The West Dances to Iran’s Tune
Iran has requested a new pause in the talks in Vienna, negotiations which purportedly aim to bring the US back into the 2015 agreement and roll back Iran’s nuclear activities. Too bad that that agreement is already obsolete. But, the negotiators don’t care about that. It’s all about pretending to do something to curb Iran’s relentless pursuit of WMD and getting back to lucrative trade with Iran.
US negotiator Rob Malley said Tuesday (12/22/21), “At some point in a not-so-distant future we will have to conclude the JCPOA is no more and we would have to negotiate a wholly different deal and we would go through a period of escalating crisis,” he added.
Reiterating Malley’s weak, ill defined, no-deadline pronouncement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that he was not going to set a deadline. “I’m not going to put a time limit on it, but the remaining runway for a deal is getting very, very, very short.” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-negotiator-warns-of-escalating-crisis-if-no-iran-deal-in-next-few-weeks/)
It seems to me that the democratic countries negotiating with Iran either don’t care if Iran gets nuclear weapons, or they sort of care but are the most inept negotiators ever. Russia and China probably don’t want a nuclear-armed Iran, but they must enjoy the Western countries’ discomfiture. Meanwhile, the autocracies continue to trade with Iran, propping up its economy.
The Europeans have collaborated with the Palestinian Arab terrorists against Israel in the past, so a repetition of that with Iran isn’t a problem. European diplomats are OK* with sacrificing Israeli/Jewish lives to save their own skins. But besides the obvious immorality, how did that perfidious deal work out for them? Not well at all, since the terrorists soon turned their attacks on softer European targets.
*Note: Italy allowed Palestinian terrorists to attack Jewish targets on Italian territory in exchange for a guarantee that the terrorists would not attack non-Jewish, Italian targets. France negotiated the same kind of shameful agreement as Italy at the expense of Israelis/Jews, as revealed in 2018 by Yves Bonnet, former director of the French intelligence service DST. (https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/12/italy-and-france-allowed-jihad-attacks-on-jewish-facilities-on-condition-they-didnt-attack-non-jewish-targets)
Russia envoy Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted that the very brief [so-called] negotiations was, “successful in a sense that it prepared sound basis for more intensive negotiations.” That’s precisely what the Iranians desire, more time wasted on “negotiations.”
The talks are very good for Russia as well as China. It’s obvious that the Iranian negotiators run rings around the Western ones, and have done so repeatedly. “Tehran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri said there were ‘hard and intense negotiations’ to agree on the ‘bases’ for further talks which will take place ‘in the near future.’” https://www.timesofisrael.com/irans-nuclear-breakout-time-now-really-short-us-official/
And so it goes: Iran advances its nuclear weapons program, the West blah-blahs, Iran steps away from negotiations, the West blah-blahs, Iran nears its goal to threaten the region with nuclear attacks. Blah, blah, blah…
Below is an excerpt from an article I wrote in 2015, which remains valid today. Have the leaders of the US and the West learned nothing? I get that China and Russia enjoy watching Iran humiliate and threaten the West; it’s what they do themselves. But what’s the excuse of Western governments?
BAZAAR [BIZARRE] DIPLOMACY
Emeritus Professor Moshe Sharon of the Hebrew University famously lectured on negotiations in the Middle East. He wrote: “To achieve their goal, the Arabs took to the battlefield and to bazaar diplomacy. The most important rule in the bazaar is that if the vendor knows that you desire to purchase a certain piece of merchandise, he will raise its price. …
“This is the wisdom of the bazaar, if you are clever enough you can sell ‘nothing’ at a price. The Arabs sell words, they sign agreements, and they trade with vague promises, but are sure to receive generous down payments from eager buyers. In the bazaar only a foolish buyer pays for something he has never seen.
“There is another rule in the market as well as across the negotiating table: the side that first presents his terms is bound to lose; the other side builds his next move using the open cards of his opponent as the starting point.
“In all its negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs, Israel has always rushed to offer its plans, and was surprised to discover that after an agreement had been ‘concluded’ it had become the basis for further demands.” From Professor Sharon’s book, Jihad, Islam Against Israel and the West.
Professor Sharon wrote about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The same applies today to the West and the Iranians. The West has the stronger hand versus Iran, but doesn’t use it. The P5+1 are richer, stronger, bigger, and even have more energy resources (if American energy sources are fully utilized). Yet Iran has endlessly spun out negotiations over years, allowing it to achieve nuclear weapons breakout, or perhaps “only” near-breakout capability. Iran has not been penalized for being the greatest funder of global terror, nor is it penalized (or even chastised) for continually saying that Israel must be annihilated. Iran has faced no impediment to becoming the strongest Muslim power in the region, and is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles which have no use except to deliver nuclear payloads. THIS MUST BE STOPPED!