{"id":1317631,"date":"2020-01-10T23:24:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-11T06:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/polman-column-michael-corleone-could-teach-trump-a-lesson-about-iran\/"},"modified":"2020-01-10T23:24:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-11T06:24:01","slug":"polman-column-michael-corleone-could-teach-trump-a-lesson-about-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/polman-column-michael-corleone-could-teach-trump-a-lesson-about-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Polman column: Michael Corleone could teach Trump a lesson about Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before Donald Trump began to slur his words and concoct fake verbs like \u201ctolerize,\u201d he declared on Wednesday that \u201cas long as I\u2019m president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon\u2026 Their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We\u2019ll never let that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Great. If that\u2019s what he wants, perhaps he\u2019d take a deal that among other things compelled Iran to cut its uranium-enriching centrifuges by nearly 75 percent until the late 2020s and submit to ongoing international inspections.<\/p>\n

Oh wait! Those were the terms of the historic nuclear deal that Trump tore up two years ago because it had one fundamental problem: It was a signature achievement for Barack Obama. So of course it had to go.<\/p>\n

Obama had embraced the credo best expressed in Godfather II by Michael Corleone: \u201cKeep your friends close, but your enemies closer.\u201d If Trump was not a husk of a human ruled by petty pique, he would understand the wisdom of entrapping a foe via international engagement. But because he\u2019s so hung up on Obama, and so personally weak, he had to flex what he thinks is \u201cstrength.\u201d His disastrous decision to tear up the nuclear deal has ramped up the dangerous tensions that presently plague us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe logic of Tehran\u2019s response is straightforward and utterly predictable: If the United States wants to make life difficult for Iran, its leaders will demonstrate that they can make life difficult for the United States too,\u201d explained Stephen Walt, one of our smartest foreign affairs experts. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t take more than a shred of strategic thinking to anticipate Iran\u2019s response and recognize that unilateral pressure was not going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Trump, lacking a shred of strategic thought, apparently couldn\u2019t fathom the possibility that Iran would refuse to knuckle under, that instead it would lash out. The result is the current tit-for-tat violence that could trigger a war.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Obama\u2019s embrace of the Corleone credo made perfect sense. Alas, Trump\u2019s impulsive instinct is to destroy every last vestige of Obama\u2019s work \u2013 as evidenced Wednesday by his oft-repeated false accusation that Obama funded terrorism. Thanks to the \u201cfoolish\u201d nuclear deal, he said, the Iranians \u201cwere given $150 billion\u2026 The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

In truth, the actual amount was reportedly closer to $50 billion and, contrary to Trump\u2019s insinuation, it was not American taxpayer money. It was Iran\u2019s money that had been frozen until the signing of the nuclear deal in 2013. Nor does Trump have any proof that the sums owed to Iran were specifically spent to manufacture the missiles Iran had launched. What he said Wednesday, in his latest attempt to smear his predecessor\u2019s achievement, was just the usual stew of lies and bellicosity.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of a conversation I had in 2015 with Ami Ayalon, a former director of Israel\u2019s domestic security service. Ayalon was visiting Philadelphia, at a time when candidate Trump was attacking Obama\u2019s nuclear deal. Ayalon told me that Trump was being foolish: \u201cTo kill the deal is to kill American leadership in the Middle East. Their assumption that we should simply reject this deal, and that we could then go back and negotiate a better deal? This is nonsense. This can only be heard from a person who does not understand anything about Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor, of course, does Trump understand anything about democracy. His spinners went to Capitol Hill Wednesday, ostensibly to explain why he was right to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, but mostly to tell Republican senators that they should not dissent or debate the warrior-in-chief\u2019s decisions. Which prompted a conservative Republican senator, Utah\u2019s Mike Lee, to blow a gasket in front of the press corps:<\/p>\n

\u201c(It) was probably the worst briefing I\u2019ve seen at least on a military issue in the nine years I\u2019ve served in the United States Senate,\u201d Lee complained. \u201cI find it insulting and I find it demeaning to the Constitution of the United States. It\u2019s un-American. It\u2019s unconstitutional. And it\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leave it to Trump to shred every remnant of the Corleone credo. As evidenced Wednesday, he can\u2019t even keep his friends close.<\/p>\n

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before Donald Trump began to slur his words and concoct fake verbs like \u201ctolerize,\u201d he declared on Wednesday that \u201cas long as I\u2019m president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon\u2026 Their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We\u2019ll never let that happen.\u201d Great. If that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 05:43:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}