By Patrick J. Buchanan
Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to play.
Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program and impose the “crippling” sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war.
And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate.
Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him at the president’s side, could assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that escalator.
Senate bill 2799 would punish any company exporting gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes.
And cutting off a country’s oil or gas is a proven path to war.
In 1941, the United States froze Japan’s assets, denying her the funds to pay for the U.S. oil on which she relied, forcing Tokyo either to retreat from her empire or seize the only oil in reach, in the Dutch East Indies.
The only force able to interfere with a Japanese drive into the East Indies? The U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1967 threatened to close the Straits of Tiran between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba to ships going to the Israeli port of Elath. That would have cut off 95 percent of Israel’s oil.
Israel response: a pre-emptive war that destroyed Egypt’s air force and put Israeli troops at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran.
Were Reid and colleagues seeking to strengthen Obama’s negotiating hand?
The opposite is true. The Senate is trying to force Obama’s hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war — a war to deny Iran weapons that the U.S. Intelligence community said in December 2007 Iran gave up trying to acquire in 2003.
Sound familiar?
Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made clear the Senate is seizing control of the Iran portfolio. “If the Obama administration will not take action against this regime, then Congress must.”
U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse.
For a cutoff in gas would hammer Iran’s middle class. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia on their motorbikes would get all they need. Thus the leaders of the Green Movement who have stood up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah oppose sanctions that inflict suffering on their own people.
Cutting off gas to Iran would cause many deaths. And the families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward those who killed them.
And despite the hysteria about Iran’s imminent testing of a bomb, the U.S. intelligence community still has not changed its finding that Tehran is not seeking a bomb.
The low-enriched uranium at Natanz, enough for one test, has neither been moved nor enriched to weapons grade. Ahmadinejad this week offered to take the West’s deal and trade it for fuel for its reactor. Iran’s known nuclear facilities are under U.N. watch. The number of centrifuges operating at Natanz has fallen below 4,000. There is speculation they are breaking down or have been sabotaged.
And if Iran is hell-bent on a bomb, why has Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair not revised the 2007 finding and given us the hard evidence?
U.S. anti-missile ships are moving into the Gulf. Anti-missile batteries are being deployed on the Arab shore. Yet, Gen. David Petraeus warned yesterday that a strike on Iran could stir nationalist sentiment behind the regime.
Nevertheless, the war drums have again begun to beat.
Daniel Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by the Jerusalem Post — “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” — urges Obama to make a “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue” by ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack today and will “presumably rally around the flag” when the bombs fall.
Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make “conservatives swoon,” in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.
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Obama’s self and projected persona as this statesman of peace through diplomacy would suffer greatly if it was perceived that he started a war with Iran, so it will be necessary for neo-cons, far-left liberals, and the dirty tricksters in the Pentagon and CIA to engineer this one carefully (far-left liberals, at the end of the day, because the end always justifies the means). Without backup and support for the theory that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, Obama would have to sacrifice this image for the larger end of gaining public support and maybe a successful run at the presidency in 2012.
Obama, his puppeteers and the dirty tricksters are running out of time, though. Americans, Obama knows, or should know, that the American people (the voters), thanks to Bush-baby, have become a highly suspicious lot, suspicious of war-engineering and their dirty tricks, so the tricksters, themselves, will have to come up with something, a plan, that Obama can sign on to and that his main promoters (the Jeds) can work out of.
If it is to be an outright lie, then some sort of damning evidence will have to be manufactured, but it had better be good — something to scare the hell out of the people not just of America but the world. Then they’ll have to find a way to pin it on Iran. Israel part in this will probably be major. But know this: you are being watched, even more carefully than the Iranians, by those well attuned to the usual shenanigans.
Buchanan is wrong. If Obama plays the war card, he is toast. Americans are weary of war, and liberals will desert him. And, conservatives will harp on his every move and mock him as war commander. Obama will lose the good will of the world, especially in Muslim nations.
If neocons support Obama’s war and insist that the GOP follow along, there will be rift between Zionist neocons and GOP mainstream sick of war, war, war… which may be a good thing.
So, I say bring on the war and the downfall of the Obama regime.
Good point Andrea. I think the war card will most assuredly make Obama lose the Presidency and quite possibly the Dems in Congress. The only issue is that the alternative is the big spending, big government, open border, free trading Republicans…
Does anybody think a war with Iran would be easier than Iraq and Afghanistan have been? Pat has explained at length about how our military is strained and depleted. If neoconservatives openly support an Obama attack on Iran, and things go badly, as they likely would, they’ll remain in the electoral unemployment line in 2012, right behind ex-President Obama.
Of course there’s always the possibility of a Muslim mass destruction card–real or staged, pick your poison–which could galvanize the populace toward retribution. But considering America’s war weariness, the Tea Party Movement, with its inherent non-interventionist US-centric foundations, would benefit most from such a cynical incursion.
I see things differently, Pat. Crippling sanctions against Iran would not necessarily lead to Iran declaring war. Bunker states always bunker down when sanctions are placed against them. Iraq did it, North Korea and Cuba have done it for 50 years. The Iranians people would simply tighten their belts while the ruling elite would continue to enjoy the very best of food, drink, robes, etc. In other words, Iran would be no different.
GOP gains would probably not be hindered, either, since America’s political self-correction movement has nothing to do with Iran, and people may not(would not) oblige Obama by doing the happily “rally around the flag in time of war” thing. Not this time. Too many are waking up to the larger gambit & agenda of the corporate-MIC war-engineers to be fooled yet again.
Iranians would simply get smart and build more refineries instead of, or in addition to, nuclear power plants.