OPINION:
Barack Obama is entitled to wonder why, after all he has done to keep their nuclear-weapons research intact and thriving, the mullahs in Iran are being so mean to him. Only the naive and foolish expect gratitude in politics, domestic or foreign, but still.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the head holy man in Tehran, is upset with the chief and all the little Indians at the White House. “They have engaged in a lot of hue and cry over Iran’s missile capabilities,” the mullah tells the official Iranian news agency, “but they should know that this ballyhoo does not have any influence and they cannot do a damn thing.” That’s fairly rude talk for a holy man, though it meets the standard of holiness in the Middle East.
The Iranians continue to rub Mr. Obama’s nose in the sordid details of the agreement he made with the mullahs. “The Americans are telling us, ’don’t talk about missile affairs,’ ” Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Aero and Missile Force, tells an interviewer in Tehran, ” ’and if you conduct a test or maneuver, don’t mention it.’ “
The commander cites a long list of things he says the White House asked the mullahs to do to protect the president against exposure of his broken promises to America. Mr. Obama apparently thinks what his constituents don’t know won’t hurt them.
The mullahs think any pressure or discomfort the president feels is just hard cheese. They’re confident that whatever they do the president won’t confront them about it.
The mullahs are determined to protect what they squeezed out of the president and Secretary of State John Kerry. “If we agree to this,” the Iranian commander says, “the Americans will advance another step, and say, ’Don’t conduct a missile test at this time, and don’t do it in the Persian Gulf region.’ After that, they will ask us, ’Why do you need your missiles to have a range of 2,000 kilometers, anyway.’
“After that, they will tell us, ’Next, we will check whether your missiles can really carry nuclear weapons. Bring us the details of the missiles.’ After that, they will say, ’We need to set up cameras.’ And finally they will say, ’Either [destroy] the missiles or load them onto a ship and hand them over to us.’ “
These are the precisely the assurances that President Obama said he would firmly extract from Iran, or no deal. We still don’t know everything he told the Iranians when he was negotiating the treaty he says is not a treaty, but from the commander’s list of particulars it’s not difficult to figure out what Mr. Obama agreed to, nor is it difficult to understand why he doesn’t want to answer questions now.
The president, for whatever his reasons, trusts the mullahs. The rest of us don’t, and as details of secret agreements dribble out of Tehran it will become abundantly clear why.
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