With the Republicans winning control of the Senate last week, The Scrapbook is hopeful that the country might be protected from the Obama administration’s worst foreign policy instincts, especially regarding Iran. At the end of this month, the interim agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program expires, and many are concerned that the White House is likely to settle for a very bad permanent agreement. After all, Obama aides have made it clear that an Iran deal is Obama’s foreign policy priority—as central to his legacy, they say, as the Affordable Care Act.
The race is on, then. The new Senate won’t be sworn in until January, and already the White House is looking at ways to get around Congress in order to ink an agreement with the mullahs. That the administration is intending to go around the representatives of the American public is in keeping with the primary colors of its Iran policy—secrecy and subterfuge. Most recently, for instance, an unnamed Obama official insulted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while another boasted of having deterred Israel from striking Iranian nuclear facilities. “Now,” the anonymous Obama toadie bragged, “it’s too late.”
It’s hardly surprising that a White House that launches anonymous attacks on allies reaches out secretly to adversaries. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, Obama sent a letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in mid-October about their shared interest in stopping the Islamic State. However, Obama is reported to have written, U.S. assistance in battling IS depends on Iran signing a nuclear deal.
This contradicts the administration’s longstanding denials that they are making any links between Iran’s nuclear file and other issues. The White House says nuclear talks are just about that one issue, and not, for instance, Iranian “interests” around the region, from Beirut to Baghdad, Damascus to Yemen. The evidence points rather to the fact that the White House is making a more comprehensive accommodation with the Islamic Republic.
It’s not simply about the nukes, but a partnership between the Obama White House and the clerical regime, a new relationship that will entertain all sorts of issues, including, for example, the Islamic State, while excluding traditional regional allies. After all, insulting someone behind his back is not how one acts toward a friend, and sending a letter to promise gestures of goodwill is not how one treats an adversary. No, even if they won’t own it publicly, the Obama White House has turned American Middle East policy upside down. The question is whether the new Senate will be able to right it again, in time.
