50-50

President Obama responded to a question on Saturday at a Brookings Institute forum in Washington saying that he was not naive and that the chances for success in our recent comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran were about 50-50 … see: NY Daily News Story.  What?  In other words, it was a coin toss as to whether we would get Iran to abandon its nuclear weapon(s) ambitions in exchange for our relaxing the sanctions we have imposed on them.  Basically he said that we must capitulate and give diplomacy a chance.

To me these remarks are the very height of naiveté. The sanctions that we had imposed on Iran were clearly having an effect and, instead of increasing the pressure, we have retreated.  This interim deal with Iran is like a bet on a coin toss in which the outcome for heads is a piece of pie and tails results in the torture and slaughter of your entire family.  How can we have such a numbskull as our president?

Very soon, the U.S. Congress is likely to pass a bipartisan measure that, after six months, would re-impose these sanctions if Iran doesn’t live up to this agreement.  And every indication from its current gorilla-dust rhetoric is that Iran won’t.  And then where are we?  We are six month’s closer to war anyway … a war that would prove that diplomacy is not always the right choice over intense international economic pressure.

This Congressional action, in itself, is a bit of a six-month capitulation.  Yet the Obama administration is unhappy with even codifying the very terms that it has offered Iran … and Iran, in turn, has threatened to kill this interim agreement if this Congressional action happens … see: Chicago Tribune Story.

So, if Congress now backs down on this threat, it will be almost as naive as our fearless (fearful?) leader … and Israel will be a coin toss away from an almost-certain Iranian nuclear attack.