March 8^th

Charles Krauthammer in a Washington Post opinion piece has made some of his usual wild exaggerations and a few outright, let’s just call them misstatements. His comments are a truly worshipful analysis of Netanyahu’s speech which he calls “Churchillian;” presumably because both Churchill and Netanyahu were warning about catastrophic future events. One of them was right but so far only one.

Krauthammer claims that Obama has, “… for six years offered the Mullahs an extended hand.” Really? That hand contained some severe sanctions and promised even worse if agreement could not be reached. Why else would Iran be at the negotiating table now if it were not for those sanctions? I’m sure Krauthammer doesn’t believe that they came to negotiate simply because of Obama’s charm.

Krauthammer makes much of the fact that after ten years the deal, assuming there is one, will expire. Naturally there is no possible way that this agreement could be extended if it seems necessary. If Iran agreed to the limits under threat of sanctions why would Krauthammer and Netanyahu believe that the agreement couldn’t be extended? The possibility of an extension would give Obama some credit and that for Krauthammer is simply unthinkable.

Netanyahu suggests some conditions and if these are not met then we “ratchet up sanctions.” For the first time is this diatribe Krauthammer actually mentions sanctions in his comments. Of course the “conditions” Netanyahu wants to place on Iran will have to be monitored and so far nothing has been said that would suggest that Netanyahu believes such monitoring would work. With Krauthammer’s mistrust of Iran you would think he would mention that,  but that would imply some criticism of his hero Netanyahu; unthinkable!