The Lame Duck Who’s Dancing

The famous lame duck got some fabulous physical therapy, because President Obama—the lame duck in question– is flexing his muscles against his political opponents, and winning handily. So far, he’s guaranteed that Congress will be unable to block his big deal with Iran, and is now pushing to silence those opposed to it by having the Democrats stage a filibuster. Wouldn’t that be something?

As Lee Smith says, the president and the Iran Lobby—NIAC– have effectively crushed the legendary Israel Lobby—AIPAC–thereby presaging potentially significant changes in the lobbying firmament. I’m told by people in a position to know such things that we can expect some changes in the ranks of AIPAC as a result. To be sure, I’ve always felt that the power of the Israel Lobby was rather overstated (I think the two most influential Washington lobbies work with/for China and Saudi Arabia), but however you measure it, the president’s won a big one.

And yet, every victory contains seeds of defeat, and The Deal, which is the fulfillment of the president’s longstanding and fervent dream to embrace the Islamic Republic of Iran, may be the first step in a nightmare scenario for both the president and much of the world. For the essence of The Deal is that we are giving tens of billions of dollars to Iran…to kill Americans. The American people get that, and they don’t like it.

Indeed, in tandem with the president’s mounting strength in Congress, public opinion polls show steady growth in public rejection of The Deal. And the opponents of The Deal are not folding their tents. On Tuesday, I participated in a Manhattan rally aimed at pressuring Senator Gillibrand to reverse her announced position, and vote against The Deal, and there were seven thousand participants on 3rd Avenue. The organizers were hoping for one thousand. In Baltimore, there was a similar demonstration to pressure Senator Cardin to vote ‘no.’

Suppose the planets stay in their current orbits, The Deal is signed by President Obama, and public distaste continues to grow. Then something bad happens, as it so often does. For starters, the Iranians might not approve The Deal. At the moment, it is supposed to be debated in the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) starting the 21st, and that body has already passed a law that prohibits the government from signing an agreement that crosses some of the red lines that are, in fact, in The Deal, including restrictions on missiles and other conventional weapons, as well as inspections of Iranian military facilities.

What if the Iranian Parliament demands The Deal be changed to accommodate their law?

It seems fanciful, and it would ignite a firestorm in the Iranian political universe, but the firestorm is white-hot already, what with the maneuvering among the various factions to determine the successor to the long-suffering supreme leader. And remember that the leader himself, Ali Khamenei, does not want to sign a deal with the Great Satan. Yes, he wants money (the better to kill us), but he’s getting money right now. We’ve been releasing roughly $700 million a month for more than two years, and Tehran is spending a lot of cash on terrorism (one of their networks was just rolled up in Kuwait before it could act, and another one has been found in Thailand after a recent attack).

Even grimmer events might occur. Remember when we caught the Iranians planning to blow up a chic restaurant in Washington? No doubt there are other such schemes afoot, and one of them might come off. Then President Obama is suddenly transformed from a visionary who crushed his domestic opposition into a dreamer who signed a deal with a regime that murdered us here in our homeland.

I’m not predicting such events, just saying that they could happen. Life is full of surprises.   Even if you’re a medical miracle, a dancing duck who was diagnosed as lame.