MEAD ON OBAMA AND IRAN – If there's one writer I urge you to consult regularly, it's Walter Russell Mead, who teaches at the very liberal Bard College and yet has survived.  Mead, in my view, sees things that others just don't see.

For example, Mead recently wrote that never before have so many American institutions been under liberal control, and yet never before have these same institutions had so little influence.  Think about it.  He's on to something.

Now Mead tackles the president and his bizarre approach to Iran.  From the American Interest: 

Suddenly, we seem to be having the conversation the administration didn’t want to have: a conversation about just where President Obama’s approach to Iran is taking us. A Washington Post editorial has put the issue on the agenda in a way that it will be hard for the spinners and Iran-apologists to dance past, and there are signs that bipartisan concerns are beginning to grow.

The Post, in one of the most important newspaper editorials of recent years, signals out three important concerns with the President’s approach:

First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and restrict that capability.

Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.

Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran — including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress — without seeking a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.

As the Post points out, a cavalcade of distinguished American foreign policy voices, including Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, have issued warnings that the White House seems to have lost its way as it tries to navigate the complex minefield that is U.S.-Iranian relations. As my colleague Michael Doran has recently pointed out in an article that contributed to the rising disquiet about the administration’s Iran strategy, the approach to Iran has been the centerpiece of the administration’s Middle East strategy from 2009 to the present day.

What’s interesting is that the growing disquiet about our Iran policy isn’t over the basic decision to negotiate with Iran. Although as usual the White House tries to portray its opponents as hot heads whose unreasoning hatred of Iran combines with a love of war to create a blind opposition to the President’s sensible and rational preference for diplomacy, the debate is not about whether to negotiate with Iran. It is about how to ensure that those negotiations advance important American interests.

COMMENT:  Please read the whole thing.  You won't be disappointed.  Mead ends with a severe criticism of the manner in which Obama is pursuing his Iran policy, if in fact he has one.  The alarm is being raised.  We can never say we didn't know.

February 10, 2015