All of a sudden Iran’s all over the news — and not in a good way.
Item: Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman promised to unearth evidence that his country’s president, Cristina Kirchner, is whitewashing Iran’s role in the most significant terror attacks in the country’s history. Monday morning, as he was set to show the evidence in Congress, Nisman was mysteriously found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment.
Item: Gen. Mohammed Ali Allah-Dadi was a top Iranian military official in Syria, leading his country’s efforts to keep butcher Bashar al-Assad in power. On Sunday, Dadi was killed, along with six operators of Iran and its Lebanese puppet, Hezbollah, on the Golan Heights. Jerusalem officials say the group was busy preparing an attack on Israel.
Item: Abed Mansour Hadi is Yemen’s elected president, championed by America as the country’s best hope for a better future. On Tuesday his palace was captured and his home attacked. Even if he survives, Hadi’s reign is likely over, unseated by a Shiite group known as the Houthis, Iran’s proxy in Yemen.
Oh, and one other, unrelated, item: Secretary of State John Kerry was in Geneva, Switzerland, last week, strolling on a beautiful riverside promenade next to Muhamad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister.
Zarif later said the walk was Kerry’s idea — a photo-op as they tried to advance the talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
And just to make sure that talks are uninterrupted, President Obama told Congress this week “hold your fire.” He vowed to veto legislation that would reinstate sanctions and add new ones if Iran fails once more to sign that elusive nuclear pact this spring.
Entering the “legacy” leg of his presidency, Obama may think he’ll be enshrined in history with a treaty ending Iran’s nuclear pursuit. This, even as it’s fairly clear that the mullahs are far more interested in negotiating an agreement on ending their nuclear pursuit than in ever actually reaching a deal.
And even as America plays the dope in Iran’s rope-a-dope diplomacy, Tehran is expanding its influence with an eye on achieving regional hegemony.
Obama once told The New Yorker that “equilibrium” between Iran’s Shiites and Gulf Sunnis would create a Mideast where “there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.”
For now, proxy warfare is everywhere. And while Sunni baddies (ISIS, al Qaeda) are in our cross hairs, chasing “equilibrium” to confront them is a lose-lose game.
Already, our old Syria war slogan, “Assad must go,” is all but gone. Instead, some in Washington are willing to tolerate Assad, Iran’s ally, as long as he helps us crush ISIS. In Iraq, Iranians and their proxies dominate the Iraqi army, which we arm and finance in hopes it can balance ISIS.
But as this week’s events show, playing footsies with the “enemy of our enemy” is dangerous.
Yes, the Paris attacks were a cruel reminder that the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula is alive and kicking. But while Iran’s Shiite allies in Yemen, the Houthis, are AQAP’s blood enemy, they’re certainly not our friends. (Their “Death to America” chants are just one hint.)
And while Iran and Hezbollah may inflict pain on ISIS, they also maintain their bloody hostility toward our ally, Israel.
When a wolf is loose in the neighborhood, a wise chicken farmer does all he can to protect his coop. But deputizing a fox to protect the chicks? Bad idea.
Nisman, a courageous and thorough investigator, said that Iran was behind an attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 that killed 30 people, after Argentina’s then-President Carlos Menem suspended nuclear cooperation with Tehran. Then, when Menem completely annulled the nuclear agreement in 1994, Iran struck again, killing 86 at AMIA, a Jewish community center in the city.
Which reminds us that the mullahs don’t only covet power over their own neighborhood. Given the opportunity, they go across oceans to attack enemies. So although our interests at times coincide, we certainly should avoid helping Iran widen its influence in the name of “equilibrium.”
Even if Obama still believes that his “legacy” will include a nuclear deal with Tehran, he should be very wary of Iran’s creeping influence.
If the diplomacy fails to stop the mullahs’ nuclear pursuit, and with this week’s news in mind, just imagine Iran’s aggression after it gets the bomb.
