Ahmadinejad outmaneuvers Obama

Iran’s nuclear deal with Turkey and Brazil this week contrasted the waning influence of America with the rising power of Tehran in the Middle East.

The proposed deal involves Iran swapping low-enriched uranium for a higher-enriched uranium from Turkey for a medical research reactor. The deal, however, allows Iran to retain enough of a uranium stockpile to build a bomb. The Washington Timessummarized it this way: “[T]he nuclear deal gives Tehran the diplomatic cover needed to pretend it is cooperating with the international community while nonetheless pursuing its nuclear ambitions.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has “outmaneuvered” President Barack Obama, says the Washington Times, which noted that Mr. Obama’s diplomatic overtures in recent months have resulted in just one thing—a resurgent Iran. Over the last year or so, Iran has tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium, purchased key weapons components, broadened control over its proxies and strengthened its influence over Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. “In short, the vacuum of U.S. power in the Middle East is being filled by Tehran’s expansionist Islamic radicalism,” wrote the Times.

David Ignatius at the Washington Post called it “negotiation,” Tehran-style, and pointed out that Iran is “moving toward nuclear-weapons capability even as it haggles on the diplomatic front.” He wrote, “As Iran plays the game, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are never final; negotiators walk away from the table only to return; face-saving compromises are floated, rejected and then re-floated. It’s likely that this enervating bargaining will end when Iran announces—surprise!—that it has all the elements for a nuclear weapon and is now a de facto nuclear state.”

The recent development also emphasizes the failure of America’s diplomacy toward its allies as well. “Rather [than] becoming more diplomatically isolated, Iran is beginning to peel away traditional American allies such as Turkey and Brazil,” the Washington Times wrote. “Mr. Obama’s policy of diplomatic engagement has failed—miserably.”

Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post, “The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of nato, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world. That picture—a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam—is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.”

So far America’s foreign policy has resulted in crumbling relations with key allies (such as Britain and Israel), tepid responses to the belligerence of rising powers (such as Russia and China) and a “laughably weak” proposed UN Security Council resolution against Iran.

Mr. Krauthammer wrote, “This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat—accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum. Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the UN General Assembly last September that ‘No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation’ (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any ‘world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.’”