A NOBEL FOR KERRY?  REALLY? – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:  The drums are already being beaten on behalf of a Nobel Peace Prize for John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart.  Kerry wants one desperately, maybe a kind of consolation prize for not being elected president. 

The Nobel Peace Prize is, of course, a joke.  It is not like the real Nobel prizes, in categories like physics, chemistry and medicine.  It is given in Oslo by a bunch of leftist Norwegian parliamentarians.  It has never advanced peace.  Indeed, it has often been given to those whose "peacemaking" actually led to war.  Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe nails it:

On Wednesday, a director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an influential think tank with ties to the Nobel organization, recommended that the 2016 prize be awarded to Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The Vienna deal is a capitulation to one of the worst regimes on earth. Far from requiring the Iranians to dismantle their illicit nuclear program, the accord leaves almost all of it intact. In exchange for little more than a promise to delay its development of nuclear warheads, Tehran is rewarded with $150 billion in sanctions relief and, within a few years, the lifting of the UN embargo on conventional weapons and missile sales. The Islamic Republic is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, yet nothing in the agreement requires any change in its notorious behavior. And despite the regime’s long record of treaty violations and deceit, the deal enables it to stall for almost a month before complying with a demand for access by inspectors — hardly the “anytime, anywhere, 24/7” inspections that the Obama administration had claimed it would insist on.

The White House wanted to sign a deal; Iran’s rulers wanted to ensure their path to the bomb and nuclear legitimacy. Both got what they wanted. The consequences will be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, more Iranian terrorism and subversion, and a greater likelihood of war.

A Nobel Peace Prize — for that?

COMMENT:  Jacoby goes on to note the past failures of the "peace prize."  I would not be shocked if John Kerry gets his prize, and the cash that goes with it.  After all, Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize within a few days of taking office.  Standards are low.

July 24, 2015