Obama's surrender to Iran nears its climax

The unthinkable is poised to occur. The US may pave the way for Iran to build a nuclear bomb.

As yet another deadline for the deal that is supposed to prevent this looms has passed, the US-led negotiating team of Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany (P5+1) is giving in to Iran on every key issue.

President Obama initially pledged that unfettered inspection of Iran's nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Authority was an absolute requirement.

Iran said it would allow no such inspections. The US now says there is a need only for negotiated access to some facilities.

The US promised sanctions would "snap back" should Tehran violate the agreement. Now it says this would depend on a majority vote among the P5+1.

How, though, would they know of such violations if Iran can hide them from inspection? Moreover, since it has refused to answer virtually all the IAEA's questions since 2006 the authority would have no benchmark of past activity from which to calibrate any development of Iran's illicit nuclear programme.

Faced with evidence of Iranian cheating, the US just moves the goalposts. A non-proliferation think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, revealed that although the US had stipulated Iran must convert all newly enriched uranium hexafluoride to uranium dioxide it had only converted a mere nine per cent. The US promptly declared this stipulation no longer mattered.

Obama's determination to close a deal with Iran at any cost was clear from the start. In the interim agreement of 2013 he conceded Iran's right to enrich uranium, hitherto another of America's allegedly inviolable red lines. He loosened the sanctions which had brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. Now we are told that the final sticking point, Iran's demand that sanctions be lifted as soon as a deal is signed, may be resolved by a timing fudge. This is not a deal at all. It is rather a capitulation by the US, UK and the rest that will put us all in great danger.

Iran is the world's principal terrorist state. It declared war on the west in 1979. It has been behind scores of attacks on western interests. It has killed dozens of US and British soldiers in Iraq. It is developing ballistic missiles to reach Europe and the US. These will be able to carry the nuclear warheads the US is now poised to enable it to build. Despite the Shia/Sunni divide, Iran has also been in alliance with al-Qaeda.

Researcher Thomas Joscelyn has documented for the American Claremont Institute how links Iran forged in Sudan in the 1990s played an integral part in al-Qaeda's rise. The 9/11 Commission even uncovered documents demonstrating how Iran facilitated the travel arrangements of the hijackers.

Using Iran against Isis in Syria and Iraq is also a terrible mistake. Iran's unwavering strategy is to foment strife in the region so it can extend its own influence. For that reason it previously backed the Isis precursor, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Now, Iran is using its role in fighting Isis to consolidate its own power there. According to Iranian human rights activist Amir Basiri, Iran-backed militias in Iraq are committing atrocities in Sunni townships and villages, thus alienating the Sunni population who are crucial to defeating Isis.

Astonishingly, Obama believes that ending sanctions against Iran will transform it into a responsible global player. On the contrary: realising that the Obama administration will never use force against it has already emboldened Iran to widen its deadly grip on the region in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza.

In Britain, the indifference towards the P5+1 capitulation is deeply disturbing. People shudder at Isis; but the threat from the Iranian regime, dominated by apocalyptic Islamists who have been attacking the west for the past three decades, is far greater.

For complex reasons, including the legacy of the Iraq war, the British seem to fear action against Iran more than Iran getting the bomb. Toughening sanctions, however, backed by a credible threat of force, is the only way to neutralise the threat Iran poses — and stave off a nightmarish nuclear arms race in the Muslim and Arab world.

Obama believes that with this deal he will be thanked for having introduced an enlightened new Middle East order. On the contrary: he will go down in history as the man who betrayed the west to its enemies and made a truly terrible war inevitable.

And where is the British government as this debacle unfolds? Why, meekly tagging along on Obama's coat-tails.

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For more than three decades, JWR contributor Melanie Phillips has served as Britain's political conscience. A journalist and author, in 1996, she was awarded the prestigious Orwell Prize for journalism.