David Ignatius, "Backstage brawl over a deal": An Agreement to Agree Is Unenforceable

Obama foreign affairs henchman David Ignatius is obviously developing a case of cold feet.

Having recently promoted a deal with Supreme Leader Khamenei that purportedly constrains Iran's nuclear weapons development program (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/david-ignatius-will-history-repeat-in.html), this Obama cheerleader now brings to our attention several caveats. In "Backstage brawl over a deal" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-backstage-brawl-over-a-nuclear-deal-with-iran/2013/11/21/82fa68da-52f3-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html?hpid=z3), Ignatius writes:

"If there’s a fog of war, there can also be a fog of peace — in which even the negotiators aren’t sure of the consequences of what they’ve done. Some of that murkiness surrounds the bargaining in Geneva to limit Iran’s nuclear program. There’s sharp disagreement among observers about the potential risks and benefits of this seeming breakthrough between Iran and the West after 34 years of hostility.

. . . .

Another danger looming in the fog of peace is that the agreement being negotiated with Iran is meant to be an interim, first-step pact. Yet diplomatic history is full of interim agreements that never get into second gear. Indeed, they often set the stage for a bloody new round of confrontation as each side jockeys for leverage in the final negotiation. I hope the United States and Iranian negotiators have a clear road map already set for the endgame; otherwise they may quickly lose their way."

Yup, Constitutional lawyer Obama is negotiating with Khamenei an agreement to agree. Unfortunately, it never occurred to the president that in law it is a well-settled principle that a so-called agreement to agree is void and unenforceable for reasons of uncertainty.

As Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit recently declared (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/ari-shavit-how-bush-let-iran-go-nuclear.html):

"If such an agreement were signed, it would represent an Iranian victory — and an American defeat. The Iranians would be able to maintain their nuclear program and continue to enrich uranium, while the Americans and their allies would loosen the economic siege on Iran and allow Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the economic oxygen needed to sustain his autocratic regime.

Yes, Iran’s race to the bomb would be slowed down — but an accord would guarantee that it would eventually cross the finish line. The Geneva mind-set resembles a Munich mind-set: It would create the illusion of peace-in-our-time while paving the way to a nuclear-Iran-in-our-time."

Unlike American Secretary of State John Kerry, Shavit is no naif.

Ignatius's conclusion:

"Don’t get me wrong: An agreement with Iran is potentially Obama’s greatest success. But it’s worth thinking unconventionally about potential risks, even as we savor the prospect of a diplomatic triumph."

Ah yes, the risks of signing a deal with Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei, who hangs homosexuals, stones to death women, murders Baha'is, oppresses Kurds, tyrannizes Sunnis and Christians, shuts down newspapers, and imprisons opposition politicians.

In fact, such a deal with Khamenei is to American overseas credibility what the Affordable Care Act is to American health care. Both are disasters in the making, whose ultimate consequences have yet to be seen.

Ari Shavit, "How Bush Let Iran Go Nuclear": A Must Read for Thomas Friedman

Perhaps you recall that in his Sunday New York Times op-ed entitled "Something for Barack and Bibi to Talk About" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/opinion/sunday/friedman-something-for-barack-and-bibi-to-talk-about.html?_r=0), would-be Middle East expert Thomas Friedman wrote:

"I can think of no better time for a good book about Israel — the real Israel, not the fantasy, do-no-wrong Israel peddled by its most besotted supporters or the do-no-right colonial monster portrayed by its most savage critics. Ari Shavit, the popular Haaretz columnist, has come out with just such a book this week, entitled 'My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.'

Shavit is one of a handful of experts whom I’ve relied upon to understand Israel ever since I reported there in the 1980s. What do all my Israeli analytical sources have in common? They all share a way of thinking about Israel — which is expressed with deep insight, compassion and originality in Shavit’s must-read book — that to understand Israel today requires keeping several truths in tension in your head at the same time."

Hmm. Friedman, who was enlisted by Obama to market the president's bogus agreement with Khamenei to curtail Iran's nuclear weapons development program (see his anti-Semitic diatribes: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/thomas-friedman-lets-make-deal-anti.html and http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/thomas-friedman-what-about-us-is-thomas.html), relies upon Shavit for his understanding of Israel.

Well, today, in a guest New York Times op-ed entitled "How Bush Let Iran Go Nuclear" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/opinion/how-bush-let-iran-go-nuclear.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0), Haaretz columnist Shavit reveals several unpleasant truths. Explaining that Bush, not Obama, was primarily responsible for the current crisis involving Iran, Shavit writes:

"AMERICAN and Iranian negotiators yesterday began a second round of talks in Geneva, seeking a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

If such an agreement were signed, it would represent an Iranian victory — and an American defeat. The Iranians would be able to maintain their nuclear program and continue to enrich uranium, while the Americans and their allies would loosen the economic siege on Iran and allow Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the economic oxygen needed to sustain his autocratic regime.

Yes, Iran’s race to the bomb would be slowed down — but an accord would guarantee that it would eventually cross the finish line. The Geneva mind-set resembles a Munich mind-set: It would create the illusion of peace-in-our-time while paving the way to a nuclear-Iran-in-our-time."

Shavit's conclusion:

"The Geneva agreement being negotiated is an illusion. The so-called moderate president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is an illusion, too. So is the hope that Iran’s supreme leader can be appeased. Because America missed the opportunity for assertive diplomacy, all the options now left on the table are dire ones.

Rather than pursuing a dangerous interim agreement, the West must insist that all the centrifuges in Iran stop spinning while a final agreement is negotiated. President Obama was right to demand a settlement freeze in the West Bank in 2009. Now he must demand a total centrifuge freeze in Iran."

Shavit, Friedman's Middle East mentor, is correct. Friedman is wrong.

Today, in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "U.S. optimistic about a nuclear deal with Iran" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/11/20/u-s-optimistic-about-a-nuclear-deal-with-iran/?hpid=z3), David Ignatius, Obama's second-string (after Friedman) foreign affairs cheerleader columnist, writes of Obama's pact with Khamenei:

"The agreement, if it can be pinned down, would be a significant diplomatic achievement for President Obama. From his first year in office, he made engaging Iran a priority; he signaled in secret letters to Tehran his interest in better relations and also assembled an international coalition for sanctions that would push Iran to limit its nuclear program.

. . . .

Details of the package remain tightly held, but one U.S. official said it would probably include a formula that has been stated often publicly by Obama, that the U.S. 'respects Iran’s right to access a civilian nuclear program.' The specific nature of that civilian program, and the level of uranium enrichment that could be conducted in the future, would be negotiated over the next six months as part of a final, comprehensive deal."

"A significant diplomatic achievement for President Obama"? yeah, right.

The level of future uranium enrichment by Iran "would be negotiated over the next six months as part of a final, comprehensive deal"? Good luck.

As stated by Shavit, this is a "Munich mind-set," and it was clear all along that this was Obama's plan.

God help us.

Thomas Friedman, "Something for Barack and Bibi to Talk About": A Total Absence of Objectivity

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Something for Barack and Bibi to Talk About" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/opinion/sunday/friedman-something-for-barack-and-bibi-to-talk-about.html?_r=0), would-be Middle East expert Thomas Friedman provides the basis for his understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Friedman writes:

"I can think of no better time for a good book about Israel — the real Israel, not the fantasy, do-no-wrong Israel peddled by its most besotted supporters or the do-no-right colonial monster portrayed by its most savage critics. Ari Shavit, the popular Haaretz columnist, has come out with just such a book this week, entitled 'My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.'

Shavit is one of a handful of experts whom I’ve relied upon to understand Israel ever since I reported there in the 1980s. What do all my Israeli analytical sources have in common? They all share a way of thinking about Israel — which is expressed with deep insight, compassion and originality in Shavit’s must-read book — that to understand Israel today requires keeping several truths in tension in your head at the same time.

. . . .

In a brutally honest chapter entitled 'Lydda, 1948,' Shavit reconstructs the story of how the population of this Palestinian Arab town, in the center of what was to become Israel, was expelled on July 13th in the 1948 war.

'By noon, a mass evacuation is under way,' writes Shavit. 'By evening, tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs leave Lydda in a long column, marching south past the Ben Shemen youth village and disappearing into the East. Zionism obliterates the city of Lydda. Lydda is our black box. In it lies the dark secret of Zionism. ... If Zionism was to be, Lydda could not be.'"

Of course, Friedman doesn't bother to mention how, during the 1948 war, the Jews were expelled from the Old City of Jerusalem and all but one of its synagogues were destroyed.

More to the point, Friedman doesn't bother telling his readers about the battle of Lydda in 1948 and ignores a shockingly different account of what happened there, written by Alex Safian (http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=122&x_article=2572). Contradicting Shavit's account, Safian observes that pursuant to the initial surrender agreement, the inhabitants of Lydda were told by the Israeli army that they could remain in their town; however, when a Jordanian patrol entered the city, they again attacked the Israeli troops. Safian writes:

"Despite the surrender agreement, and the promise to turn over arms, the Israelis, now numbering only 500 men, had to once again take the town in another desperate battle.

Fighting house-to-house to root out snipers, and this time giving no quarter, within an hour much of the town was once again under control, and an estimated 200 Arabs were dead.

But the Dahmash Mosque, was still fighting, held by an estimated 70 fighters, and with an unknown number of others inside. Rather than launch a costly frontal assault, Lt. Col. Kelman decided to breach the mosque's walls with an anti-tank weapon, known as a PIAT, and then have a platoon rush the building.

After the PIAT was fired, the men that stormed the building found that the defenders were dead, killed by the effects of the armor piercing projectile in the confined space of the mosque. (Kurzman, p. 515-516)

The second battle to take Lydda was over, but now facing the Israelis was the difficult question of what to do with the inhabitants. The town leaders, knowing that they had broken their word to surrender and disarm, and knowing in particular that the five Israeli soldiers outside the mosque had been massacred and their bodies mutilated, feared that the Israelis would now return the favor.

It's hardly surprising that the Israelis were in no mood to give the residents another chance to break their promise to live in peace. But, of course, the Israelis also didn't execute or 'massacre' them. Instead, the residents were ordered to evacuate the city and move towards the Jordanian lines and Ramallah."

. . . .

[I]f you know the facts – that the town surrendered, went back on its word, massacred and mutilated Israeli soldiers, and then despite all this the residents were allowed to leave unharmed – the picture looks very different.

You want to learn more about Israel and the Middle East? Start by ignoring Friedman.