The Sham Iran Nuclear Deal
Are things “coming to a head concerning Iran’s nuclear program?” (“Trump: Absolutely No Nukes for Iran,” Editorial, April 18).
The Obama-Biden negotiations with Iran are a perfect case to explain why Americans have lost confidence in Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Obama arrogantly told Americans and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran was in the Middle East’s best interest.
Obama wanted Americans to think the JCPOA would be a diplomatically successful agreement with Iran. But it wasn’t verifiable and Iran was never in full compliance with the JCPOA. It was not diplomatically successful; it was a diplomatic embarrassment.
In 2018, President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal. He then began a maximum-pressure campaign of economic sanctions against Iran.
President Biden immediately resumed “indirect” negotiations with Iran, even as Tehran financed terror groups across the Middle East. The indirect talks failed to produce positive results for U.S. Middle East policy. By the end of Biden’s presidency, the U.S. had little diplomatic credibility in the region.
Since President Trump’s return to the Oval Office, he has pursued direct negotiations with Iran. Negotiations are underway between Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his counterparts. Reportedly, U.S. and Iranian teams will soon begin more indirect negotiations. If the two sides cannot agree on whether the talks should be direct or indirect, more delay and frustration could result.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recently said about the negotiations: “There is no reason for much optimism, and there is no reason for much pessimism either.” This is progress?
James Patterson
(not the novelist)
Washington, D.C.
America’s Radical Left A Reincarnation Of Germany’s Nazis
Rabbi Moshe Taragin’s column “Yom HaShoah: Echoes of Hatred: Antisemitism From 1940 To 2023” (April 25) is an excellent essay comparing the moral, religious, and cultural similarities between the horrific events of the 1940s to those today. Having lived through that period, fortunately from the safety of America, I would also like to comment on another aspect of those two eras – that of the actual physical violence directed against the Jews. Those familiar with both histories should recognize that today’s American radical left is employing some of the same tactics used by the German Nazis of the 1930s and 40s.
Today’s increasing street violence, intimidation, and bullying of people they don’t like are a throwback to the Nazi brownshirt roving gangs of the 1930s. Their complete domination of the media and entertainment industries is akin to the takeover of all means of information by the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. The infiltration of youth at all levels of academia parallels the Hitler Youth movement. The deliberate racial divisiveness is a mirror of the absurd artificial Nazi racial profiling. And the politicizing of U.S. government agencies recalls the seizure by the Nazis of the democratically elected German government.
And then, of course, we come to the Jews, who are the perennial scapegoats blamed for all of society’s ills. First the Nazis isolated and discriminated against the Jews with boycotts and the Nuremberg Laws. Then they escalated to outright violence and destruction of synagogues and other Jewish establishments on Kristallnacht. Finally, the Nazis slaughtered all European Jews during the Holocaust, the worst genocide in recorded history. Disturbingly, today’s American left has already begun going down that path and are openly attacking Jews, sometimes labeling them as “Zionists,” in the streets, in their synagogues and institutions, and intimidating and bullying them in businesses and schools. All while these same forces continue to violently “resist” the democratically elected president and Congress.
We therefore have to be vigilant so that we don’t fall into the trap that the philosopher Santayana so famously warned about: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
