First some history about red lines: 10 years after Obama's embarrassing 'red line' retreat | Responsible Statecraft "Unfortunately, Obama learned his lesson from the Syria episode, and the lesson he learned was that he would never again seek Congress’s approval for military action or involvement anywhere else" More...
"More than his support for Israel, more than displaying empathy for the Iranian people, he had to stand by his word."
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| Remember Obama's red lines? |
"What is it about Switzerland? Three Presidents have tried their luck at dealing with blatant insanity. Obama played his cards in Lausanne in 2015 while Biden bet on Vienna five years later. Geneva’s turn had come. The President’s golf pal Witkoff went through the motions. Last night Trump gave thumbs up. The Mullah team had its final chance. At that moment in Tehran all hell broke loose.
"Of all murky lunacies, redoing nuclear talks with born liars and lunatics is the most comic, the most idiotic, the most perilous. “The president wants diplomatic solutions. He prefers them greatly.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to mask Trump’s serial ultimatums tagged with frantic appeals for Tehran to negotiate. He’d risked sailing close to the wind, given Obama’s “worst deal ever made,” that crude denouncement now putting the President’s political life at risk. The Special Envoy was having a third stab at a nuclear deal. The Mullahs would have been relishing one cop-out after another. And they slipped a fourth round of playing postman’s bluff onto the rumor mill.
"Never mind the MAGA movement. A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs conducted in February 19-23 found that both the left and right view Iran’s nuclear program as a threat. At the same time they lack trust in the President’s judgment. As for the isolationist crowd, a military escapade in the Middle East scares the hell out of them. Zionists getting America to fight their wars are not the flavor of the day. Bait clicks for populist Tucker Carlson and professor John Mearsheimer were as likely as the risk of Iran’s ballistic missiles to de-escalate.
"Many in the MAGA movement look askew at the President’s involvement in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Gaza as a betrayal of his vow to put “America first.” It would all have blown up in his face had Trump not bombed the terrors of Tehran to smithereens but cut a deal which froze rather than dismantled their nuclear program, declaring it better than Obama’s excuse for a deal.
"For sure, the motives of the 44th and 47th Presidents were poles apart. A signature legacy motivated the former to bargain with the devil. And he meant to empower Iran’s theocracy, not bring it down. Indeed Obama was about to turn the old order upside down. Iran, hitherto America’s number one foe, was going to be, in the world’s number one hotspot, America’s number one ally. A detente brewed between the world’s powerhouse and the world’s sour pickle jar." . . . More...
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