OUR IRAN POLICY IN FREE FALL – AT 7:52 A.M. ET:  Nothing is more important, and more pathetic, than our collapsing policy toward Iran.  The Iranians have won every round.  We keep making excuses.  Steve Hayes, in the Weekly Standard, has a terrific account of how sad things really are.  Just read this first paragraph:

On March 24, Obama administration officials briefed reporters on what was described as a very positive development in the U.S. effort to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon: China had agreed to participate in a conference call to discuss sanctions.

Yeah, that's right.  Our famous victory consisted of getting some Chinese official to get on the phone.  I'm blown away by our influence.

So here we are. After 15 months of pleading with the mullahs and entreating our allies for help, Barack Obama’s Iran policy is such a dismal failure that administration flacks are left to tout as a breakthrough Chinese participation in a phone call to discuss watered-down U.N. sanctions that few believe will work.

And Iran’s enrichment proceeds apace.

Do you get the sense that the president isn't really that interested?  It's hard not to get that sense.

In October 2009, Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton administration official and author of a first-rate history of U.S.-Iranian relations, said, “If by early next year we are getting nothing through diplomacy and sanctions, the entire policy is going to be revealed as a charade.” Plan B, Pollack noted, is “containment,” adding: “In their heart of hearts I think the Obama administration knows that this is where this is going.”

I'm afraid that's right.  We'll "contain" the Iranians, even though suicide is part of the mullah creed.  We'll be sold the line that it's no different from containing the Soviets. 

Well, there are two differences:  1) An Iranian bomb instantly makes iran the major power in the region, an overwhelming loss for the United States, and 2) Iran may just use the bomb, even if it means giving it to a well-controlled terrorist group.

But let's not worry about details.

John McCain, who's been terrific and firm on the iran issue, compares the Obama administration to another infamous government:

He said he had been rereading William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill and was struck by the similarities between the naïveté of Neville Chamberlain and the willingness of the Obama administration to accommodate the mullahs. “They’re just flailing. A few days ago the president said he wanted to talk some more,” McCain said, incredulous, referring to Obama’s message on Nowruz, the Iranian new year, which renewed the administration’s offer for negotiations. The overture, following Iran’s dismissal of several previous “final” deadlines for new talks, is “consistent with the thread of appeasement throughout history. It’s that same idea that if we’re nice to our enemies, they’ll do what we want.”

But that's what The One believes.  He believes in his voice, his words, above all else.  He believes he has come to save us.

Ultimately, of course, it doesn’t matter whether China participates in a conference call about weak U.N. sanctions that will have a negligible effect on Iran’s behavior. And containment, the de facto policy on Iran today, will become the acknowledged Obama administration approach to Iran.

Which means, of course, that Iran will have the bomb.

COMMENT:  Patrick Daniel Moynihan, the late senator from New York, once wrote an essay on "defining deviancy down."  He argued that, once we accept a lower standard in anything – like the rate of crime – we get used to it.  My great fear is that the American people will get used to the deviancy of this administration, its intellectual and moral corruption, and its adoption of 1930s-style appeasement policies.

Remember, troops will be coming home from Iraq.  That's something Americans like to see.  They may be fooled into believing that we're safe, that Obama is succeeding.  And they will be wrong, and their children will pay the price.

March 29, 2010