly granting Israel clearance to use Saudi airspace specifically for a strike against Iran, it is patently clear that Israel is not the only nation that believes air strikes may be the only way to truly stop the Iranian Bomb. 


Saudi Arabia's decision is also a loud warning that the Iranian nuclear stand-off is shifting into a most dangerous phase. The world can certainly expect more war-gaming and posturing on all sides as the weeks progress.


All Israel needs is a green light from the US to fly over Iraq toward Iran, and the fireworks can begin. What happens after that day could be scarier still for Israel. Russia and China both have enormous economic interests in Iran and anyone who damages their vital energy lifelines could face more than just a verbal lashing. This is a most grave consideration, one which Israel's leaders know all too well as they prepare to make the most fateful decision in the Jewish State's contentious history.