How about the Biden administration, those Abraham Accords, Netanyahu, and Iran?
I detest the Biden administration’s unraveling of so many of the accomplishments of the Trump administration. I only hope that a lot of the positives of the last four years will survive nevertheless, or at least that people watching the Biden administration will finally perceive how pernicious the Democrats’ policies have become, before it’s too late to reverse the damage done.
…[A]s the theme of “election interference” should make clear (the UAE doesn’t have elections), and as has been substantiated by Israeli reporting, the source of the upset isn’t in Abu Dhabi but in Washington. In other words, the Biden administration is interfering in Israel’s upcoming election by strong-arming the Emiratis into publicly distancing themselves from Bibi.
Next week Israel will hold its fourth election in a little more than two years, so in effect Netanyahu has been campaigning for more than 24 months—including in August when he and MBZ signed the agreement. Should the Emiratis have shunned the deal since Netanyahu, like any Israeli prime minister, would invariably present his accomplishment to voters? What about sending an ambassador to Israel, as it did at the beginning of March? What about investing $10 billion, as MBZ told Netanyahu he would? So how does a photo op with the prime minister glad-handing the crown prince of Abu Dhabi on his home turf cross the line?
Plainly, the Obama-Biden team doesn’t care about interfering in Israeli elections or else Barack Obama’s State Department wouldn’t have funneled money to an NGO that campaigned against Netanyahu in 2015…
But there’s a bigger play here than interfering in Israeli politics by denying Bibi a preelection photo op with Israel’s peace partners in the Gulf. Their larger goal is to weaken or dismantle the Abraham Accords, which by assembling a treaty structure that binds Israel together with the Gulf states structurally interferes with the administration’s stated goal of realigning the United States with Iran—and therefore against Israel and the Gulf—by reentering Obama’s nuclear deal…
…For the Middle East hands in the Biden administration, what matters most is completing the project many of these Obama alumni helped initiate while serving under Biden’s former boss—realignment with Iran.
Trump didn’t just withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which undergirded Obama’s realignment strategy, he also designed a strategic architecture to counter Iranian influence—the Abraham Accords.
It gets a bit tiresome to keep saying it, but this was all very very predictable in any Biden administration. They still consider the Iran deal of the Obama years their crowning glory, and they can’t wait to go right back to it or something similar – or even worse. If many Americans didn’t realize that, then they haven’t been paying attention.
[NOTE: I notice that I keep forgetting to click on the “Biden” category when I do many of these posts about policies of the present administration. I think that’s because I don’t think he’s completely in charge, although I do think that in most cases Biden supports the program with whatever powers he still retains. He certainly appeared to support them during the Obama years, when he was supposedly in full posession of his faculties.]
As I commented a while back on a related post by our gracious host, the current administration is playing a very naïve game in a bad neighborhood. An emboldened Iran may overplay its hand or – worse yet -finally cross over whatever red line Israel has set for taking unilateral action. And, knowing a number of Israelis myself, I am certain they will. When (not if) that happens, what the Biden/Harris administration will do is anyone’s guess. If Trump was in office, the Israelis may have trusted him with some warning. They won’t do that for this crowd.
So any bets on when the ME gets real Messy? I mean more than it is now Messy.
I mean shooting war Messy? It will happen, make no mistake.
We are in the hands of Evil: Biden, Harris and the Democratic swarm.
Yeah, let’s send 200 million vaccine doses to other countries. At our cost.
Let’s do a deal with Iran.
Let the illegals pour in and live off us in hotels at an annual cost of $150,000 per illegal family.
And those unaccompanied minors? Why, let’s let them be sex slaves here in the USA.
SHIREHOME –
I’m not a betting man. I think it might start with a minimum-messy scenario: some type of low-level skirmish type activity by Iran and / or its proxies as a means to place stress on Israel and the US. People will die, just not Americans or Israelis. Iran will consolidate its gains and minimize its losses while continuing the cat & mouse games with its nuclear program. I think a “fait accompli” public unveiling of a nuclear weapon by the Iranians is still unlikely.
Binyamin Netanyahu has thus far escaped punishment.
This state of affairs must not be allowed to continue.
(The same can be said for the State of Israel.)
Obama and Co. were able to orchestrate UN Resolution 2334 successfully; however, they failed to achieve their master goal: to force Israel to withdraw to the May 1967 cease-fire lines (in the name of “justice”, “fairness” and “peace”, of course) and to thus set the stage for the destruction of the Zionist Entity—in the name of, you guessed it, “justice”, “fairness” and “peace”….
But that was then. This is now: Just as the Democrats decided they would not fail in November 2020 (as they failed in November 2016), they will make sure not to fail in this matter either.
https://lidblog.com/obama-anti-israel-resolution/
The writing is on the wall.
(In case anyone is wondering how they’ll pull it off, well…things might not work exactly the way they want them to, but one can bet one’s last bitcoin that “Biden” will try to place all the onus on Netanyahu (if he gets reelected—but even if he doesn’t) and on the State of Israel, generally.
…and of course blame Trump—since it would be too good an opportunity to pass up…
Besides, they are being encouraged and emboldened by all the usual suspects (not that they really need it, but still…):
https://lidblog.com/jstreet-biden-reverse-trump-2/ )
I cannot understand why the Obama admin and now Biden need these other countries to “lose” so Iran can “win”. Why do we need to cozy up to Iran? We don’t need their oil (unless Obama had burisima stocks too?). I am struggling to guess the endgame here. If you are geopolitically wise to this i’d love to hear your thoughts.
Ideology.
The ideology of justice.
The ideology of Fundamental Transformation.
The ideology of destruction.
It’s been a long time since I thought much about Obama’s ME policy, but this was my general theory:
Almost every decision Obama ever made could be predicted by the answer of, “Which choice would be better for Sunni Islamists?” Slobbering all over Iran was a conspicuous exception. Unless, of course, you consider the logical consequences of an emboldened Iran. They want to be a regional bully but if they do something out-of-line that goads Israel and its reluctant allies (who are more concerned about Iran than Israel at this point) into action, the best Iran will likely manage is to make a giant mess.
And what has happened so far when there’s chaos in the region? It tends to open up a vacuum for Sunni Islamists to seep into. Maybe backing Iran was simply Obama’s ultimate idea to destabilize the ME.
Ideology.
Whereby the Little Satan will be transformed, just as will be the Big Satan.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mass-federalization-how-washington-bailing-out-failed-states-decapitating-competitive
Justice. Fairness. Peace. Equity (call it what you want, you get the idea…)
And the arc of history.
But what “goodly creature” do we have here?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/phillips-breaks-dem-leadership-election
(And why, though it really shouldn’t be, is it so unexpected…)
I rarely use his real name, but suggest Biden* administration
Predicted before inauguration Israel was going to get the raw end of any deal. Leftists always go antisemitic, it’s in their DNA
Funsize:
I agree that it’s not easy to understand why Obama and Company wanted to ally with Iran, but I think it’s a combination of many factors.
The first is that, like all good leftists these days, Obama hates Israel and Netanyahu also. Iran hates Israel. Therefore, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least, potentially. The second is that leftists have a long history of allying with the mullahs for strategic reasons, strange though that may seem, and it began before the revolution. At the time, the left thought it would prevail over the mullahs in forming the succeeding government, and although that didn’t work out for them (au contraire; many were purged), that was fifty years ago and quite a while ago the left seemed to like the mullahs again (perhaps because of the aforementioned hatred of the mullahs for Israel).
Then there’s the fact the George Bush, Obama’s predecessor, was fairly tight with the Saudis. So still another reason to try to empower Iran was to stick it to the Bushes. Now, of course, there’s a similar motive to stick it to Donald Trump, Obama’s successor. Obama will get the last laugh. Biden has the same motives, if he’s even part of this.
The next motive is one I think is actually quite immortant to them, and it’s ego. George Bush said that Iran was part of the axis of evil. I believe that Obama, even before becoming president – when he’d make remarks about how he, unlike the previous administration, was going to try to talk with Iran – thought that he could work miracles there and be lauded to the skies for it if he signed some sort of peace treaty. The cost of that treaty in terms of what we would give up and what Iran would get, whether the treaty was real or a head fake by Iran, whether the American people wanted it or not – none of that was a consideration so much as how everyone (particularly in Europe, where they were salivating to do business again with Iran) would think he was the Lightbringer. And so he moved mountains to make it happen, and then he had to live through seeing it all undone by Trump. So now it’s both revenge on Trump but an attempt to prove he was right after all. The same is true for everyone onboard in the Biden administration. It’s a Restoration.
I have a somewhat different take on why the left hates Israel and apparently favors Iran. I think that the global elite are, in the main and certainly including Obama… transnationalists.
I suspect they see a nuclear Iran as the means to facilitate the destruction of both Israel and Iran. Nuking Tel Aviv would effectively end Israel. Israel’s military would in retaliation turn Iran into a glass parking lot. Problem solved as far as nationalism in the Middle East is concerned. Turkey aside, Sunni nations are basically tribal and pose no nationalistic threat because the ‘Ummah’ supercedes any societal nationalism. But even in Turkey, Islam reins supreme over nationalistic feelings.
Israel and Iran are both fiercely nationalist and transnationalism posits that nationalism is the core factor in precipitating wars. Transnationalism’s corrective to this is a borderless world in which a global elite ‘benevolently’ rule over a ‘disciplined’ mankind. The removal of Israel, Iran and the United States would leave only China as a preminent nationalistic society with a military capable of defending its national borders.
As a goal, not fully complete but decidedly closer to completion.
Neo,
I still read your posts nearly every day. I appreciate your perceptive and usually agree with it.
To me it seems pretty clear that the Democratic party does not have our (as in any but their own) interests at heart. That they are going to push as many things through as fast as possible for two reasons
1) Because its possible their majority will be short lived. Its taken all of a month to dismantle huge chunks of Trumps successes
2) I think that when things go south in the next year. One of their first moves will be to dump Biden and blame most of it on him. So not only will they then get away scot free. But President Harris ( as Biden has called her repeatedly) will then be given a pass by the media.
I see only two ways to deal with this problem. One is violence which I am against. And the other is to simply let this abomination run its course. Which of course eventually leads to ruin,oppression and then probably violence anyway. With the amount of official lying and corruption going on. I have no idea what to do other than wait this disaster out.
“If many Americans didn’t realize that, then they haven’t been paying attention.”
or, as a minor variation perhaps,
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
— H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major
Mythx: “Its taken all of a month (for the Biden* Admin) to dismantle huge chunks of Trumps successes”
I’m not positive of the dates but the tide has switched a few times so far.
As I recall, Dems had the WH and both houses of Congress under Bill Clinton (not uncommon ever since the Great Depression) but not for long (Newt) and Dems weren’t yet demonic. So it wasn’t such a big deal.
W Bush and Repubs had the WH and both houses briefly until the Dem media promoted the “culture of corruption”. GOPe used their fleeting power to stuff the channel with wasteful spending, thus PorkBusters was born. A missed chance.
Next, Obama’s Dems had the WH and both houses of Congress. They didn’t solve much of anything but maybe they used that time to ram ObamaCare through? They actually cemented a lot of stuff and stuffed the ranks of gov’t employees with Dem partisans.
PDJT and Repubs had the WH and both houses but House and Senate GOPe broke every promise they’d made and decided the main enemy was not Iran, not Russia, not China, not the Dem Party … no, the MAIN enemy was the conservative base of their own party. What pinheads.
There may be lessons to be drawn.
On the one hand, the American voting public has made decisions. You can argue (I would, actually) that they can see there are problems, important problems, which need to be solved. And the voters have done what they could to make decisive moves to cause Change.
But so far, they’re rather schizo. OTOH, you can’t vote for Repubs and get Repub policies so their confusion is understandable. Dems promise moderation but deliver extremism, so that’s the other side of the coin.
But my point is that there could be method in the madness. It’s not just aimless thrashing, alternately giving each party a mandate.
“On the one hand, the American voting public has made decisions.”
Yes, a majority made the decision to reelect Trump. The democrats made the decision to cancel the majority of American’s votes. And a corrupt government supported that assault upon the Constitution they swore an oath to uphold.
“…Obama hates Israel and Netanyahu also. Iran hates Israel…”
Ah, but whom/what else does Obama hate?
And whom/what else does Iran?
(Is this what’s known as a four-fer?)
“…Obama hates Israel and Netanyahu also. Iran hates Israel…”
Ah, but which other country does Obama hate?
And which other does Iran?
(Is this what’s known as a four-fer?)
= = = = = =
“…the destruction of Israel and Iran…”
A bit of a stretch, that. More than a bit of a stretch.
Facilitating Iran is a way of “thinking outside the box”, of helping one’s enemies because it’s an idea “so crazy it could actually work!”
Or…facilitating Israel is an ingenious way of “leveraging” Israel to stop being so “intransigent” and “make peace” with the Palestinians.
And if Israel doesn’t take the hint (i.e., the “encouragement”); if Israel decides it WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES “make peace” with the Palestinians, hey, well “we” tried—“we” did our very best to help Israel—it’s not “our” fault if Israel is suicidal.
“We” had her best interests at heart.
Really. “We” care more about Israel than the Israelis.
(Just like “we” care about America…and have its best interests at heart.
Really….)
I’ve found this decade old post by Daniel Greenfield instructive as to the relationship between radical Islam and the Left. Remembering that our current Left was, in its formative years, taught and run by the USSR and their cutout CPUSA.
http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2011/05/how-left-went-wrong-on-islam.html
It is difficult to figure out why Obama-Biden decided to cast their lot with Iran rather than make common cause with Israel, Saudi Arabia and others to bottle it up. Since Persia was a great empire dating back to ancient Greece & Rome, Obama and Rhodes may well have believed that they were applying some kind of big-picture, world-historical viewpoint on this, backing the stronger horse that might ultimately be unstoppable, anyway. In the shorter term, though, letting up on Iran and giving it resources to cause more trouble seems to have produced no benefit. Far better to keep the pressure on and hopefully weaken the theocratic rulers.
https://dailytorch.com/2021/03/cartoon-name-that-tune/
Correction:
“…facilitating Israel…” should be “…facilitating Iran…”
“It is difficult to figure out why…”
Actually, it’s not.
In a nutshell: post-colonialist theory, and theories of Western oppression of indigenous peoples.
All one has to do is cast Israel as the bastion of Western colonialism and mass perpetrator of oppression of indigenous peoples, and….voila!
(P.S. It doesn’t matter how accurate or inaccurate such a “casting” might be, as long as one feels it to be true…. Besides, ignoring or denying any evidence to the contrary is generally encouraged or even demanded in “cases” such as this.)