Obama's Path to an Imperial Presidency

President Barack Obama has just taken another giant step towards implementing his imperial presidency.

The announcement in yesterday’s New York Times that he will seek an Iran deal “that will avoid Congress” reveals his utter contempt for the American people. Moreover, it shows us that what clearly will be a very, very bad deal is one he hopes to portray as proof that he has brought stability to the Middle East, and that — just as he had argued — Iran has shown that it is cooperative, is under “moderate” leadership, and has proved that it wants peace and can be a partner of the United States.

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As the Times story by David E. Sanger puts it: “President Obama will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it.” He will do it with a sleight-of-hand semantic trick which involves removing sanctions on Iran without Congressional approval, which a Treasury Department study evidently argues that he can do. By calling it simply an “agreement” and not a treaty, Obama thinks he can accept a bad deal and legally not have to obtain a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

The reason he wants to do this is obvious: even if the Democrats control the Senate, he would not have enough votes for a treaty to pass.

We have known for a long time that the Obama administration has decided that Iran can have a bomb and still act responsibly, despite its proven support of international terrorism and its promise to destroy Israel. In the mind of the administration’s so-called “realists,” letting Iran have a bomb will make it an equal player among the world’s nuclear powers. Then, the old doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (appropriately dubbed MAD) will be honored by the Ayatollahs, just as the Soviet Union worked with its main antagonist, the United States, to carry on its conflict without using the atomic weapons they possessed.

Of course, the apparatchiks of the Kremlin subscribed to the materialist Marxist-Leninist theory. Unlike the religious zealotry of the commissars, the Mullahs subscribe to a reading of Islam that demands the eventual triumph of the Caliphate that will make Iran a leading world power, and a perch from which Sharia law will be the law of the land wherever it attains hegemony.

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A solid argument warning against the deal was made by Dennis Ross, Eric Edelman, and Ray Takeyh in The Washington Post some time ago. The three former policy makers note the following:

The ebbs and flows of the war on terrorism should not be allowed to conceal the fact that the theocratic Iranian regime and its attempt to upend the regional order remains the United States’ most consequential long-term challenge in the Middle East.

The Islamic republic is not a normal nation-state seeking to realize its legitimate interests but an ideological entity mired in manufactured conspiracies. A persistent theme of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speeches is that the United States is a declining power whose domestic sources of strength are fast eroding. In today’s disorderly region, Iran sees a unique opportunity to project its influence and undermine the United States and its system of alliances.

The Times and others, including anyone in the Obama administration, might just as well read any of the columns on PJ Media by Michael Ledeen, who more than anyone else has been telling the hard truth about the true nature of the Iranian regime. Ledeen has continually explained the game the Mullahs have been playing, of which our president has become a patsy.

To date, the president has ignored such advice from those who have long been involved in Middle East affairs. Now,  we at least have bipartisan opposition to the kind of deal Obama wants to accept.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R, IL) said: “Congress will not permit the president to unilaterally unravel Iran sanctions that passed the Senate in a 99 to 0 vote.” Senator Robert Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, (D, NJ) boldly stated: “If a potential deal does not substantially and effective dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program, I expect Congress will respond. An agreement cannot allow Iran to be a threshold nuclear state.”

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Obama’s dangerous foreign policy has thus achieved the impossible: uniting Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. They are intent on preventing a deal that depends largely on Iran’s good word, which as we all know, does not amount to much.

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