Parallels

I didn't watch any of the Presidential webcast Friday where he interacted with the leadership of the American Jewish community in an effort to simultaneously ostensibly allay their fears and sell the JCPOA as the best method of preventing Iran's attaining a nuclear weapon.

It has been posited in some circles that the President's unfathomable attitude toward Jews in general and the Zionist project in particular notwothstanding, it still is heartening that he has shown that he feels compelled to respond to the Jewish community's concern rather than ignoring them outright.  [Although one might also assume this was a more subtle attempt to both lecture and divide the Jewish community rather than actually mollify it.]

I'm not sure from what historical parallels these more optimistic assessments are drawn--and in the circles where I've heard them, they haven't been based at all on more "progressive" sociopolitical notions, which would almost mandate an almost lock-step support of the President.  No: they've actually emanated from communities where opposition to the JCPOA is usually vocal and almost unceasing.

Hearing this assessment recently, I was searching for historical analogs, and today two occurred to me.  While both may be strained to a point, there's enough commonality between the events surrounding the JCPOA and German President Paul von Hindenburg's appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, and between the JCPOA and Palestine High Commissioner Herbert Samuel's appointment of Haj Amin al-Hussieni as Mufti of Jerusalem in 1920.

Hindenburg's case may be instructive, because as late at 1932, as detailed in a JTA dispatch at the time of his death two years later, "von Hindenburg sent to the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith a message in which he expressed disapproval of the limitation of Jewish rights and also of all anti-Jewish attacks. His message was in reply to a white book submitted to him by the Central Union setting out the facts regarding Nazi terroristic methods practiced against the Jews.  The Hitlerites, as well as General von Ludendorf protested von Hindenburg’s statement and later Nazi deputies in the Reichstag unleashed a vicious attack on “Der Alte,” denouncing him and describing him as “the Jewish candidate.”"  [Did he "have their back"?...]

Yet, when he needed to save his precious German Fatherland, and, having convinced himself he could control Hitler only by handing over the high office he had worked so hard to deny the future Fuhrer, von Hindenburg rewarded Hitler's gangsterism with the Chancellorship after the Nazis had suffered a downturn in the polls in the most recent election.  Once can compare this to trying to rehabilitate a certain Islamic Republic by rewarding them in advance for unverified compliance with a legally dubious agreement that subverts a sanctions regime that had been effective and has now been short-circuited.

In Samuel's case, in trying to please all factions that were engaging in a tug-of-war over the newly conquered Palestine, Samuel reverted to the previous Caliphate policy that had been the Ottoman modus operandi in appointed al-Husseini to the position of Mufti, where he proved to not only be a thorn in the side of the British colonial authorities [at least, those who weren't already sympathetic or actively furthering his murderous tendencies] but a paradigm of religiously motivated genocidal Judeophobia, particularly when he ended up in Berlin during World War II.  [Not for nothing came the remark about the High Commissioner [alternatively attributed to Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George]:  "When they circumcised Herbert Samuel, they threw away the wrong bit."]

In both of these cases, ostensibly well-meaning statesmen had concerns other than the well-being of the Jews, which, while one can always maintain may not have to be the primary concern or interest of a state, somehow always prove to be a litmus test of how a power can act against it's own interests in cases where the authorities assume that their interests and the Jews' are automatically at odds, whereas in fact the Jews' interest prove to be aligned with those of the States in question all along.  That is why--as this writer opined recently--the protests against the JCPOA must continue regardless of the result of the upcoming Congressional battle.

Postgame With The Clock Still Running, and Other Silver Linings

Even with the announcement from Rep. Maloney that she will oppose the Iran deal, the failure to overcome the veto still seems likely, and there is now the possibility that Sen. Reid will engage in a filibuster to make sure the vote against the deal that would trigger the vote never comes to pass in the first place.

But there is no reason for the opponents of the deal to stop protesting, even [or especially] after the possible veto and subsequent failure to override.  Au contraire: the pressure needs to ratcheted up more than a few notches even after Sept. 17.

One only actually needs to conjure up the spectre of the ostensibly failed Iraq War which the cabal in this White House and State Dept. wields so deftly to scare deal opponents [and supporters] and turn it on its head.  All one has to do is remind the Democrats that they once were for the war before they were against it, and they can be for this deal before they were against it as well.  [This flip flop is unlikely to happen with any GOPer.  Maybe it's in the DemNA.]

The reason that gambit might work is simple: maintaining this principled and fierce opposition to the deal even if it "passes" will put all of its supporters on notice that they will be electorally vulnerable in the next round.  In which case those who even voted to allow the deal to be implemented might work to either undermine its gifts to Iran--especially since, as a distinct non-treaty, its enforcement is shady as it is, and we already know that the WH/DOS cabal will likely already be trying to undermine any type of enforcement that makes the Mullahs uncomfortable.

Aside from making a mess of this deal, the other positive side effect is that it will completely isolate the President and force him to do everything to shore up his legacy project via executive order, which will further highlight just how the deal was cemented against the wishes of the majority of Americans.  Additionally, an implemented and failed deal can redound to the ill electoral effects of the 2016 Dem Presidential candidate, whomever s/he is, because the burden of proof cred vis-a-vis national security will always be on the Dems rather than the GOP.

Additionally, as Aaron David Miller pointed out--the reason the deal itself didn't give away more than it has was partially due to the unceasing opposition, which thankfully won't stop.  So--even though it will take 15 years to accurately gauge the possiblity--if this deal does "work", there's no reason the GOP and certain "lobbies" shouldn't have the chutzpah to take credit for making sure that it had any teeth, rather than becoming the Iran reclamation/rehabilitation project the President all but alluded to around the time of his 2009 Grovel in Cairo.

Finally, the President's singular pursuit of this deal as his legacy even if it leaves his party in tatters is of a piece with their reluctance to campaign on Obamacare in the 2014 midterms: it reveals that there is a possibility that eventually his personal agenda and his parties can be forced to diverge, and he could be compelled to sell them out for his own personal prestige.  Which hopefully can only hurt all of them across the board at the polls while he attempts to become the next Jimmy Carter.