The Revolution is Over; Cairo Returns to Normal

When the Arab Spring arrived in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Western progressives thrilled to the advance of democracy. New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof camped out in the square to breathe in the heady fumes of democracy on the march. When CBS stupidly sent correspondent Lara Logan to the scene, the results were more like a nightmare.

Journalists had not noticed that Egyptian men had been leading the world in molesting women. Yet, the same journalists thrilled to the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, and ignored the way women were treated under the Sharia Law that Morsi promised to implement.

Anyway, Morsi was overthrown by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the new government cracked down severely on the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist organizations. What happened next shocked the delicate sensibilities of a New York Times reporter. The people of Cairo started acting more normally. They started working out and getting in shape.

Needless to say, the Times was befuddled. Even some Egyptian intellectuals were befuddled. There must be a political explanation for the way young people, in particular, had given up on revolution and had embraced fitness. There must, in short be something wrong with them. If they were working out more it must be a sign of fascist repression.

Leave it to the Times, in a news story, to denounce the wish to be healthier as a sign of political oppression.

Here is the way the Times reported the news:

CAIRO — Egypt’s young people have once again taken to the streets. This time, though, they are in spandex and on bicycles, in kayaks and sculls on the Nile, doing street workouts in the slums of Giza or CrossFitexercises in makeshift rooftop gyms.

More than five years after overwhelming numbers filled Tahrir Square in Cairo, deposing President Hosni Mubarak, and three years since the military crackdown that ousted the elected Muslim Brotherhood president and jailed protesters by the thousands, a fitness craze has taken hold. It is a stark departure for a nation that is the 17th most obese in the world, where fast-food joints proliferate and smoking is still the norm in restaurants — and everywhere else. 

Egyptian squash players are among the best in the world, and privileged families have long pushed their children to take up sports, but the new focus on fitness is drawing in people from all classes, with substantial numbers of women, too, and is more about exercise for exercise than about games or competition. Many Egyptians see it as a direct outgrowth of the withering of the political revolution under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that young people are no longer wasting their time tilting at windmills. Perhaps it’s a good thing that they have given up on political revolution. Perhaps it’s about time that they got down to work building their country’s economy. Perhaps getting in shape will help them to work harder and more effectively.

About these matters the Times has nothing to say. It wants to promote revolution. And perhaps a return of the Muslim Brotherhood:

“Why now, and where does this come from? Clearly, it’s connected with the withdrawal from public life by young people,” said Ezzedine C. Fishere, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo who has seen the trend take hold in his family. Professor Fishere said he goes to the gym regularly, his daughter wears a Fitbit and his ex-wife works out, too.

After the military crackdown, he said, “everyone who had participated in 2011 started to move to the private sphere, some took refuge in depression, some in nihilistic activities and many in fitness — not just fitness, but taking care of oneself.”

Professor Fishere has a political explanation. He teaches political science and seems to believe that politics explains everything. He has nothing to say about the need to get the Egyptian economy running and that people who are completely out of shape will probably not have the energy to do so.

Instead, he denounces the authoritarianism—i.e. fascism—of President el Sisi:

Traditionally, Professor Fishere noted, authoritarian governments have been interested in promoting sports and physical culture. And in this case, it was a relief valve on the pressure cooker that is the Arab street.

“This is a safe area for both, an area the regime is willing to support,” Professor Fishere said. “And for the youth, it’s a good outlet for their energies.”

Others see things differently, and more clearly:

The Egyptian Rowing Club, one of many with boathouses on the Nile, is so busy that there is often a waiting list for the club’s sculls and kayaks. Even so, Abeer Aly, a board member, says she thinks the increased popularity is just a sign of the times worldwide. “I can’t see the correlation between youth revolution and fitness events,” she said. “I just see a trend of people practicing and enjoying rowing, cycling and other things a lot more.”

For that we need no political explanations. Good habits do not need to be undermined by intellectuals who are looking forward to the next revolution.

You have to wonder, given the history of the twentieth century, why the idea of revolution maintains its mystique? And whatever made them think that an Islamist government was radical or progressive? Do they really believe, with out president, that the ayatollahs in Iran are true revolutionaries? Weren’t these intellectuals supposed to be the smart ones.

Leadership That Nobody Notices

It is an article of progressive faith that the 1950s were the worst of times. And that the 1960s were the best of times. Nothing like losing a war to make progressive hearts go pitter patter.

What was wrong with the 1950s? Any progressive worth his subscription to the Nation will tell you that America was then racially segregated.

They will not tell you that the Democratic Party was leading the fight to keep America segregated. They will not tell you that the civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s.

They will not tell you about integrating Central High School in Little Rock. 

No, they believe that the 1960s, with their race riots and violent confrontations were a better time… for whom, it’s not very clear.

But the worst part of the 1950s was: not enough drama. You see, it doesn’t matter if people are burning down their neighborhoods. It’s the drama that counts. It’s the struggle that counts. The results… not so much.

Anyway, Kevin Williamson has offered us a riff on presidential golfers. I can’t say that it has ever crossed my mind to riff on golf at all, but someone had to do it. So, why not Williamson?

While sharing his thoughts about Barack Obama’s golf game— and noting that it’s the time of the day and week when Barack does the least damage—Williamson brings up another decent presidential golfer—one Dwight Eisenhower.

He notes, in passing, that the Eisenhower presidency lacked great drama. It was not a time of celebrity presidents or charismatic leaders. The reason was: the man in charge was competent. Ike knew what he was doing. He knew how to manage a crisis.

Progressives were bored out their mind. They prefer blood on the streets. They much prefer class struggle.

Williamson explains what did not happen during the Eisenhower years:

But of course, Eisenhower could afford to goof around on the golf course all day. Nothing of any interest or consequence happened during the years of his presidency, except: The death of Stalin and the Soviets’ acquisition of the hydrogen bomb, Germany’s ascension to NATO, the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the end of the Korean War and a near nuclear confrontation with China, the Suez crisis, the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, the Congo crisis, revolution in Cuba, the Formosa Resolution, a military intervention in Lebanon, the U-2 incident, two major civil-rights acts, Brown vs. Board of Education, Little Rock, the further rise and chaotic fall of Joseph McCarthy, and the addition of two new states.

He concludes with the salient point:

The Eisenhower years were in fact crisis after crisis after crisis, and Eisenhower is the great illustration that great leadership often is leadership that nobody notices. It didn’t feel like the nation was in a constant state of crisis.

When someone is really in charge he does not have to pretend to be in charge. He does not have to mime being in charge. When he is charge no one notices.

Good point.

The Last Word on Weed

Thank God for Charles Barkeley.

A few games before his first NFL pre-season game, Dallas Cowboys running back-- first round draft choice and future Emmitt Smith-- Ezekiel Elliot was caught visiting a marijuana dispensary in Seattle.

Need we say that Jerry Jones, owner of the team, was incensed. But, Charles Barkeley said it all in an interview on a Philadelphia radio station. When asked to comment on the Elliot situation, Barkeley said:

"That's just stupid, man. He's [Ezekiel Elliot] got to be smarter than that. I mean, that's just stupid. It's like Ryan Lochte, that's just stupid. Just tell the truth and apologize ?

"I'm like, c'mon man, you gotta be smarter than that. I'm not a marijuana guy, I think I've told you, I smoked pot like five times in my life. All it did was [make] me want to eat potato chips. It was a waste of my time. I didn't feel no euphoria, it didn't take me to no special place, I just said, 'Do we have any more potato chips in the state of Alabama or Pennsylvania?'

"This guy thinks he can just walk into a marijuana store, legal or not, it's just a bad look. Sometimes I watch sports today, I'm like, you've got to have some common sense."

There you have it, the ultimate purpose of marijuana: it makes you want to eat more potato chips. And while you're at it, Zeke, grow a brain. 

Israel and Its Arab Neighbors

You have been reading it on this blog for some time, but you can now also read it on the editorial page of the New York Times. In fairness, you have read it here because I pay attention to Caroline Glick and to the Israeli press.

The story is worth underscoring. Israel and its Arab neighbors are currently forging a new level of diplomatic ties, the better to fight against the axis of Iranian influence that the Obama administration has created.

The Times editorialized this morning:

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no formal diplomatic relations. The Saudis do not even recognize Israel as a state. Still, there is evidence that ties between Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states and Israel are not only improving but, after developing in secret over many years, could evolve into a more explicit alliance as a result of their mutual distrust of Iran. Better relations among these neighbors could put the chaotic Middle East on a more positive course. 

One needs to curb one’s enthusiasm and to leave open the possibility that this is not quite as good as it sounds. And yet, the Times is correct to suggest that these public meetings are highly significant:

It’s hard to tell sometimes whether and through whom the Saudi royal family is speaking, and some analysts do not view General Eshki as a serious interlocutor. But his visit to Jerusalem, which included a meeting with members of Parliament, suggested a new Saudi openness to testing how the public in both countries would react to overt contacts. Significantly, Saudi Arabia has also begun a media campaign in the kingdom, apparently to prepare its citizens for better relations with Israel.

Note also-- a point I have not seen reported elsewhere-- the new Saudi media campaign to prepare for better relations with Israel.

And the Times also adds that Egypt, under President el Sisi has been developing more notably positive relations with Israel:

Egypt has also been pursuing warmer ties with Israel. A week before the Saudi delegation arrived, Sameh Shoukry became the first foreign minister of Egypt to visit Israel in nine years. Although the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1979, the relationship never fulfilled its promise. However, ties have improved since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi became Egypt’s president in 2014, enabling greater security cooperation against Hamas in Gaza and the militants battling Egyptian troops in the Sinai.

One should mention that the Times has nothing to say about the role that Barack Obama has played in all this. But it does remain true to its leftist core by continuing to insist that the world needs to show deference to the Palestinian terrorist cause. And of course, the Times is happy to suggest that the Palestinians and the Israelis are equally uninterested in peace. In that the Gray Lady has erred grievously. The truth is, as long as the world continues to legitimate Palestinian grievances and Palestinian terrorism, there will be no peace.

The Times explained:

Unfortunately, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians show interest in serious peace talks. And there are reasons to doubt that the Palestinians are the Arab countries’ real focus. Mr. Netanyahu, in fact, has made clear his preference for improving relations with the Arab states first, saying Israel would then be in a stronger position to make peace with the Palestinians later on.

Of course, improved relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors do not preclude a Palestinian peace deal. The danger is that these countries will find more value in mending ties with each other and stop there, thus allowing Palestinian grievances, a source of regional tension for decades, to continue to fester.

Of course, if Palestinian terrorists lose their financial support within the Arab world, they will be more likely to sue for peace. But if they continue to gain the support of misguided European and American leftists, they will continue their futile efforts.

Hillary's War Against Women

Speaking of the war against women, Paul Sperry reports on the extent to which Hillary Clinton, through the influence of her top aide Huma Abedin, has been in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood. And the extent to which this connection has caused Hillary herself to promote and to help propagate ideas that are not merely opposed to the feminism she espouses but completely contradict the norms of civilized morality and common decency.

Not only did Hillary visit a girls' school that Huma’s mother runs in Saudi Arabia, but she invited the same mother to participate in a State Department event for “leading thinkers” on women’s issues. Why would anyone grant legitimacy to such a woman? Why would anyone honor a woman who holds such blatantly misogynistic beliefs?

While we are here, remember what happened in 2002 when a fire broke out at another Saudi girls school in Mecca. The Telegraph reported:

SAUDI Arabia's religious police are reported to have forced schoolgirls back into a blazing building because they were not wearing Islamic headscarves and black robes.

Saudi newspapers said scuffles broke out between firemen and members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who tried to keep the girls inside a burning school in Mecca.

Fifteen girls were killed as they stampeded to escape from the blazing building in the Muslim holy city. Saudi media and families of the victims have been angry over the deaths of the girls in the fire that gutted the school.

The resulting public criticism of the religious police, or mutaween, is highly unusual.

The English-language Saudi Gazette, in a front-page report yesterday quoted witnesses as saying that members of the religious police stopped men who tried to help the girls escape from the building, saying: "It is sinful to approach them."

Girls schools in Saudi Arabia do not promote women’s freedom or rights. And, for those who missed the point, Muslim dress is not a fashion statement.

Regarding Mrs. Abedin, Sperry reports:

As secretary of state, women’s-rights champ Hillary Clinton not only spoke at a Saudi girls school run by her top aide Huma Abedin’s ­anti-feminist mother, but Clinton invited the elder Abedin to participate in a State Department event for “leading thinkers” on women’s issues.

This happened despite ­evidence at the time that Saleha M. Abedin had explored the religious merits of sexual submissiveness, child marriage, lashings and stonings for adulterous women, and even the ­circumcision of girls.

The elder Abedin, whose daughter helps run Clinton’s presidential campaign, did take a pro-gender-equality stance on at least one issue: Muslim women’s right to participate in violent jihad alongside men.

As for the beliefs that Saleha Abedin espoused, they are contained in a book that she translated, edited and promoted. They are about as bad as you would think:

In 1999, Saleha translated and edited a book titled “Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations,”  published by the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Written by her Saudi colleague Fatima Naseef, the book explains that the stoning and lashing of adulterers, the killing of apostates, sexual submissiveness and even female genital mutilation are all permissible practices ­under Sharia law.

“The wife should satisfy her husband’s desire for sexual intercourse,” the book states on Page 202, even if she is not in the mood. “She has no right to abstain except for a reasonable cause or legal prohibition.”

But getting in the mood may be difficult. The book says female genital mutilation is permissible: ­“Cir­cumcision for women is ­allowed.”

The elder Abedin fully supports these horrors:

On the back cover, Saleha says she is “pleased to launch” the book as part of a series on the study of women’s rights in Islam sponsored by the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC), for which she is listed as chairperson.

Founded by Huma’s mom, the Cairo-based IICWC has advocated for the repeal of Egypt’s Mubarak-era laws in favor of implementing Sharia law, which could allow female genital mutilation, child marriage and marital rape.

As mentioned yesterday, the Muslim Brotherhood promoted female genital mutilation in Egypt and strongly opposed the Mubarak regime for trying to put an end to it.

Despite all this, Huma Abedin in 2010 arranged for Clinton, then the secretary of state, to travel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to meet with her mother and speak at a girls school she founded and helps run as dean. Speaking to a roomful of girls, Clinton said Americans have to stop stereotyping Saudi women as oppressed, before assuring the audience that not all American women go “around in a bikini bathing suit.”

While there, Clinton formed a partnership with Saleha’s Dar al-Hekma college called the US-Saudi Women’s Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, and prom­ised to reverse post-9/11 curbs on Saudi student visas to America.

The next year, Clinton invited Saleha and the president of the Saudi school to Washington to participate in a State Department colloquium on women, as revealed by internal emails released in response to a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill told the Post that while Huma Abedin was in fact listed as an editorial staffer of her mother’s radical journal from 1996 to 2008, she didn’t really do anything for the publication in her long tenure there.

Asked if Clinton regrets honoring the Islamist mother and bestowing ­legitimacy on her extreme views, Merrill had no comment.

Do I even need to mention the hue and cry that would have greeted this association if the candidate had been a Republican. The double standard practiced by the American media is so blatant that no one even notices any more. 

When He Doesn't Call Back

What hath feminism wrought?

Olivia Goldhill is standing tall and proud. She correctly remarks that feminism has overthrown courtship customs that have existed for centuries. She apparently missed the point, made by yours truly and by Camille Paglia, that traditional courtship empowers women.

If your mind does not veer too close to the paranoid you will have figured out that courtship and dating could not have evolved without the active participation of women. More so since they are in charge of the game. Even more so since, when it comes to romance women have home field advantage.

So if you think that traditional courtship was a vast patriarchal conspiracy, you have missed the point entirely. And you have grievously insulted all the women who created and fostered the custom.

Goldhill is down on dating because she has bought the party line that considers it sexist. Thereby she places herself among those whose minds have not gotten beyond the name-calling state of intellectual development:

With feminism almost universally embraced, I had long assumed that anyone I’d be interested in hanging out with would know that the traditional, heterosexual dating rules are ridiculous. And why play some outdated game when you’ve absolutely no intention of starting a serious relationship?

But then, since Goldhill had overcome dating, she found herself hooking up. Truth be told, like it or not, the hookup culture—see yesterday’s post—arose after feminists rejected traditional courtship. But, hooking up does not always produce the desired outcome. It is decidedly bad for women. Worse yet, as everyone but Goldhill knows, when you hook up with whomever you might never see him again.

She offers us her anguish:

The first time I met someone I was interested in post-break-up, none of those rules were relevant. We had sex, texted, and hung out without counting the hours between messages or playing hard to get. The second time, however, I was not so lucky. In a scenario familiar to millions of people, yet honestly surprising to me, I had sex with a guy (we’ll call him Dan) and never heard from him again. I didn’t know him well and certainly wasn’t emotionally invested, but the interaction still rankled me. We’d got on incredibly well and, for all the nonchalance endemic to casual hook ups, sex is an unavoidably intimate experience. The radio silence post-coitus seemed strangely cold.

And she continues, to wring her experience through her feminist mind:

Ultimately, it seems women-whom-you’ve-had-sex-with are the only category of people straight men aren’t expected to treat cordially. This deep-seated sexism comes alongside various other problematic assumptions—that sex is something women give to men, that women always want relationships, that talking about emotions in connection to sex is “crazy”—that still seem to permeate heterosexual sexual relations. And that left me, a hard-core feminist in 2016, feeling like a cow that had given away the milk for free.

Glad I didn’t call her a cow. You can imagine the outrage.

Anyway, she says that men do not call a woman they barely know and who has provided a sexual service because they are sexist. Oh really. Is that the best she can do? Young Olivia Goldhill has been bragging about how feminism has destroyed common courtesy, which is fundamental to courtship, and then she complains that her latest hookup, call him Dan, was discourteous and did not call her back.

You cannot, Olivia dear, have it both ways. The fact of the matter is, courtship existed to ensure, as much as possible, that you would be having sex with someone you know. Not only that, but that you would await some level of commitment before giving it away. If you do not act like a lady you cannot expect him to act like a gentleman. How about a little coherent thought?

Goldhill has every right to behave as she wishes. No one would reproach her for doing as she pleases. And yet, she does not confer the same right on her hookup. She insists that he show her proper respect, and fails to understand that showing respect is part of the courtship game that feminists destroyed. She doesn't just want to do what she wants, but she insists that other people respect her for it. She is arguing for mind control.

Anyone who has is able to reason like an adult—and that includes most mothers of adolescent and adult daughters-- will tell Goldhill that she should act as though she respects herself. Because if she acts as though she does not respect herself, why would any man respect her?

Blaming it on sexism is shifting the blame. And disempowering women. One notes, with chagrin, that feminism, in its radical fervor, has overthrown traditional customs and beliefs. As such, it has done women no favors. In place of the cordial and perhaps even awkward game of courtship—see Jane Austen—it has given women the freedom to hook up and it has given men the freedom to treat women with disrespect. Moreover, in its constant assault on men’s character, its constant accusations of sexism—these are certainly not limited to the dating world—it has produced a hostile cultural environment.

And, why would anyone imagine that men will not retaliate by treating women with something less than respect. Since physical retaliation is a criminal action, men have found other ways to mistreat women—by not calling them in the morning, by using them and discarding them.

If you think that men are going to sit back and take the hostility and the abuse, the assaults on their character and dignity, you are wrong. It is insulting and offensive. It has taught men the power of ghosting.

One might not like the way that men treat women, but feminists should cease and desist from denouncing men as sexist and should start acting as though they respect themselves. At that point, men will be far more likely to show them more respect. 

Obama Submits to the Ayatollahs

So many Americans are so dissatisfied with the two current candidates for the presidency that they are missing the real story. They ought to be horrified at the way Barack Obama has conducted his presidency. For whatever reason, they are not. The media will not allow them to do so.

And yet, the two current candidates rose up in the Age of Obama. If you think that that is a coincidence, think again.

Today’s topic, scrupulously ignored by the media and the presidential candidates, is Obama’s conduct of the relationship with Iran. Believing that he had to get a deal with the ayatollahs at any price, our bumbling president, a man who was grossly unprepared to conduct foreign or any other kind of policy, was so desperate that he allowed himself to be outmaneuvered and humiliated. When the president allows himself to be humiliated the nation is humiliated also. If you were wondering why so many people are so angry, it’s the place to look.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon has written a book about Obama and Iran. Eli Lake has reviewed the book for the Daily Beast. 

It all began with the uprising that followed the stolen Iranian election in 2009. As opposed to the Arab Spring where the Obama administration sided with the protesters and particularly with the Muslim Brotherhood, it refused to do anything to support the rebellious masses of Iranians in 2009.

Eli Lake explains:

One of the great hypotheticals of Barack Obama's presidency involves the Iranian uprising that began on June 12, 2009, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced the winner of contested presidential elections. What if the president had done more to help the protesters when the regime appeared to be teetering?

It's well known he was slow to react. Obama publicly downplayed the prospect of real change at first, saying the candidates whom hundreds of thousands of Iranians were risking their lives to support did not represent fundamental change. When he finally did speak out, he couldn't bring himself to say the election was stolen: "The world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was."

But Obama wasn't just reluctant to show solidarity in 2009, he feared the demonstrations would sabotage his secret outreach to Iran. In his new book, "The Iran Wars," Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon uncovers new details on how far Obama went to avoid helping Iran's green movement. Behind the scenes, Obama overruled advisers who wanted to do what America had done at similar transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and signal America's support.

Obama’s advisers wanted to support and to facilitate a transition to democracy. Our nation had done so on many previous occasions. The president overruled them. Either he had no problem with the ayatollahs or he was in thrall to a real estate developer named Valerie Jarrett. Or both.

What did the administration do?

Solomon reports that Obama ordered the CIA to sever contacts it had with the green movement's supporters. "The Agency has contingency plans for supporting democratic uprisings anywhere in the world. This includes providing dissidents with communications, money, and in extreme cases even arms," Solomon writes. "But in this case the White House ordered it to stand down."

At the time, Solomon reports, Obama's aides received mixed messages. Members of the Iranian diaspora wanted the president to support the uprisings. Dissident Iranians from inside the country said such support would be the kiss of death. In the end, Obama did nothing, and Iran's supreme leader blamed him anyway for fomenting the revolt.

Obama from the beginning of his presidency tried to turn the country's ruling clerics from foes to friends. It was an obsession. And even though the president would impose severe sanctions on the country's economy at the end of his first term and beginning of his second, from the start of his presidency, Obama made it clear the U.S. did not seek regime change for Iran.  

Why did Obama want to make the ayatollahs into friends? Apparently, if George W. saw them as members of the axis of evil, the deep thinking Obama concluded that they must be good. The enemy of my enemy… or something like that.

Clearly, he did not care that they were the leading state sponsor of terrorism. He did not think of how the world would react to see the United States providing support, recognition and money to a state sponsor of terrorism. Did Obama green light Muslim terrorism?

What did Obama do? Lake reports:

As Solomon reports, Obama ended U.S. programs to document Iranian human rights abuses. He wrote personal letters to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei assuring him the U.S. was not trying to overthrow him. Obama repeatedly stressed his respect for the regime in his statements marking Iran's annual Nowruz celebration.

His quest to engage the mullahs seems to have influenced Obama's decision-making on other issues too. When he walked away from his red line against Syria's use of chemical weapons in 2013, Solomon reports, both U.S. and Iranian officials had told him that nuclear negotiations would be halted if he intervened against Bashar al-Assad.

And, we must underscore that Obama let the situation in Syria turn into an unmitigated horror because the Iranians told him not to intervene. What else were you expecting from Jeremiah Wright’s protégé?

Finally, when it came to negotiating the nuclear deal, the Americans were no match for the Iranians:

Eventually, the Iranians wore down the U.S. delegation. At the beginning of the talks in 2013, the U.S. position was for Iran to dismantle much of its nuclear infrastructure. By the end of the talks in 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry and his team "agreed that Iran would then be allowed to build an industrial-scale nuclear program, with hundreds of thousands of machines, after a ten year period of restraint."

Other U.S. red lines were demolished too. The final deal would allow the U.N. ban on Iranian missile development to phase out after eight years, and the arms embargo against Iran to expire after five. Iran would not have to acknowledge that it had tried to develop a nuclear weapon, even though samples the Iranians collected at its Parchin facility found evidence of man-made uranium.

America gave away the store and told the Iranians that they could do as they pleased, as long as Obama’s successors would have to deal with it.

The diplomacy gave us something like a deal. The Iranians correctly concluded that Obama had granted them power, prestige and legitimacy, to say nothing of a free hand in promoting more terrorism and in developing more advanced weapons to use against the West and against Israel. And of course, the deal has set in motion a process that will most likely lead to nuclear proliferation in the region.

Lake concludes:

Kerry's diplomacy succeeded. But the Middle East got war nonetheless. "The Revolutionary Guard continues to develop increasingly sophisticated weapons systems, including ballistic missiles inscribed with threats against Israel on their nose cones," Solomon writes in the book's concluding chapter. "Khamenei and other revolutionary leaders, meanwhile, fine-tune their rhetorical attacks against the United States, seeming to need the American threat to justify their existence." 

There was a chance for a better outcome. There is no guarantee that an Obama intervention would have been able to topple Khamenei back in 2009, when his people flooded the streets to protest an election the American president wouldn't say was stolen. But it was worth a try. Imagine if that uprising had succeeded. Perhaps then a nuclear deal could have brought about a real peace. Instead, Obama spent his presidency misunderstanding Iran's dictator, assuring the supreme leader America wouldn't aid his citizens when they tried to change the regime that oppresses them to this day.

It’s the Age of Obama. If you support the president  you are in favor of coddling terrorists and defending one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. The story is out there. Nearly everyone is ignoring it.