Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Everything Is Awesome, Mideast Edition

Everything Is Awesome, Mideast Edition - WSJ
Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, has been offering a reassuring view of the Iranian nuclear deal in the face of some Arab skepticism.
“If you can diplomatically and peacefully resolve the nuclear issue in a way that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he told reporters last week, “we believe that will lead to a much more stable region.”
Mr. Rhodes also contends that with a deal “there will be no need to see [a] regional arms race.”
So what’s more frightening: That Mr. Rhodes believes what he’s saying? Or that he does not?

Just for Mr. Rhodes’s benefit, here’s a refresher course on stability and the arms race in the Middle East since April 2, 2015, the day Mr. Obama announced his framework nuclear agreement with Iran.

April 2: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif immediately accuses the U.S. of “spin” and contradicts Mr. Obama’s key claims regarding the terms of the deal.
April 12: A Swedish think tank reports that Saudi Arabia registered the biggest increase in defense spending in the world.
April 13: Moscow says it will deliver the S-300 air-defense system to Tehran. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei later boasts that the U.S. “can’t do a damn thing” militarily against Iran.
Read on. Long, sad and frightening list
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"I recount these events not just to illustrate the distance between Ben Rhodes’s concept of reality and reality itself. It’s also a question of speed.
The Middle East, along with our position in it, is unraveling at an astonishing pace. 
Reckless drivers often don’t notice how fast they’re going until they’re about to crash.
We are near the point where there will be no walking back the mistakes we have made.
No walking away from them, either.
It takes a special innocence to imagine that nothing in life is irreversible, that everything can be put right, that fanaticism yields to reason and facts yield to wishes, and that the arc of Mideast history bends toward justice."

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