Appeasement: Obama’s Secret Letter to Khamenei

MW-CY442_obama__20141105115645_ZHThe Wall Street Journal headline on November 6, 2014 stated that “Obama Wrote Letter to Iran’s (Ayatollah) Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader of Iran) About Fighting Islamic State.” The article described the letter as “secret,” and goes on to say that the October, 2014 letter to Khamenei “[m]arked at least the fourth time Mr. Obama has written to Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since taking office in 2009 and pledging to engage with Tehran’s Islamist government.”

President Obama’s “secret” letter has raised deep concerns among U.S. Middle Eastern allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates, who have expressed their concern that America’s desperate efforts to reach an agreement on the nuclear issue with Tehran might appear as appeasement, and that the U.S. might soften its demands for Iran’s nuclear disarmament. They are worried that the Obama administration’s eagerness to get an agreement might leave the radical Iranian regime with the capability to produce a nuclear weapon.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to the revelation concerning the “secret” letter to Khamenei, saying, “I think the struggle with ISIS doesn’t need to come at the expense of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear arms.”

Reacting to Obama’s “secret” letter, Linda Heard’s column in the Saudi based Arab News (November 11, 2014), stated that

Iranian tanks rumbling over Iraqi soil is guaranteed to throw a match on the embers of sectarian conflict, would serve as a recruiting tool for Daesh [the Arabic term for ISIS], and inflame Sunni tribes. Furthermore, this does nothing to allay the concerns of Gulf States that the U.S. may be cooking up a Grand Bargain with Iran to act as its geopolitical proxy. Those fears are exacerbated by America’s pivot east, not to mention that the luster of Arab oil has diminished now that the U.S. is on its way to becoming the world biggest oil producer. The question uppermost is this; Is Obama throwing Sunni States under an Iranian bus?

During his first six months in office, President Barack Obama wrote two letters to Khamenei calling for improvement in Iranian-U.S. relations. To many Iranian liberals who sought more freedom from the oppressive clerical regime, it amounted to appeasement of the Ayatollahs. Moreover, it only served to heighten Khamenei’s contempt for the U.S. and President Obama.

Ayatollah Khamenei rejected Obama’s overtures for improved relations, and in the words of Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, the latest letter smacks of “Obama chasing after Khamenei in the undignified and counterproductive manner of a frustrated suitor.” Suzanne Maloney, writing for the  Brookings Institute (November 7, 2014) concludes:

There is simply no plausible scenario in which a letter from the President of the United States to Ali Khamenei generates greater Iranian flexibility on the nuclear program, which the regime has paid an exorbitant price to preserve, or somehow pushes a final agreement across the finish line. Just the opposite – the letter undoubtedly intensified Khamenei’s contempt for Washington and reinforced his longstanding determination to extract maximalist concessions from the international community. It is a blow to the delicate end-game state of play in the nuclear talks at the precise moment when American resolve was needed most.

The November 24, 2014 deadline for the final nuclear agreement between the five permanent representatives on the UN Security Council (U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France) and Germany with Iran is fast approaching. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the outgoing EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton met in Muscat, Oman last weekend with Javad Zarif, the Iranian Foreign Minister.

It is likely that the U.S. administration, through John Kerry, urged the Iranians to be more flexible and indicated its desire to reach an agreement, even if it leaves Iran with the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. The Iranians are bent on retaining their right to enrich uranium and keeping their existing nuclear infrastructure intact. Kerry, on the other hand, seeks to create the impression that the U.S. will adhere to President Obama’s pledge to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Former U.S. Representative Dan Burton wrote in the Washington Times (2/19/2014),

Based on Iran’s history of lies, deception and hostility, why should we believe they are playing square now? Giving Iran $7 billion in cash while leaving in place one of the most sophisticated enrichment programs in the world is not an act of faith; it is an act of appeasement.  Appeasement did not work in the 1930’s with Adolf Hitler. It did not work in the 1990’s with North Korea. It will not work in 2014 with Iran.

Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), who co-authored a bill with Bob Menendez (D-NJ) that imposed tough sanctions on Iran, reacted to President Obama’s letter saying that “The best way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to quickly pass the bipartisan Menendez-Kirk legislation — not to give the Iranians more time to build a bomb.” John Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the House, said, “I don’t trust the Iranians — I don’t think we need to bring them into this.” Referring to the continuing nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, Speaker Boehner said he “would hope that the negotiations that are under way are serious negotiations, but I have my doubts.”

In an ironic twist, Khamenei actually blames the U.S. for creating ISIS and al-Qaeda as a way to weaken the Islamic world. It is perhaps a more honest response than the Taqiyya (a form of religious dissimulation or deception of one’s enemy) artists such as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who have appeared to have charmed the Obama administration and the British government that recently reopened its Tehran embassy.

The Obama administration appears to have concluded that the Islamic Republic of Iran would be the best American deputy to guard the region and insure the region’s stability. For the Ayatollahs, this couldn’t be a better prospect. For a long time, Iran has sought to become the hegemon of the region. With the U.S. destroying Iran’s rivals, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, it paved the way for Tehran to spread the Shiite arc. Haider al-Abadi’s Iraq, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, and Hezbollah controlled Lebanon are now tributaries of Iran. The Arab Gulf states can expect increased intimidation from Iran. Israel faces an existential threat from a nuclear armed and hegemonic Iran.

And yet, other than in the realm of terrorism, Iran has little ability on its own to project power. Its air force is antiquated, and its regular army is relatively weak. Khamenei’s threat that “if America makes the wrong move toward Iran, the shipment of energy will definitely face danger” is rather hollow given U.S. capabilities. In fact, the U.S. Navy has the capacity to eliminate the entire Iranian navy in an hour. It is America’s consistent appeasement of Iran despite its unpunished attacks on Americans in Lebanon, (241 U.S. Marines killed in 1983, U.S. embassy in Beirut bombed) Saudi Arabia, (Khobar towers bombing 19 American servicemen killed and hundreds wounded), and Iraq (Improvised Explosive Devises killing numerous American soldiers) that has emboldened the Ayatollahs of Iran. President Obama’s letter to Khamenei appears to smack of further appeasement.

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  • EamonnDublin

    The headline should read: “The Antichrist’s Secret Letter to Khamenei”.

  • bitterlyclinging

    You cannot negotiate with madmen.
    No sooner had the door to Hitler’s study in Munich closed behind Neville Chamberlain, hurrying heading home to England to triumphantly present his “Peace in our time’ document to the British people and the Western Democracies, Hitler turned to his Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop, both men angered because Chamberlain had acquiesced completely to their demands depriving them of “Their war”, and both agreed they would not be so deprived the next time.
    Obama is one of only two possibilities, a complete bufoon, or the Devil himself.

    • kasandra

      I think we can put out of our minds the possibility that he is a buffoon. He is certainly getting intelligence on Iran from our intelligence community and foreign leaders. Nor can he be oblivious to their history of acts against the U.S. (BTW, I’ve always believed that they contracted out the blowing up of PanAm 103 to Libya in return for our shoot down of Iran Air 655.) He also cannot be ignorant of Iran’s numerous deceptions or Ruhani’s public statements concerning how he deceived the Europeans in negotiations. If you and I know about these, you can bet Obama does, too. So that leaves one possibility.

    • bigjulie

      I vote “BUFOON”!

      • bitterlyclinging

        An exceedingly clever bufoon, at that. I lean more toward the Devil himself. Obama, demonstrating a talent that hints at the height of laziness, never, ever makes an unnecessary move
        My high school Western Civ teacher, a marvelously bright fellow, at the time fourteen years after the war had ended, was convinced that WWII was a biblical event because of Hitlers and Germany’s attempt to specifically eliminate the Jews, but we were too close in time to the actual event to recognize it as such, “not being able to see the woods from the trees” etc The United States was still a staunchly Christian nation, FDR asked the American people the afternoon of June 6th, 1944 to go into a church that day and say a prayer for the success of the D-Day Invasion, at the time and largely responsible for Hitler being unable to achieve his goal. If you were the Devil, still intent on destroying the Jews, its highly likely you would send your next emissary to debilitate the people who thwarted your plan the last time.
        Obama has de facto declared war on the American people. He is at this moment actively orchestrating an invasion by foreign forces on our shores, weakening our military, subverting Christianity and our culture, strengthening and emboldening our enemies.

        • bigjulie

          He has a lot of help in his “cleverness”. He is somewhat “learned” but hardly of impressive intelligence. His actions in his “war on the American People” seem to me to be more vengeful than ideological. He did not have the most impressive childhood, by a long shot and I believe his ability to parlay his “talents and gifts” are really the actions of others who recognized that, with his looks and voice, he could be easily “sold” to a wide variety of Americans by simply attiring him to a “T”, and giving him the correct words to say at the right time, via Teleprompter, which he uses like a Stradivarius in the hands of a gifted violinist. Extemporaneously speaking, he is a klutz! You will notice that, when he speaks, the Teleprompter is NEVER shown, giving the impression that he is really a forceful extemporaneous speaker.
          The suits, the bearing, the head tilts, even the Black patois he uses when speaking to a Black audience, is all carefully crafted and coached. The man is, in my opinion, a fraud, carefully crafted by the Axelrods of the world, who are paid a lot of money to do so.
          Fortunately, a lot of people are now “catching on”, but it is late in the game for Americans trying to recapture their original great country. We have even bigger bufoons leading congress right now, and Obama can do a lot more damage to America in the time he has left!

    • knowshistory

      buffoon? nah. he is by my estimate, in the 40 percentiles of human intelligence, with an iq well into the 90′s. the reason he will not release his grades is that every teacher he ever dealt with realized he was of sub-par wit, and was not actually qualified to be in college. his main advantage is that he keeps his mouth shut unless reading, from a teleprompter, someone else’s words. when off the tele, his words speak for themselves. not a buffoon, just a lettuce picker that never learned to pick lettuce. the devil? nah. the devil is just a made up entity to explain the evil in people’s hearts. the devil made me do it! has been standard fare for centuries. then came mohammed, and a unique innovation: allah made me do it. murder? approved by allah. treachery and treaty breaking and lying: allah made me do it. rape: allah again. pedophilia: allah told me to do it. genocide: allah approves. Obama isn’t the devil. he is just a good muslim, doing what good muslims do: kill infidels for allah. it is fortunate for us that he does not possess even average intellect. think what holder could have done in the white house.

      • bitterlyclinging

        Receiving financial aid as a Kenyan foreign student would be another reason to not release your college transcripts when running for President Of The United States. There’s too much about Obama to dismiss him as having a diminutive intellect. Better to regard him as possessing a 200 plus IQ when dealing with him, rather than be contemptuous and suddenly find yourself outwitted. He is a worthy adversary. Once he’s dead, you can make any claims or statements you wish.

  • Toa

    The Iranians already think Obama is a fool, and they’ve made it known for some time.
    He is just too full of himself and his “Liberal” designs to even acknowledge it.

  • Pete

    It was a mash note.

  • Pete
  • USARetired

    America should be even more concerned that Obama is secretly corresponding with an enemy of America, which could be construed as treason!