Posted by John Hinderaker
The Democrats are trying to make a scandal
out of the fact that representatives of the Trump campaign communicated with
Russians, even though those communications were 100% appropriate. I had
forgotten about this post, which I wrote in March 2015, until Rush Limbaugh
read from it on his program. It reminds us what a REAL scandal
involving a presidential campaign and foreign policy looks like:
In 2008, the Bush administration, along with the “six
powers,” was negotiating with Iran concerning that country’s nuclear arms
program. The Bush administration’s objective was to prevent Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons. On July 20, 2008, the New
York Times headlined: “Nuclear Talks With Iran End in a Deadlock.” What
caused the talks to founder? The Times explained:
Iran responded with a written document that failed to
address the main issue: international demands that it stop enriching uranium.
And Iranian diplomats reiterated before the talks that they considered the
issue nonnegotiable.
The Iranians held firm to their position, perhaps
because they knew that help was on the way, in the form of a new president.
Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. At some
point either before or after that date, but prior to the election, he
secretly let the Iranians know that he would be much easier to bargain with
than President Bush. Michael Ledeen reported
the story last year:
During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama
used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend
of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The
secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the
shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his
conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.
So Obama secretly told the mullahs not to
make a deal until he assumed the presidency, when they would be able to make a
better agreement. Which is exactly what happened: Obama
abandoned the requirement that Iran stop enriching uranium, so that Iran’s
nuclear program has sped ahead over the months and years that negotiations have
dragged on. When an interim agreement in the form of a “Joint Plan of Action”
was announced in late 2013, Iran’s leaders exulted
in the fact that the West had acknowledged its right to continue its
uranium enrichment program:
“The (nuclear) program will continue and all the
sanctions and violations against the Iranian nation under the pretext of the
nuclear program will be removed gradually,” [Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif] added. …
“Iran’s enrichment program has been recognized both in
the first step and in the goals section and in the final step as well,” Zarif
said.
“The fact that all these pressures have failed to cease
Iran’s enrichment program is a very important success for the Iranian nation’s
resistance,” he added.
So Obama delivered the weak agreement that he
had secretly promised the mullahs.
That, readers, is what a real scandal
looks like.
