OK, it’s happened, Iran says it can quickly build an atomic bomb if it wants, and thank you oh, so much ex-President Barack Obama for facilitating this achievement with a progressively inane deal throwing sanctions out the window while autocratically skipping a constitutionally required treaty process.
Thank you, too, President Joe Biden, for trying to make us overly dependent on Iranian oil as we stifle the development of our own resources in part by telling climate-changing oil companies they have no future because here come windmills and solar panels. An obvious problem is that renewables aren’t ready yet and will never do the job of fossil fuels by themselves unless we go agrarian in an impoverished, post-industrial future.
Of course, Iranian oil produces as much CO2 as American oil and, if Biden had been successful in getting Iran to produce more oil for U.S. benefit, CO2 from Iran would still be making things hotter while we might have had to say goodbye to Israel. Biden also visited that ally in his miswrought Middle East adventure and listened as the Israeli prime minister, Yair Lapid, tried to explain to him how a deal strengthening Iran could accelerate Iran's dream of Israelis disappearing from their earthly presence once and for all.
No deal emerged, which is better than what Obama did in helping to create the 2015 pact. That travesty allowed Iran to retain means of enriching uranium to a killer extent. It allowed ballistic missile tests with lethal missile mastery eventually enlarging Iran's military power. There was no inspecting of military bases for nuke development. A number of nations unleashed billions of Iranian dollars, further enabling the financing of terrorist massacres all over the Mideast.
President Donald Trump threw all that out the window with renewed sanctions as his administration amazingly arranged the Abraham Accords through which Arab nations joined with their old enemy Israel to stand up to Iran. To his credit, Biden, who once belittled the accords, is now determined to widen them.
For instance, he would have liked Iran’s enemy Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords but did not quite get there or anyplace else in talks that many said he should never have entered, given the fact that Saudi Arabia’s leader is accused of murdering an American journalist. I understand the reluctance even though I also believe Saudi Arabia is one of the best chances we have for peaceful, humane Middle East order. Worrying about Biden having fist bumps with the Saudi leader strikes me as trivial.
The huge concern now is happy, giggly Iran, which previously lied about trying to develop a nuclear weapon and is now saying it is darned near ready if needed. Understand that Iran is intertwined with Russia, China and North Korea, and understand, too, that its self-perceived mission is to rule the Middle East and Central Asia.
A nuclearized Iran could enable the objective or maybe cause other nations, such as Saudi Arabia, to go nuclear themselves. One possibility is a spreading nuclear war ultimately involving the United States and maybe the whole world. It is unlikely that brave, alert, nuclear-equipped Israel, which has been assured by Iran again and again it was going to be wiped out, would sit around waiting for that outcome.
Biden’s trip was a failure and he is a failure, as he has proved on issue after issue, from the border to the economy to Afghanistan, where millions are now starving to death. Climate change is for real but the way Biden and other progressives are approaching it could be more disastrous than the climate itself. Our country needs competent leadership at a time when the world and our country seem at the brink of something awful. I do think Biden has handled the war in Ukraine well, and I congratulate him on that, but it’s not enough. We need political change in Congress to emerge from the midterm elections.
