(Washington Times) Michael Hayden - The U.S. is fast closing in on a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seeing the handwriting on the wall, has hurried to Washington to make an eleventh-hour appeal to Congress. Netanyahu's haste is understandable. The draft agreement represents what has fairly been described as massive and irreversible concessions to Iran. This agreement will legitimate Iran as a nuclear state. The agreement's impact on future counterproliferation efforts will be profound as a struggling, isolated regional power has just challenged the world and clearly won. There's a lot not to like here, and it will be pretty easy to shoot holes in the agreement. Congress should certainly be offered the chance. Codifying a deal of this magnitude on executive prerogative alone would be unconscionable. And what of the talk of an overall American-Iranian rapprochement once the nuclear issue is behind us? The president himself has spoken of a better-behaving Iran as a "very successful regional power" and of an "equilibrium" between Tehran and the Sunni states of the region. The New York Times' David Brooks even suggests that the president's big plan is that "Iran would re-emerge as America's natural partner in the region." I will be skeptical too that, after an agreement is reached, Iran won't be the duplicitous, autocratic, terrorist-backing, Hizbullah-supporting, Hamas-funding, region-destabilizing, hegemony-seeking theocracy that it is today. But if you reject this, then what are the options? There was a reason we thought this was the problem from hell while I was in government. It still is. Gen. Michael V. Hayden is a former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency.
2015-03-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive