The denuclearisation option

UPDATE: PDT’s post-meeting press conference: “sometimes you have to walk”.

You should wind the video back to the beginning of the press conference. The original post is below.
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PDT is in Hanoi trying to resolve the Korean War which began 69 years ago and to end the threat of nuclear escalation in North Korea and in a perfect world end all nuclear arms on the Korean Peninsula. This from here.

CHAIRMAN KIM: (As interpreted.) We had exchanged a very interesting dialogue with each other —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We did.

CHAIRMAN KIM: (As interpreted.) — for about 30 minutes.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Boy, if you could have heard that dialogue, what you would pay for that dialogue. It was good.

So we’re going to have a very busy day tomorrow, and we’ll probably have a pretty quick dinner and a lot of things are going to be solved, I hope. And I think it’ll lead to wonderful — it will lead to, really, a wonderful situation long term. And our relationship is a very special relationship.

Thank you very much everybody. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

Then there’s this at the other end of the spectrum: Pakistan shoots down 2 Indian warplanes, parades captured pilot on video.

Tensions between two of the world’s nuclear powers were raised dramatically Wednesday after Pakistan’s air force said it shot down two Indian warplanes that crossed the disputed Kashmir border and captured each of the aircraft’s pilots.

In America, of course, the media focuses on Michael Cohen’s testimony about nothing. The best comment comes via Powerline.

You would like to laugh at such dark stupidity, but they are a pathetic bunch of lying scum, with Michael Cohen a perfect representation of the way they think and the way they act.

ADDING WHAT SIMON SAYS: Roger Simon, that is: Dems Reelect Trump by Staging Partisan Cohen Hearing During Nuke Negotiations.

The day the Democrats decided to schedule the House Oversight Committee hearing with Michael Cohen to coincide with Trump’s negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi is the day the Democrats ensured the president’s reelection. It was one of those rare moments of clarity you can imagine in the history books.

The Democrats revealed themselves as partisan hacks while the president was halfway around the world trying to save the lives of millions. That’s not just bad timing, it’s atrocious. And it has little to do with the success or failure of the talks with Kim. No one knows how that will turn out, probably not even the principals themselves. It has do with the priorities of the human race like global survival — what a normal person should care about….

The test for Americans of all political parties, indeed of citizens of all countries, is whether they actually wish Trump well in this endeavor. If they don’t, they are truly evil.

The Obama State Department was a lethal danger to us all

Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Vol. 19, No. 1

  • Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi has said that Iran will continue with its activities at the heavy water plant in Arak. Iran has purchased equipment for the facility and did not even fill in the core of the reactor with cement to render it unusable in January 2016 in accordance with the nuclear deal.
  • He claimed on Jan. 22, 2019, that images published at the time showing that Iran had completely sealed the core of the reactor were photo-shopped, and that Iran was never required in the agreement to seal the core of the reactor with cement.
  • Salehi said he was “thankful to Allah for the way in which the discussions relating to the technical aspects of the nuclear talks were conducted, as they left so many breaches in the agreement that Iran was able to exploit.”
  • ”Iran has lost nothing as a result of signing the agreement,” Salehi continued, “and history will prove this. We have preserved our capabilities in the field of enrichment. We are…continuing to manufacture new centrifuges. We are doing everything we need to do.”

From Iran Continues with its Nuclear Activities Unabated. Read the whole thing. You wonder why PDT doesn’t trust any of them. Why would he, and why would you?

A nuclear Australia?

Via Instapundit which notes “China is going to end up hemmed in by nuclear powers at every turn, if they don’t rein in Li’l Kim”: Going Nuclear? The Optimal Posture and Force Structure for Australia. Bottom line:

“Australia would not consider such a step lightly,” but history has shown that changes in geopolitics can sneak up on nations before they are aware of the dangers they face, Let’s not fall victim to this. Let’s be ready and discuss options now before it is too late.

If you look at the map you must wonder why it hasn’t happened already.

What’s next?

From Drudge and I assume everywhere else. The one thing no one will do is ask Hillary or Obama what they would do. And this is not an American problem, it is a problem for us all.

 

Thomas Sowell on “the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation’s history”

Obama knows better than anyone else, just as he did with healthcare and just as he did with the economy. And now he is bringing his same non-existent analytical skills to solving the tensions in the Middle East by engineering a cave-in to every single demand the Iranians are making about building nuclear weapons. A country that literally floats on oil does not need to build a nuclear power plant. This is Thomas Sowell writing on these matters, in a column titled, Etiquette Versus Annihilation. Here is how he begins:

Recent statements from United Nations officials, that Iran is already blocking their existing efforts to keep track of what is going on in their nuclear program, should tell anyone who does not already know it that any agreement with Iran will be utterly worthless in practice. It doesn’t matter what the terms of the agreement are, if Iran can cheat.

It is amazing — indeed, staggering — that so few Americans are talking about what it would mean for the world’s biggest sponsor of international terrorism, Iran, to have nuclear bombs, and to be developing intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond the Middle East.

Back during the years of the nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the United States, contemplating what a nuclear war would be like was called “thinking the unthinkable.” But surely the Nazi Holocaust during World War II should tell us that what is beyond the imagination of decent people is by no means impossible for people who, as Churchill warned of Hitler before the war, had “currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them.”

Have we not already seen that kind of hatred in the Middle East? Have we not seen it in suicide bombings there and in suicide attacks against America by people willing to sacrifice their own lives by flying planes into massive buildings, to vent their unbridled hatred?

Well, we have seen it, but Obama has not. Or if he has, he has taken a very different lesson from the rest of us. Sowell concludes:

Against the background of the Obama administration’s negotiating what can turn out to be the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation’s history, to complain about protocol is to put questions of etiquette above questions of annihilation.

Meanwhile the most intense current debate in the United States is over whether someone’s religious views should be allowed to influence how they run their business. The US is no longer the leader of the free world. It is even questionable whether Americans are any longer even a free people.

Who can explain the anti-American American media

obama iran negotiations cartoon

There was a time I could understand what is going on in politics. I wouldn’t necessarily agree, but I could follow it. But what has me utterly mystified is the negotiations between the Americans and Iran. And it’s not Obama. He’s a known quantity. It’s everyone else, and the absence of any serious reaction.

Let me begin with this. Here’s a story from yesterday: Poll: Clear majority supports nuclear deal with Iran. Here’s what the survey showed, according to the opening para:

By a nearly 2 to 1 margin, Americans support the notion of striking a deal with Iran that restricts the nation’s nuclear program in exchange for loosening sanctions, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

If it comes to that, I support a deal that restricts Iran’s nuclear program. But it is the second para of the story that brings clarity to what American really believe:

But the survey — released hours before Tuesday’s negotiating deadline — also finds few Americans are hopeful that such an agreement will be effective. Nearly six in 10 say they are not confident that a deal will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, unchanged from 15 months ago, when the United States, France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia reached an interim agreement with Iran aimed at sealing a long-term deal.

So try a question like this instead: Are you in favour of striking a deal that leaves Iran with nuclear weapons while their leaders continue to repeat, “Death to America”, and who threaten to use a nuclear weapon to obliterate Israel?

It is media who have asked their own poorly framed but obviously biased question, who have left out the necessary qualification in how they have reported the story, and who have done so to help ease the way towards an outcome that achieves what absolutely no American could possibly want. We know whose side the media are on, but does anyone know why that is? We also know which side the American administration is on, which leads to exactly the same question again.

Then from Drudge, these were yesterday’s sub-heads at the top of the page:

Iran talks lead to more talks…
Tehran refuses to give up enriched nuclear material…
Iran militia chief: Destroying Israel ‘nonnegotiable’…
Hackers threaten ‘electronic holocaust’…
Drone Spat in Iraq…
Saudis Make Own Moves…
Rabbi compares Obama to Haman, archenemy of Jewish people…
French Fear Plans To Make Iran Key Middle East Ally…
Venue for talks is ‘gilded cage’ under constant surveillance…
ABCWASHPOST POLL: Clear majority of Americans support deal…

About that “nonnegotiable” destruction of Israel. This is the opening of the story linked above:

The commander of the Basij militia of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that “erasing Israel off the map” is “nonnegotiable,” according to an Israel Radio report Tuesday.

Militia chief Mohammad Reza Naqdi also threatened Saudi Arabia, saying that the offensive it is leading in Yemen “will have a fate like the fate of Saddam Hussein.”

So far as negotiations go, the Iranians are a certainly more hard-edged than the Americans. These are the sub-heads from today:

HOW ABOUT JUNE?
Talks extended past deadline…
Tehran refuses to give up enriched material…
Netanyahu: Deal will allow nuclear breakout in less than year…
Militia chief: Destroying Israel ‘nonnegotiable’…
Hackers threaten ‘electronic holocaust’…
Iranian plane buzzes Navy copter…
PAPER: Even Chamberlain would not make deal Obama eager to conclude…
Saudis Make Own Moves…
Yemen nears ‘total collapse’ as Mideast powers trade blame…

So why are the Americans so intent on reaching a deal? Anyone’s guess, but protecting American interests does not appear to be amongst them.

UPDATE: I find myself both depressed and very angry, and think of none of the past six years of the Obama Administration as anything other than tragic. But the cartoon added above is not there because it makes you laugh, but because it so perfectly captures our present reality.

Lying media scum

Here’s the headline: Poll: Clear majority supports nuclear deal with Iran. Here’s what the survey showed, according to the opening para:

By a nearly 2 to 1 margin, Americans support the notion of striking a deal with Iran that restricts the nation’s nuclear program in exchange for loosening sanctions, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

If it comes to that, I support a deal that restricts Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. But it is the second para of the story that brings clarity to what American really believe:

But the survey — released hours before Tuesday’s negotiating deadline — also finds few Americans are hopeful that such an agreement will be effective. Nearly six in 10 say they are not confident that a deal will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, unchanged from 15 months ago, when the United States, France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia reached an interim agreement with Iran aimed at sealing a long-term deal.

So try a question like this instead: Are you in favour of striking a deal that leaves Iran with nuclear weapons while their leaders continue to repeat, “Death to America”, and who threaten to use a nuclear weapon to obliterate Israel?

It is lying media scum who ask their own poorly framed question, leave out the necessary qualification, and have done so to help ease the way towards an outcome that achieves what absolutely no American could possibly want. We know whose side the media are on, but does anyone know why that is? We also know which side the American administration is on, which leads to exactly the same question again.

UPDATE: And from Drudge, the sub-heads at the top of the page:

Iran talks lead to more talks…
Tehran refuses to give up enriched nuclear material…
Iran militia chief: Destroying Israel ‘nonnegotiable’…
Hackers threaten ‘electronic holocaust’…
Drone Spat in Iraq…
Saudis Make Own Moves…
Rabbi compares Obama to Haman, archenemy of Jewish people…
French Fear Plans To Make Iran Key Middle East Ally…
Venue for talks is ‘gilded cage’ under constant surveillance…
ABCWASHPOST POLL: Clear majority of Americans support deal…

About that “nonnegotiable” destruction of Israel. This is the opening of the story linked above:

The commander of the Basij militia of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that “erasing Israel off the map” is “nonnegotiable,” according to an Israel Radio report Tuesday.

Militia chief Mohammad Reza Naqdi also threatened Saudi Arabia, saying that the offensive it is leading in Yemen “will have a fate like the fate of Saddam Hussein.”

So why are the Americans so intent on reaching a deal? Anyone’s guess, but protecting American interests does not appear to be amongst them.

American foreign policy crashes and burns

At the end of a successful negotiation, both sides get something they want. The cave-in to Iran over nuclear weapons is absolute and complete: U.S. Caves to Key Iranian Demands as Nuke Deal Comes Together. What is clear is what Iran gets. What is invisible is what anyone else gets, not the US, not Israel, not the Saudis, not any other nation in the Middle East, not anyone else anywhere that I can see. Basically, Obama said, “stop me if you can”, and it turns out no one could.

The Obama administration is giving in to Iranian demands about the scope of its nuclear program as negotiators work to finalize a framework agreement in the coming days, according to sources familiar with the administration’s position in the negotiations.

U.S. negotiators are said to have given up ground on demands that Iran be forced to disclose the full range of its nuclear activities at the outset of a nuclear deal, a concession experts say would gut the verification the Obama administration has vowed would stand as the crux of a deal with Iran.

Until recently, the Obama administration had maintained that it would guarantee oversight on Tehran’s program well into the future, and that it would take the necessary steps to ensure that oversight would be effective. The issue has now emerged as a key sticking point in the talks.

Concern from sources familiar with U.S. concessions in the talks comes amid reports that Iran could be permitted to continue running nuclear centrifuges at an underground site once suspected of housing illicit activities.

This type of concession would allow Iran to continue work related to its nuclear weapons program, even under the eye of international inspectors. If Iran removes inspectors—as it has in the past—it would be left with a nuclear infrastructure immune from a strike by Western forces.

“Once again, in the face of Iran’s intransigence, the U.S. is leading an effort to cave even more toward Iran—this time by whitewashing Tehran’s decades of lying about nuclear weapons work and current lack of cooperation with the [International Atomic Energy Agency],” said one Western source briefed on the talks but who was not permitted to speak on record.

With the White House pressing to finalize a deal, U.S. diplomats have moved further away from their demands that Iran be subjected to oversight over its nuclear infrastructure.

“Instead of ensuring that Iran answers all the outstanding questions about the past and current military dimensions of their nuclear work in order to obtain sanctions relief, the U.S. is now revising down what they need to do,” said the source. “That is a terrible mistake—if we don’t have a baseline to judge their past work, we can’t tell if they are cheating in the future, and if they won’t answer now, before getting rewarded, why would they come clean in the future?”

The United States is now willing to let Iran keep many of its most controversial military sites closed to inspectors until international sanctions pressure has been lifted, according to sources.

Obama is the international equivalent of the pilot who has crashed the passenger jet into the Alps. Locked into the cockpit at the White House and doing whatever he wants.

WHEN YOU THINK THEY HAVE REACHED THE LOW POINT YOU THEN READ SOMETHING ELSE: This is quite an excellent summary of the unravelling going on in the Middle East: Obama’s Mideast ‘free fall’. It comes with the sub-head, “Mounting chaos in the region puts the administration on the defensive”.

Now the U.S. is in the strange position of fighting ISIL alongside Iran at the same time it backs the Sunni campaign against Iran’s allies in Yemen. . . .

On Thursday, Iran’s foreign minister, who has been meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry in Switzerland to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, demanded an immediate halt to the Yemen incursion.

At the same time, civil war rages on in Syria. On Thursday, Robert Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, sent Obama a letter urging him to respond to charges that the regime of Bashar Assad — a close ally of Tehran — has used chlorine gas against civilians. In late 2013, Obama threatened to punish Assad with airstrikes after his forces deployed nerve gas.

OK, chaotic with the responsibility for most of it the idiocies of the Obama White House. And then the article comes to what it seems to see as upbeat and positive:

The official offered a hopeful note, adding that a nuclear deal with Iran — which some reports say could come as soon as Sunday — could be a turning point for the region.

“The truth is, you can dwell on Yemen, or you can recognize that we’re one agreement away from a game-changing, legacy-setting nuclear accord on Iran that tackles what every one agrees is the biggest threat to the region,” the official said.

There is seemingly no level of stupidity these people are incapable of transcending.

An idiot or pretending to be an idiot

Let me get this right. Obama is in secret negotiations to arrange a deal with Iran to allow it to build nuclear weapons. Iran has said that it seeks to have nuclear weapons so that it can wipe the Jewish State off the map. Israel has been using whatever ports it can to find out what Obama and Iran are up to. Obama is infuriated with Israel because it has been spying.

OK, let’s face it. Obama is either an idiot, or he is pretending to be an idiot. No one in the position that Israel is in would do anything other than stay on top of every manoeuvre now being made by every party in the Middle East.

That the media in the US asks not a question about what is going on is not news. Everything goes on quietly with hardly a murmur while Iran moves closer to nuclear capabilities. It is inexplicable to me. But there it is and it’s not changing soon enough for me.

The damage a president can do especially if that’s his aim

obama netanyahu

From Scott Johnson at Powerline, HOW TO UNDERSTAND OBAMA’S IRAN DIPLOMACY.

I think the easiest way to understand Obama’s diplomacy is this. Assume that Obama believes Iran should have nuclear weapons and would like to facilitate the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program. This assumption is the Occam’s Razor that clarifies what might otherwise be obscure. The assumption may not be correct, but it should prove a handy guide to coming attractions.

It is the same for every policy. If you think of Obama’s aim as harming the white American middle class, and doing as much damage as possible to American foreign policy interests, you will never go wrong in guessing what he will try to achieve. There are plenty of obstacles so he cannot do anything he wants, but he does as much as he can. The American people elected their bitterest enemy to the White House, and as obvious as it is, no one in public life will say so loudly and clearly. Is it respect for the presidency, uncertainty about Obama’s actual motives or fear of exposing just how damaging a presidential system can be?