Slowly but surely, both rationality and reality are escaping US right-wingers

The Iran nuclear deal which was sealed last month has been praised globally as a landmark achievement of the Barack Obama administration. I belong in the group that is not too sure this thing will pan out well. I am keeping my fingers crossed, watching the dark clouds gather in America.

For anybody with some knowledge of American politics, it is becoming patently clear that the agreement will not be ratified by the US Congress.

In that case Obama will be left with no choice but to veto the outcome. Thereafter it remains a big ‘if’ whether he will sway enough numbers to block the two-thirds majority Congress must muster to override the presidential veto.

In a sense, Obama’s real contest is not with Congress. It is with a small but powerful Middle-Eastern state that holds extraordinary – even abnormal - power over successive US governments, more so Congress.

Israel has opposed the agreement in loud and vociferous terms, claiming that it leaves enough loopholes for Iran to still acquire a nuclear bomb. Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have never had time for each other on a personal level. The Iran deal has only served to intensify the animosity.

INAPPROPRIATE

On March 3, the Israeli Premier took the battle directly to the US Congress. It was an unusual gambit. Though technically he could argue he went to speak there at the invitation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, a right-wing gadfly who regards Obama as on par with Lucifer, the whole matter of a foreign leader coming to lecture another one at his home base sounded very inappropriate, even crass.

Still, Netanyahu knew he would be the one calling the shots in that particular institution. The Congress was full to the brim that day and he was given a standing ovation after his speech. Before he departed the US, he didn’t even bother – as a matter of courtesy – to seek an appointment with the man at the White House.

One can write a whole book on why exactly Israel has this unique capacity to make America dance to her every tune.

All I need mention here is that when the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC – (which lobbies on Israel’s behalf) holds its annual Washington DC gatherings, virtually every American congressmen and senator feels obliged to attend.

Not even Britain, which boasts of a “special relationship” with the US, comes anywhere close to this kind of influence.

AIPAC, as it were, is furiously lobbying against the Iran nuclear deal.

ENDORSED THE DEAL

It so happens that just about everybody else thinks the agreement with Iran is a good one; in fact, the quiet refrain is that the US got the better of the Islamic Republic.

The five permanent UN Security Council members – plus Germany – who were all involved in the negotiations, have endorsed the deal.

Most importantly, so has America’s security establishment, led by the Pentagon and the CIA.

Under the deal, Iran will have to forfeit its uranium and plutonium stockpiles.

It must also dismantle the centrifuges that spin and enrich this uranium to bomb-grade level. All of which will be done under tight international supervision.

Only afterwards will the international sanctions imposed for years against Iran be lifted – gradually.

A lot of nations of this world are coming around to the view that Republican right-wingers of America are not just twisting the world into a hole, but their country too.

You can’t be making internationally-sanctioned agreements, whether on nuclear arms or climate change, which you then suddenly trash unilaterally and irrationally.

Empires begin to decline when they lose touch with reality. Diplomacy has lost meaning to the Republicans. It’s either their way, or the gun. We have seen that in Iraq, and in Syria.

Iran could very well be next. For how long will this fetish for stupid wars possibly go on?

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