You may remember that during the president’s first trip abroad he spent two days in Turkey. A little much, I thought. After all, a presidential visit is something of a gift to the host country’s government. And why did Ankara deserve such a gift? Well, it didn’t.
First of all, in 2003, it had barred American troop movement through Iraq from the north. I don’t know exactly how many U.S. deaths accrued because of this ban. But sober estimates tell us that as many as 500 soldiers may have been killed because of the restriction. Since then, the Erdogan regime has been pushing an Islamist agenda at home and an Islamist agenda in foreign policy.
In any case, it was during Obama’s April 2009 visit that he launched his flamboyant (but doomed) seduction of the Muslim orbit, putting an end to his desperate distancing from anything having to do with Arabs or Islam. He has not been rewarded for any of his initiatives—some corny, some embarrassing, some deeply false—by any of the Qur’anic states.
It was clear that Turkey would be one of the several obstacles in the Security Council to sanctions against Iran’s nuclear adventures. Along with Russia, China, and Brazil, all of which the president has also wooed with extravagant but futile gestures. Alas.
Today’s news of the deal consummated among Turkey, Brazil, and Iran is a diplomatic pretext designed to undercut the sanctions regime which was itself being systematically enfeebled so as to get Moscow and Beijing to go along. Poor Mrs. Clinton has been danced out on occasion to assure us that the envisioned restrictions will be tight. At least as of a few hours ago, she has neither been asked nor commanded (nor, for that matter, volunteered herself) to testify to the basic lie once more.
Instead, Robert Gibbs issued a White House statement, the substance and style of which were both mystifying and deceiving.
Isn’t it time we begin a move to expel Turkey from NATO? If Turkey is an ally of civilized Europe, I am a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority.
MEMRI has just released a very smart analysis of the tripartite diplomatic alliance against America. Iran is its locus. But it is not just Iran that will benefit.
Before reading, please take a look at the photograph of the diplomatic goons enjoying their victory over the United States.
The Iran-Turkey-Brazil Nuclear Agreement: In the Iranian Perception, a New World Order Led By Iran
By: A. Savyon
Introduction
As the Obama administration strives for achievements at the NPT review conference currently taking place in New York, Tehran launched a countermove in the nuclear issue vis-à-vis the U.S. and the West.
Tehran, which at the time of this writing is hosting the G-15 conference of developing countries, presented today, May 17, an agreement together with Turkey and Brazil on a uranium exchange deal – after rejecting an identical agreement proposed by the West in late 2009 in the Vienna outline.
According to Tehran, it appears that under this agreement Iran is willing to transfer 1,200 kg of 3.5%-enriched uranium that it has in its possession (out of the stock of 1,600 kg that the West knows about) to Turkey for safekeeping, in order to receive in return 120 kg of 20%-enriched uranium that it needs for the Tehran research reactor. Iran expects the International Atomic Energy Agency, as the body in charge of implementing the NPT, to ensure that Russia enriches the uranium to 20%, and that France turns it into nuclear fuel that will be transferred to Iran, as proposed previously by the Vienna Group (the 5+1). Section 7 of the new agreement ensures Iran's right to back out of the agreement and not to be bound by it if the Vienna Group does not accept it.
Immediately with the signing of the agreement, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the 5+1 to return to the negotiating table.Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast announced that this agreement did not prevent ongoing nuclear enrichment to 20% in Iran, and that this activity would continue as usual.
It was also reported that the details of the agreement would be provided to the IAEA within a week, and that Tehran, together with the agreement's two co-sponsors, Turkey and Brazil, were expecting it to be implemented within a month. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that if Ankara saw that Tehran was not receiving the 20%-enriched uranium, it would return to Iran its entire stock of 1,200 kg of uranium.
The Agreement in the Iranian Perspective
This agreement, which is in effect an Iranian ultimatum to the West and to the IAEA, constitutes a significant Iranian achievement, on two levels:
1. Instituting a new world order, led by Iran. The move and the agreement are the practical implementationof statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the establishment of a new world order, and regarding the need for Tehran to participate in running the world, and even to present a political, cultural, and moral alternative to what it calls the failure of the forces of the old order – the U.S. and the West.
This move attests that Iran has managed to cast out the West, and particularly the U.S., in its drawing up of an agreement on a political and global issue relying onrising forces in the developing world – Brazil, whose nuclear plan has military potential, and Turkey, a regional Islamic force – while the agreement presented in Tehran is the same outline as that proposed to it by the West in Vienna.
The recruitment of Brazil, a major emerging world power and a U.N. Security Council member, has moved the Iranian initiative beyond the Middle East and beyond the Iranian nuclear sphere, making it the first step in the building of a political transregional global front that Iran presents as an alternative to the West's hegemony.
2. The agreement will undermine U.S. and Western efforts for sanctions on Iran: Now that Iran has expressed a practical willingness to compromise on the nuclear issue in the spirit of the West's Vienna outline, Iran considers that the justification for sanctions will completely disappear, and the West itself will now appear rejectionist, and unwilling to share nuclear technology with the third world.