The New Neo

I’ve read a lot about what might be behind this deal, and I’ve even written about what might be behind it (see this as well as this).

But I’m still having trouble believing it, because it is so terrible. In that latter post I quoted a piece by Caroline Glick, who explains the motives behind the Iran deal in this way:

The Biden administration justifies its pro-Iranian and anti-Israel/Sunni Arab policy by claiming it is a means to disengage the U.S. from the Middle East at a time that Washington is keen to concentrate its resources and attention on Asia and the rising threat of China…

Biden’s policies are the polar opposite of Trump’s policies both conceptually and substantively. Biden’s policies represent a reinstatement and escalation of Barack Obama’s policies for Iran and the wider Middle East. In contrast to Trump, Obama, Biden and their advisors believe that the U.S.’s Middle Eastern allies – Israel and the Sunni Arab Gulf states – maliciously worked for decades to entangle the United States in the wars of the Middle East. To disentangle America from the region and its pernicious “allies” the Obama-Biden doctrine posits the U.S. must realign itself away from its allies and weaken them, and towards Iran, which it must empower.

That’s probably as good an explanation as any, in the sense of logic. Nevertheless I still can’t wrap my mind around it, even as an explanation for behavior I think is stupendously unwise and destructive to US interests. The logic exists only as a surface logic, because even if one were to accept the “Israel and the Arab Gulf states have maliciously worked to entangle the United States” part of the reasoning, the “so instead let’s embrace a country dedicated to our destruction and the spread of Islamic terrorism around the world” part doesn’t really follow as a good alternative. The only explanation for taking that road, it seems to me, is the desire to destroy the US and the West or at least weaken it immensely, and to empower the Iranian mullahs as well as the terrorists they sponsor.

Everything I’ve read so far about this new Iran Deal – one that’s apparently set to be announced every day now – is frightening and profoundly disturbing. Here’s some of the latest:

Russia’s top state-controlled energy company is set to cash in on a $10 billion contract to build out one of Iran’s most contested nuclear sites as part of concessions granted in the soon-to-be-announced nuclear agreement that will guarantee sanctions on both countries are lifted.

Russian and Iranian documents translated for the Washington Free Beacon show that Rosatom, Russia’s leading energy company, has a $10 billion contract with Iran’s atomic energy organization to expand Tehran’s Bushehr nuclear plant. Russia and the Biden administration confirmed on Tuesday that the new nuclear agreement includes carveouts that will waive sanctions on both countries so that Russia can make good on this contract.

There’s also this:

Days after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired missiles aimed at the U.S. consulate in northern Iraq, President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly planning to remove the Iranian outfit from the list of international terrorist organizations.

The decision to drop the IRGC — Iranian regime’s military arm — from the terror list, appears to be yet another concession made by the Biden White House to restore the Obama-era nuclear deal with Tehran.

This last point seems to have been what’s delaying the deal somewhat at the moment – but once again chances are that the Biden administration will concede on this, too, or already has done so. In fact, it may not even be over then, because there may be a continuing series of escalating demands from Iran, as it sees the utterly compliant Biden group willing to give them everything they ask for in order to get them to acquiesce.

It’s as though malevolent beings representing the US have hatched this plan in order to laugh maniacally at the world and to greatly harm the United States and the West. I don’t usually write in such extreme terms but that’s the way this appears to me, and I’m reduced to a desperate and almost certainly vain hope that the real thing will be nowhere near as bad as the advance reports predict.

So what happens if an administration – and the mostly unelected and unvetted by Congress “diplomats” who are doing the negotiating of a deal with a foreign power that is our enemy – are tantamount to Benedict Arnolds squared, on a global scale? Is there any recourse? The obvious one would be Congress somehow getting in the way or even impeaching and removing that president. But that won’t happen because it would need many Democrats to cooperate, and the requisite numbers will not be doing that. There are a few who will probably object, but they almost certainly can’t meet the 60-vote threshhold to invoke cloture. And wouldn’t Biden be able to veto any bill that might be passed, which would mean there would then be a 67-vote threshold?

What’s in it for Biden and company? What constituency does a deal like this appeal to, except for the Israel- and US-hating far left? How large is that group?

However large the public support may be – and I continue to think it’s significantly less than a majority – there are too many people in positions of power in this administration (just as in the Obama administration) who appear to be fully in favor of this insanity. Are they all moles? Are they all being blackmailed or paid off? And/or do they all want to harm the West and the US that much? Despite how cynical and skeptical and suspicious I’ve become over the years, I just can’t bring myself to answer “yes” to that last question, even though I think that’s likely to be the correct answer.

It feels like the crazy Queen of Hearts is president and that deck of playing cards her courtiers, and we – the American people – are Alice trying to wake from this nightmare:

Or maybe the president is the Mad Hatter and the rest of them are attendants at the mad tea party where logic gets twisted and things spin wildly out of control:

That’s funny. What’s happening now is not.