When President Obama said that those in this country who stand in such hysterical opposition to the Iran deal are making common cause with Iranian extremists, he knew he would set off a bomb in the middle of Outer Wingnuttia, and so he has.
Ben Stein leaned into Neil Cavuto on Friday and said it just must be mental illness. What else could possibly cause the President of the United States to negotiate a deal to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon ever, after all?
Here's the thing, though. James Fallows went with a few other journalists and talked to the President after his speech. His observations track with my own, just from watching him deliver cogent arguments for the deal.
The real-world context for Obama’s certainty on these points is his knowledge that in the rest of the world, this agreement is not controversial at all.
There is practically no other big strategic point on which the U.S., Russia, and China all agree—but they held together on this deal. (“I was surprised that Russia was able to compartmentalize the Iran issue, in light of the severe tensions that we have over Ukraine,” Obama said.) The French, Germans, and British stayed together too, even though they don’t always see eye-to-eye with America on nuclear issues. High-stakes measures don’t often get through the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote; this deal did.
Some hardliners in Iran don’t like the agreement, as Obama frequently points out, and it has ramifications for many countries in the Middle East. But in Washington, only two blocs are actively urging the U.S. Congress to reject it. One is of course the U.S. Republican Party. The other is the Netanyahu administration in Israel plus a range of Israelis from many political parties—though some military and intelligence officials in Israel have dissented from Benjamin Netanyahu’s condemnation of the deal.
Read the entire article. It's really well done, and gives some insight into what President Obama does and does not expect in terms of outcomes.
The only mental illness here is the Obama Derangement Syndrome which has infected the entire Republican and Likud parties. Ben Stein has a serious case of it too.
