[Politico]The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

Hezbollah ain't forcing Americans to stuff **** up their noses are they? I think A Nuke is a bigger threat to America than some coke. Tell me how many Hezbollah attack were committed in the US since Obama became president.

 

Drugs are less important than the nuclear deal?

 

Waiting for Breitbart confirmation.

Isn't that how a negotiation works? We want this but they want that and you give them that for this.

Anyway, Trump said this was the worst deal ever and would scrap it right away. I guess he forgot? The Trump technique of bashing things in the press and then silently going along in private with whatever he was bashing in public seems lost on most of you.

 

Hezbollah be exporting that Red Leb.

 

I completely believe Obama would do what the article claims. Real governance and leadership is full of damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't decisions. For those who hate the Iran nuclear deal (Fox, Friends, and fans), they would say he made the wrong choice.

Not having all the information in front of me that he had in front of him, I don't know what I would have done. I hate anything that let's more coke into the country, but clearly, if it ain't Iranian coke, someone else will supply it. Americans want lots of drugs, an absurd amount of drugs. :-(

So, if I follow the article, it's possible he could have decreased, at least for a time, the supply of coke into the US, throttled Hezbollah in the process, but then been much less likely to keep Iran at the table for the nuclear deal.

I'm not privy to his thinking, but I would bet, based on his tone and themes for 8 years, his thinking went something like:
* start with the nuclear deal to slow their nuclear program and show them what it might be like to really be part of the international community
* as they join the international community, slowly, you keep enticing them with carrots, and hitting them gently with sticks.
* eventually crack down on Hezbollah as Iran moderates in the future.
* wonderful future moment of international cooperation and everyone joining hands with inspiring music

As usual, Obama was pretty optimistic about humanity and the will of people in other countries to yearn for democracy. I see less evidence of that than he does, and I am less optimistic than he is. As it is, hard to evaluate this particular decision until we get another 5-10 years of monitoring Iran and their nuke program and the evolution of their government.

(By the way, seriously an odd statement about lefties not being capable of criticizing Obama. Lefties seem much more willing to criticize their "team" than other parties I can think of. Lots of criticism of him from lefties. It was nothing like the criticism for Two Scoops, but good lord, the latter is an unstudied, and quite possibly compromised man of, by evidence, failing mental health. Just because a bunch of us didn't join in the Kenyan Muslim train, or some of the other nonsense, doesn't mean we can't rationalize criticize him. I for one thought he was often tone deaf to middle America, too friendly with the tech industry, too active internationally, and too warm and fuzzy with drone strikes that have killed too many foreign civilians.)

 

Of course there are choices a President must make that are less than ideal to gain progress on something that in the scheme of things is more critical to US security. That's just a fact but you present a good point about "lefties". It seems anyone left of crazy is a lefty and they support all Democrats but the reality is far different. A lot of "lefties" are incredibly opposed to the corporate Democrat governance of Obama. Any attempt to seriously engage "lefties" would discover this fact quite easily. In fact there are quite few far left posters on this board, glynch being the prime example. To glynch's credit, when the Bush administration was gearing up for war in Iraq it was glynch who stood behind his contention that it was all a big lie and he was right where a lot of other posters fell right in line with Bush.

 

Okay, I had to brainstorm for a few minutes but I think I've got it.

Really, it sounds like the DEA was getting really close to doing foreign affairs work given Hezbollah's relationships with Iran, Palestinians, etc. It sounds like a great op that could be leveraged by the State department if that's what the State department wants. If it's just the DEA that wants it though, and it runs afoul of our foreign policy interests, it should take a seat. So, is there someone to be blamed? If there is, it's definitely Obama. I guess it depends on how much you like the Iran deal.

Fortunately, now that Trump is in charge, I don't see why DEA wouldn't have the green light to go forward with it now.

 

Well, I'm not sure that's generally accepted on this BBS.

 

Gave them their money back to make the bolded more accurate.

Why would you assume nothing productive would happen in between that time?

Is it because Trump is further allying with Saudi Arabia and it's monarch's power consolidation, which is a bitter enemy of Iran? If your ego just needs to hear Obama's Middle East foreign policy sucked, then it overall sucked. Anything sort of leaving the region will further draw the US and its resources into the region.

How do you feel about what Trump is doing? What is he doing differently and what does it mean for the US in your eyes?

 

Yes, I was accurate. Thank you.

Any compensation? No idea, wasn't there. Honestly, though I would imagine it was more of a good faith type of offer.

What do you mean kicked off? I think this has been "kicked off" for awhile, no?

Fair point. It's all in the execution and sometimes you lose time to see things through. Can the US unilaterally prevent the rogue or questionable nations from obtaining a nuclear bomb? I'd say no and it's pretty obvious when you see who has nukes. I wouldn't put the entire failures of the world on the US or the outcome of relations on one man when it comes to nuclear deterrent.

And since then the Green Revolution occurred and the most moderate president since before the Iranian Revolution was re-elected.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from 2003- 2013, was a bad dude who represented the worst aspects of a rogue nation. However, he was actually very unpopular because him and the clerics were much more "fundamentalist" and brutal. The aforementioned, Green Revolution happened, but he was still in. Fortunately, the will of the people is slowly forcing more moderation under the eyes of the clerics.

Money from Saudi Arabia helped sponsor 9/11 and backed terrorist against our forces in Iraq as well and they are our allies. They also bombing the **** out of a defenseless Yemen, our allies.

Lame.

You're "honestly unsure" yet you quickly figured out it immediately...

You'd think it was self evident, but you'd find a lot of people still supporting players in the Middle East that don't need our support.

It is when I bring it up as one can't talk about geopolitical events without talking about the future. A pitfall of democracy is a 180 in policy making. One would never know what would happen with Hillary but there's a better chance we wouldn't have swung so sharply back offering ice cold handshakes to Iran.

Obama ultimately failed because he ran out of time and someone with a more similar mindset didn't follow. The events are shaping up quite rapidly in the region with the Saudi/Israel/US alliance taking shape against an Iran/Russia.

 

Politico is a left leaning paper and it is doing a piece criticizing Obama, and you are wondering how the left will blame anyone but Obama?

 

Out of curiosity, do you know anything about the inspections process with the various North Korea deals and the inspections process with Iran? Like ... anything at all? Why would you think it makes sense to compare the two and assume if one failed, the other would too?

Or is "inspections" all you know and your next thought it "see, it must be the same thing!"

My overall comment about your thoughts on this topic is that you don't know really anything of substance on the topic and/or just wanted to use it as an opportunity to rant about lefties. If you're actually interested in at least sounding like or just pretending to know what you're talking about, there's a lot of information about there about the specifics of the deal.

 

10 years without a war?

 

You do realize that Americans work with the IAEA, right? Or do you think the inspectors on the ground work in isolation and Americans don't have any access? Do you not trust British or French inspectors? Are they working against us? Do you blame a country for not allowing people from a country that's branded them the Axis of Evil into their research facilities? Would we trust Iranians to inspect anything of ours? We gave them something they wanted - no Americans on site - in exchange for something that didn't matter since our allies get to be on site and it doesn't affect anything. In return, we'd get something that has value to us. It's called smart negotiating.

Is this a real question? How do you think we have evidence of Iran's nuclear activities over the past decade without inspecting? Again, I would say you don't appear to have a lot of knowledge about how this all works.

Did the quote you just provided really say that the IAEA refuses to inspect these areas but inspectors found traces of uranium there?

I'll raise your 2 guys and give you 80:

https://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2017-iran-deal-experts-statement

Almost universally, this deal has been hailed as extraordinarily well designed by international nuclear proliferation experts. It was done when the deal was made and it has been done since. Or if you don't trust the Americans, how about the fact that much of the Israeli security establishment believes it is effective and supports it?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dail...s-disagree-with-netanyahu-about-the-iran-deal

Largely because the lessons we learned from the NK deals were at the heart of the negotiations on the Iran deal. The Iran deal may fail also, but it won't remotely be for the same reasons as NK - the two deals are not remotely similar. And, of course, there's the fact that North Korea and Iran are not similar in their circumstances, motivations, leadership, or anything else. Why you think they'd act the same ways, I have no idea.

 

All that said, there are legitimate criticisms of the deal. But "North Korea failed, so this will too" is not amongst them. It's simply extraordinarily stupid.