Quote: ThirstyMan wrote in post #1

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By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, June 12, 2018

North Korea Is Winning!!!

The more we learn about it — as Iranian and Obama-administration deceptions are uncovered — the more we know it was a disaster from the start.

When Donald Trump withdrew from the so-called Iran deal in early May, almost all conventional wisdom in Washington was aghast.

The Left thought nullification would fast-track Iranian proliferation, incite more Iranian terrorism and adventurism, estrange our allies, and alienate a possible new friend.

Many on the conservative side (aside from Never Trumpers who are against anything Trump is for, including their own prior policies) thought it would have been wiser to back out slowly, or at least to have waited first for the duplicitous Iranians to get caught in clear violations, or to coordinate a joint withdrawal with the Europeans.

Few of these critics ever quite understood that the deal was already a stinking corpse, long overdue for burial. Iranian cunning and the strategic thinking about the asymmetrical deal had always aimed at the following trajectory:

Ostensibly postpone a bomb now, at a time when the regime was facing growing unrest and near bankruptcy from sanctions — and thus was in no position anyway to build an arsenal of bombs and missiles.

Keep occasionally cheating to ensure the apparatus for bomb-making was successfully hibernated — and therefore easily restarted at a future date.

Enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars in new commercial income over the next ten to 15 years to quiet domestic unrest, and to bank enough cash to go fully nuclear in the future.

Forge the so-called Shiite Crescent to the Mediterranean, by dominating Bashir al-Assad’s weak Syria, exploring anti-Sunni possibilities in Yemen, and bulking up Hezbollah’s Lebanon, while stocking a huge arsenal of preemptive missiles based near Israel. Hope that Iran’s regional strategic stature would only improve over the next decade.

Expect natural breakthroughs in technology to make future bomb-making easier and cheaper when the accord expired.

There is no wonder, then, why almost every news story about the Iran deal has confirmed the wisdom of getting out of it.

snip

Finally, if Iran makes serious new efforts to nuclearize, Egypt and Saudi Arabia may match Iran bomb for bomb. Iran would be facing three unpredictable Middle Eastern nuclear powers, in a neighborhood full of existing nuclear, volatile nations: China, India, Pakistan, and Russia.

The Iran deal was born in deceit, sold through deception, and kept alive by willful blindness. The more we were told it could not be nullified, the more malodorous it became. Nothing since its death has proven it wise; everything has confirmed it really was, in the words of Trump, “a “disaster.”

A final note. The looming “Korean deal” should be approached by employing the very opposite methodology used in Obama’s Iran deal: Be prepared to walk away; assume North Korea will cheat; do not separate its terrorist behavior or ballistic missiles from its promises to denuclearize; and focus on its nuclear patrons, without which there could be no North Korean bomb; expect even a denuclearized North Korea to remain an enemy of the U.S; do not invest presidential stature in the mercurial whims of a thug.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/i...from-the-start/

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From Breitbart:

Donald Trump: At Least We’re Not Paying North Korea $150 billion Like the Iran Deal
13 Jun 2018

President Donald Trump defended his agreement with North Korea compared to the Iran Deal reached by former President Barack Obama.

“I don’t think a deal could be softer,” Trump said in response to a question from ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, “First of all, we’re not paying $150 billion.”

The president repeated that the nuclear with Iran was a “terrible deal” while his agreement with Kim Jong-un cost very little.

“We’re paying nothing from that standpoint other than, you will see what happens,” he said.

Trump appeared confident that Kim could reach deals with Japan and South Korea in the region to improve his country economically as part of his plan to denuclearize the region.

“I think he wants to denuke, it’s very important,” he said. “Without that, there’s nothing to discuss.”


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...-the-iran-deal/