thebigp

Obama's Victory Is Iran's Victory:--47h., b4
A majority of senators and congressmen oppose Obama's signature foreign policy initiative. So does most of the American public, by a two-to-one ratio according to a new poll released last week. In other words, the administration may have won this round, but the fight over the Iran deal isn't over.
The other critical actor is the White House's negotiating partner in Tehran. The clerical regime looks at the American political landscape and sees that it is operating in a protected environment that may change very quickly when a new administration comes to the White House in 16 months. Unlike the Obama White House, the Islamic in Republic understands that the fight over its war weapons program will continue.
But for Obama, the issue was never really whether Iran could be trusted, but how to build Iran's trust in Obama. The American president apologized for imagined t***sgressions against Iran. He backed the regime against the Iranian people when they took to the Streets in June 2009 to protest against their crooked leaders. Obama promised Tehran he wouldn't touch their Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad. The White House repeatedly leaked Israeli operations against Iranian arms shipments to its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. The administration ordered airstrikes against Assad's enemies and thereby helped the Syrian dictator survive, and sent American pilots to fly missions in support of IRGC troops in Iraq.
Still the Iranians must have wondered: Could Obama be trusted? In the negotiations, the White House played the role of Iran's lawyer, defending and supporting Tehran's demands when France and other EU partners demurred. Anyone who was against the deal was putting America on a course to war, according to the president Obama thus signaled to the Iranians that military force was not an option. He wasn't going to hurt them. Really, they should trust him—he had shown them how roughly he treated allies, foreign and domestic, who tried to get in the way of their new relationship.
The Iranian regime sees that it must move quickly to establish facts on the ground. Indeed, it seems Tehran is already moving assets into place. Recently, Ahmed al-Mughassil, the mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Tower bombing that k**led 19 American servicemen and injured 372, was arrested in Beirut while traveling from Tehran on an Iranian passport. Presumably Mughassil was dispatched for a purpose—perhaps to assist Hezbollah a project targeting either Israel or American allies in the Persian Gulf. Last month, Kuwaiti authorities captured an Iranian arms shipment destined for a local Hezbollah cell. Two Iranian diplomats operating out of the embassy in Kuwait City reportedly coordinated the shipment.
The Obama administration is celebrating the Iran deal as a political victory over its opponents—namely, the majority of the American people. But this "victory" comes at a high price. It has provided the Iranians with a window of opportunity. Contrary to the White House's rhetoric arguing that the only alternative to the deal is war, the deal, in strengthening Iran, has made conflict more likely.
source-weekly standard (9/14/15),