XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: rminor@thanks-liberals.com   
      
   The administration thinks a nuclear Iran is inevitable—but lacks   
   the courage to say it.   
      
   Does it matter what sort of deal—or further extension, or non-   
   deal—ultimately emerges from the endless parleys over Iran’s   
   nuclear program? Probably not. Iran came to the table cheating   
   on its nuclear commitments. It continued to cheat on them   
   throughout the interim agreement it agreed to last year. And it   
   will cheat on any undertakings it signs.   
      
   We knew this, know it and will come to know it all over again.   
   But what’s at stake in these negotiations isn’t their outcome,   
   assuming there ever is an outcome. It’s the extent to which the   
   outcome facilitates, or obstructs, our willingness to continue   
   to fool ourselves about the consequences of an Iran with a   
   nuclear weapon.   
      
   The latest confirmation of the obvious comes to us courtesy of a   
   Nov. 17 report from David Albright and his team at the   
   scrupulously nonpartisan Institute for Science and International   
   Security. The ISIS study, based on findings from the   
   International Atomic Energy Agency, concluded that Iran was   
   stonewalling U.N. inspectors on the military dimensions of its   
   program. It noted that Tehran had tested a model for an advanced   
   centrifuge, in violation of the 2013 interim agreement. And it   
   cited Iran for trying to conceal evidence of nuclear-weapons   
   development at a military facility called Parchin.   
      
   “By failing to address the IAEA’s concerns, Iran is   
   complicating, and even threatening, the achievement of a long   
   term nuclear deal,” the report notes dryly.   
      
   These are only Iran’s most recent evasions, piled atop two   
   decades of documented nuclear deception. Nothing new there. But   
   what are we to make of an American administration that is intent   
   on providing cover for Iran’s coverups? “The IAEA has verified   
   that Iran has complied with its commitments,” Wendy Sherman, the   
   top U.S. nuclear negotiator, testified in July to the Senate   
   Foreign Relations Committee. “It has done what it promised to   
   do.” John Kerry went one better, telling reporters Monday that   
   “Iran has lived up” to its commitments.   
      
   The statement is false: Yukiya Amano, the director general of   
   the IAEA, complained last week that Iran had “not provided any   
   explanations that enable the Agency to clarify the outstanding   
   practical measures” related to suspected work on weaponization.   
   Since when did trust but verify become whitewash and hornswoggle?   
      
   That’s a question someone ought to ask Mr. Kerry or Ms. Sherman   
   at their next committee appearance, especially since it has   
   become clear that the administration has a record of arms-   
   control dissembling. To wit, the State Department under Hillary   
   Clinton had reason to know that Russia—with which the U.S. was   
   then in “reset” mode—was violating the 1987 treaty on   
   Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces. Yet it didn’t disclose this   
   in arms-control reports to Congress, nor did it mention the fact   
   prior to the Senate’s 2010 ratification of the New Start treaty   
   on strategic weapons.   
      
   “We’re not going to pass another treaty in the U.S. Senate if   
   our colleagues [in the administration] are sitting up there   
   knowing somebody is cheating.” That was then-Sen. John Kerry in   
   November 2012, complaining about the coverup. The administration   
   only came clean about the Kremlin’s breaches last summer,   
   presumably after it had finally given up hopes for its Russian   
   reset.   
      
   Why the spin and dishonesty? Partly it’s the old Platonic   
   conceit of the Noble Lie—public bamboozlement in the service of   
   the greater good—that propels so much contemporary liberal   
   policy-making (cf. Gruber, Jonathan: transparency, lack of). So   
   long as the higher goal is a health-care bill, or arms control   
   with Russia, or a nuclear deal with Iran, why should the low   
   truth of facts and figures interfere with the high truth of   
   hopes and ideals?   
      
   But this lets the administration off too easily. The real   
   problem is cowardice. As a matter of politics it cannot   
   acknowledge what, privately, it believes: that a nuclear Iran is   
   undesirable but probably inevitable and hardly catastrophic. As   
   a matter of strategy, it refuses to commit to the only realistic   
   course of action that could accomplish the goal it professes to   
   seek: The elimination of Iran’s nuclear capabilities by a   
   combination of genuinely crippling sanctions and targeted   
   military strikes.   
      
   And so—because the administration lacks the political courage of   
   its real convictions or the martial courage of its fake ones—we   
   are wedded to this sham process of negotiation. “They pretend to   
   pay us; we pretend to work,” went the old joke about labor in   
   the Soviet Union. Just so with these talks. Iranians pretend not   
   to cheat; we pretend not to notice. All that’s left to do is   
   stand back and wait for something to happen.   
      
   Eventually, something will happen. Perhaps Iran will simply walk   
   away from the talks, daring this feckless administration to act.   
   Perhaps we will discover another undeclared Iranian nuclear   
   facility, possibly not in Iran itself. Perhaps the Israelis   
   really will act. Perhaps the Saudis will.   
      
   All of this may suit the president’s psychological yearning to   
   turn himself into a bystander—innocent, in his own eyes—in the   
   Iranian nuclear crisis. But it’s also a useful reminder that, in   
   the contest between hard-won experience and disappointed   
   idealism, the latter always wins in the liberal mind.   
      
   Write to bstephens@wsj.com   
      
   Comments:   
      
   Dale Huberg 2 days ago   
   Turn the Israelis loose!  Forget sanctions.   
      
   JOHN LJOHN L 2 days ago   
   Ah, this brings me back. One of Ireland's leading journalists,   
   Vincent Browne, said of Bush's harassment of Iran in 2006:   
   "hands off Iran"... Yes, the freeloading Irish do love to   
   pontificate... Some think it's only the Jewish state, see, that   
   they're throwing under the bus...   
      
   JAMES MATLOCKJAMES MATLOCK 2 days ago   
   I don't understand all the nonchalance here about the   
   possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons. Besides the   
   enhanced possibility of one or more nukes winding up in   
   terrorist hands or an American port city, what about the risk of   
   a nuclear-backed Iran deciding it can provoke a crisis with the   
   Americans in the Persian Gulf the same way the North Koreans did   
   with the South Koreans when the North sank a South Korean   
   gunboat. South Korea was forced to stand more or less helpless   
   in the face of the murder of over 40 of its sailors. Suppose   
   Iran decided to sink an American warship, anywhere in the world   
   in the same manner and the brazenly denied what it did? Further,   
   all this moral equivalence with a nuclear armed Israel is   
   foolish. Iran is a nation run by millennialist religious   
   fanatics who've labeled the United States "The Great Satan".   
   Ultimately for Iran, Israel "the Little Satan" is a side show.   
   Iran has made common cause with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and   
   several other "B-list" enemies or potential enemies of the   
   United States. A nuclear armed Iran increases the strength of   
   this group and adds one more wild card to a deck already   
   brimming with them.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)