For a few days, the band was back together. Following President Trump’s decision to target Qassem Soleimani, the media’s favorite go-to critics featured members of Barack Obama’s administration who crafted an🍎d sold the failed nuclear deal with Iran.
John Kerry, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Wendy Sherman and Leon Panetta gave interviews or popped up on social media to defend 🌜their tenure and declare that Trump was a reckless fool for poking the mullahs’ nest.
Naturally, the Obama alums were in perfect sync with the dominant medi⭕a narrative in the four days between the Soleimani strike and Iran’s feeble retaliation. They helped feed the breathless headlines and feverish speculation that the coming conflagration would rattle the world.
T🍃he coverage was peppered with a “we told you so” tone about Trump. The Washington press corps and the Obamaites echoed each other in warning that the preಞsident was a dangerous commander in chief, and finally they had the facts to prove it.
Except they didn’t. Instead, they all ✱had egg on their faces for getting the big story wrong. Again.
By the time Trump made his restrained public statement Wednesday, the entire media script was flipped upside down. World War III was on hold because the Iranians blinked, and the president, seizi🐻ng a potential opening, was inviting the mullꦆahs to negotiate.
Some crazed warmonger he is.
The♒ results sim💮ultaneously shred the claim that the Obama nuke deal was effective and confirm the wisdom of Trump’s decision to eliminate Soleimani.
Contrasts between competing policies don’t 🔴get any sharperꦕ. Nor does the clarity of the result.
The episode was also a disaster for the Dem 2020 candidates. Their knee-jerk criticism of th🍨e Soleimani strike and embrace of Obama’s appeasement of Iran is another mark against them.
Worse, the attempts by some to blame Trump because Iran shot down a civilian airliner, killing 176 innocents, is absolutely dis𝔉graceful.
In big-picture terms, last week proved what had long been obvious: The Obama nuclear deal was fatally flawed and would never succeed in changing the na🌼ture of 🌸the regime.
Kerry, then secretary of state, spent two desperate ye🔜ars caving iꩲn to virtually every Iranian demand and getting next to nothing in return. When an agreement finally was reached, Iran refused to sign the document.
Republicans were united in opposition, but naysayers also included some Democrats. In a dramatic break with Obama, Sen. Chuck Sch🅠umer cited numerous problems with the pact and said the most serious was that Iran would be free after 10 years to build a nuclear ꦇweapon.
“🐲To me, after 10 years, if Iran is the same nation as it is today, we will be worse off with this agreement than without it,” he said in 2015.
It took mere months to reveal other problems, including that some o🎉f the billions in sweeteners and ransom payments Obama approved were used to help fund the terror proxies Soleimani managed around the region.
Kerry admitted as much , saying, “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every componeꦯnt of that can be prevented.”
Yet he insisted the deal was the best option, and lob𝓡bied Congress, European♊ diplomats and even met with Iranian officials to try to salvage it after Trump took office. The president, in response, argued Kerry should be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from conducting foreign policy without authorization.
Meanwhiꦰle, Kerry showed in a Friday op-ed in The New York Times that he hasn’t learned anything. His assertion that “diplomacy was working until Trump abandoned it” was one of the many howlers the piece contained.
He distorted how his deal ignored the Soleimani terror network by ♌bizarrely claiming the agreement “created opportuniღties” to pressure Iran on those issues.
“We were working with allies to deepen sanctions on Iran for its involvement in Yemen, its transfer of weapons to Hezbollah and its actions in Syria, its human rights violations, its threats against Israel aꦓnd its ballistic missile program,” he wrote.
His claim bears no🅺 relation to reality. The agreement didn’t create opportunities for America and other signatories to confront Iran’s malign activities. It overlooked and then helped to fund them.
And zero progress was made on 𓆏curbiꦆng those activities — until Trump droned Soleimani.
Ther𒆙e is a second fiction afoot, too, and that is the media/Kerry narrative that Trump wants war.
In fact, Trump, his warts aside, is a fairly conventional adherent to the peace-through-strength philosophy that governed American foreign policy for most of our history, 🐟Democrats included. Recall that the president resisted more hawkish voices who wanted to attack Iran last summer when it shot down one of our drones; he canceled the mission at the last possible minute.
Tru🦹mp, who campaigned on staying out of “endless wars” and waꦐnts to bring our troops home from the Mideast, also placed a key restraint on Iran policy by saying publicly he is not seeking regime change.
Plainly, Trump🐲 is not a warmonger. He’s a deal maker and his record is that of someone who uses our military might as a deterrent, unleashes it with discretion🅺 and only as a last resort.
He’s long wanted to talk to Iran’s leaders, much as he is trying to defuse the North Korean nuclear issue b😼y talking🍬 directly to Kim Jong-un.
He has described his goal numerous times: a b⭕etter deal than Obama’s, one that ends the terror networks and permanently bars Iran from getting nukes.
In a brief phone interview🐈 I had with him Tuesday, just hours before Iran launched its noisy, half-hearted missile attack, the president already was hoping for de-escalation. When I asked what he wished the Iranian response would be, he didn’t miss a beat, saying, “They should come bac▨k and negotiate.”
If Iran iওs smart, its leaders will accept his offer and come to the table.
Either way, they should remember theyღ are now facing a president wꦕho wants a deal, but not at any price. And a president willing to use power if diplomacy fails.
‘Spirit’ of duplicity
With impeachment back, reader 🅠Peter O’Keefe offers a thought about Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He writes: “It is ironic that she refers to her spiritual side during the proceedings but conveniently forgets about this commandment: ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’ ”
Dancing for donors
Things you wish you could unsee.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a fundraisin⭕g pitch, asks recipients to choose from among four short videos of her dancing.
If I contribute, will she stop?
Voir oh dear! Harv-jury woe
Th🐼e Post reports that a potential juror in the Harvey Weinstein sex-assaꩲult trial got off the case after saying a friend “had an encounter” with .
“I do not think I can be a fair juror,” the woman 🔜said before being dismissed.
With about 90 women making public complaints against Weinstein and wall-to-wall media coverage, the hardest part of the trial might be finding jurors w🔥ith an open mind.