And the winner is...the Islamic Republic of Iran

By Claude Salhani - Trend:

Question: What to do if you are a president of a country and your ratings are low and you need to score some major points before you leave office?

Answer: Declare victory and leave as quickly as possible.

By the time the media wakes up to the fact that the agreement reached on July 14 between Iran and the P5+1 over the nuclear issue was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, most people will have forgotten the details, except for a few die-hard analysts and commentators, that most people will resent when they start to go on television saying, “I told you so.” Nobody likes a wise ass.

So victory is declared by both sides: President Barack Obama finally gets “his” deal with Iran finalized before the end of his second term in the White House, which is rapidly approaching, and he will be able to take his victory lap around the Beltway. The American president can now leave the White House with some sort of positive legacy in foreign affairs.

Yet this agreement, which many who have been following the ongoing saga agree, will hardly be worth the paper it will be printed on. Iran will sign then proceed to do whatever it wants to do, as it has always done in the past. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.

When the West wakes up to the fact that Iran did not live up entirely to the agreement, Tehran will at first ignore the accusations as long as possible, then they will play the usual game of passing the accusations around. There will be allegations of a slightly different version of the accords. There will be blame on the translation, the difference of nuance, of meaning of certain words in English as opposed to Farsi, and so on.

Make no mistake about it, Iran plans to become a nuclear power and unless there is a major change of direction in Tehran – which is unlikely in the near future –chances are Iran will become a nuclear power within the next few years.

The US invasion of Iraq was a key factor in getting the Iranian leadership convinced of the need to join the nuclear club. Today the brutality and string of victories scored by the Islamic State (ISIS) and the utter disdain they have of Shiites is a driving force for Tehran to remain on the nuclear track.

Ironically, after toiling hard during his first term to portray Iran as a sponsor of terrorism, Obama is now trying to convince the American people (and himself) that Iran can be a valuable partner in the war against the Islamic State in Syria and in Iraq. And indeed they can and they will because they are right up there with all the others whom ISIS is targeting.

Yet for a month now the U.S. State Department has been defending Iran from suggestions that it was on the verge of violating a requirement to reduce its low-enriched uranium stockpile under a 2013 interim nuclear agreement with major powers.

For the United States in today’s turbulent Middle East, Iran remains the lesser of two evils, but nevertheless, Iran remains as dangerous as it ever was.

Now with sanctions lifted and Iran able to access billions of dollars until now frozen in international banks, there is renewed fear among some US analysts and security specialists that some of this money may be funneled to terrorist organizations.

Or it could divert some of the funds to continue supporting its proxy groups in Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

US presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton addressed a hand-picked audience at a Dartmouth College campaign event a couple of weeks ago saying that even if the US were to finalize a deal with Iran, there will still be problems with that country. Clinton called the Iranians “the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism.”

That may well be so, but today there are terrorist groups that are far more dangerous than Iran. At the present time the primary threat is the Islamic State. They are the most radical, the most brutal, and the most dangerous.

/By Trend/