Checkmate

By Matt Ward

A nuclear agreement with Iran has finally been signed and Barack Obama and his administration are heralding it as a triumph. Barack Obama is clearly looking to secure his legacy through this nuclear deal. With an eye towards how history will view him, Obama has been anxious to get this deal, in fact any deal, completed before his term comes to an end. He was desperate to be the President who finally tamed the ancient Persians, those masters of chess, desperate to bring them to heel through the statutes and limitations of an internationally recognized and binding nuclear agreement.

Other seasoned commentators see these aspirations as gullible and naive, that Obama has displayed a breath-taking hubris in these negotiations and in its final agreement. Despite what Obama thinks to the contrary, President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have more than met their match in the Iranians. Obama and Kerry have met their nemesis in Iran, though they are so utterly clueless they don’t seem to even realize it yet.

Or worse, they do realize but simply do not care.

Sun Tzu, author of the ancient and revered Art of War, would be proud of what the Iranians have achieved in these talks. Never in the history of international relations has a weakened, inferior power gained so much from a more significant, powerful enemy at such limited personal cost to themselves. Iran have gained every single desired outcome and have conceded on not one major point. Not a single one. Iran has not made any concessions in this deal at all.

The inspection clauses are worse than worthless giving Iran nearly a one month notice before they have to give inspectors access to any suspect sites. The deal actually helps them deliberately deceive the West. This means any intelligence indicating potential breaches is completely useless. This deal ensures that there can be no “smoking gun.”

It is a complete capitulation to Iran.

What fool makes an agreement with a regime that is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world and in the final agreement acquiesce and allows them the continued ability to develop nuclear weapons? What fool does this when the regime in question regularly and consistently, even as the negotiations are drawing to a conclusion, calls for your own death publically and very unashamedly?

When sanctions are lifted Iran will do what they always have done, they will abandon this deal under the false pretence that America or the international community have not kept up their side of the bargain in some way, just as they have done in the recent past.

When this happens the West will be in an even weaker position than they are now as Iran will have received billions of dollars in sanctions relief meaning there will be no crippling financial imperative for them to sit at a negotiating table a fresh. There is also no certainty at all that Russia or China would allow for anymore sanctions on Iran in the future.

The opportunity to force Iran’s hand has now gone and there will be real consequences for it. The West should be under no illusions about Iran’s imperial intentions in the Middle East. Iran has a deep sense of its own Persian history and it fully intends, now that these negotiations are completed, to utterly dominate the entire region.

The region is in outright chaos especially with the rise of ISIS and the destruction of traditional power bases and borders this has brought with it. It is this huge power vacuum that Iran intends to fill. It is now certain that the acquisition of nuclear weapons in ten years at the very latest, (although in reality probably much sooner), will only embolden that ambition.

Iran still fully intends to acquire nuclear threshold status as soon as they possibly can. What else do Obama and Kerry think the Ayatollah meant just last week when he said that soon Iran would present an achievement to the world soon that would be a “fait accompli?”

If this nuclear agreement does gets through Congress or is not derailed by hardliners in Iran, then it will have irrevocably changed the Middle East landscape forever. The Middle East is already broken, now it is near total collapse. This deal will create seismic changes in the power structures of the region. Iran is now in total ascendancy. Traditional American allies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan are appalled. Israel has been thrown under a bus, literally cast aside.

How insulting and appalling for the tiny Jewish State that only now after the deal has been signed do Obama and Kerry talk of strengthening and deepening Israeli-US security cooperation, to “safeguard Israel.” It would have been better to consider Israel’s defensive needs before the conclusion of these talks, not after.

Better still to have taken proactive measures to prevent Iran from ever building or developing nuclear weapons again. Talk is cheap and these statements are what they are, merely hollow, meaningless words. Obama and Kerry have no intention whatsoever of defending Israel, and Israel know it.

This agreement will now certainly force Israel’s hand. Israel sees Iran and its nuclear weapons program as an existential threat to the survival of their Jewish State. They see Iran as a threat to the Jewish race itself. They are now obliged to defend themselves, and they will. When this happens the international outrage will be appalling and American support for Israel will evaporate.

The legacy Obama so desperately seeks will not be found in this accord.  People will not look back at Barack Obama and consider him to be the great statesman of our time. Obama’s legacy will be of a president that allowed and created the necessary conditions for a full-blown nuclear arms race in the Middle East, as the Saudis will now purchase nuclear weapons from Pakistan, ready-made and off the shelf.

President Obama has now ensured both the Sunni’s and the Shia’s, if left unchecked, will have the capability to utterly annihilating each other, and begin the next world war in the process. Obama, in this agreement has completely destroyed the traditional balance of power in the Middle East.

More important than how posterity will judge this administration though is how God will judge it. I have said many times that God’s foreign policy is the same today as it was three thousand years ago,

“I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3).

We should all be under no illusions about what this agreement means. Obama and his administration and therefore the country that he leads have now cursed the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Seventy five years ago Neville Chamberlain declared that we had “…peace for our time.” How wrong he was. Winston Churchill perhaps best summed up the position we find ourselves in today in his cutting response to Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

I think Churchill may be right again.

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