How obsequious is the The New York Times when it comes to Barack Obama’s new deal with Iran? The Times described the angry responses from erstwhile foes Israel and Saudi Arabia as “expected theater of these negotiations.”
“Expected theater” from two countries whose very existence is threatened by the Iranian nuclear threat?
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told Jeffrey Goldberg just before the deal went through, “There’s no confidence in the Obama administration doing the right thing with Iran. We’re really concerned — Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Middle East countries — about this.”
You read that right–the Saudi prince was linking arms with Israel over the Iranian nuclear threat.
Alwaleed continued:
Why are they offering relief? Keep the pressure on. Sanctions are what brought about the negotiations to begin with! Why not keep the pressure up? …Obama is in so much of a rush to have a deal with Iran. He wants anything. He’s so wounded. It’s very scary. Look, the 2014 elections are going to begin. Within two months they’re going to start campaigning. Thirty-nine members of his own party in the House have already moved away from him on Obamacare. That’s scary for him …This has been going on for 30 years plus, since the Iranian revolution in 1979. And his people bragged about the first call between President Obama and President Rouhani. But what does a call mean? It’s nothing.”
Goldberg asked how the Arab states would feel about an Israeli strike on Iran. Alwaleed responded, “Publicly, they would be against it,” he said. “Privately, they would love it.”
The Arab Street? Alwaleed answered:
The Sunnis will love it. The Sunni Muslim is very much anti-Shiite, and very much anti-, anti-, anti-Iran …The threat is from Persia, not from Israel. This was a great empire ruling the whole neighborhood. I’ll tell you something — they are in Bahrain, they are in Iraq, they are in Syria, they are with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, which is Sunni, in Gaza. They are intruding into these areas. King Abdullah of Jordan had a good statement on this — he said that a Shiite crescent begins from Iran, through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and goes down to Palestine, to Hamas.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu publicly condemned the deal, saying:
What was concluded in Geneva last night is not a historic agreement; it’s a historic mistake. It’s not made the world a safer place. Like the agreement with North Korea in 2005, this agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place. For years the international community has demanded that Iran cease all uranium enrichment. Now, for the first time, the international community has formally consented that Iran continue its enrichment of uranium.
But the Times still had to admit that the deal “requires Iran to make only a modest down payment on the central problem,” “does not roll back the vast majority of the advances Iran has made in the past five years,” and constitutes “a major source of friction between the White House and two allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, which have made no secret of their belief that they are being sold down the river.” And the Times also admitted the most dangerous concept, that the “rollback” by Barack Obama & Co. are chortling about, “would slow Iran’s dash time by only a month to a few months.”
The writer, David Sanger, tried to mitigate the horrific implications of the deal, whining, “In reality, no one imagines the Iranians will give up everything. The question is, how much is enough?”
The answer, for those who believe in peace: Everything.
But don’t expect the New York Times to choose peace over Obama any time soon.
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