“The Paper of Record reported on Monday about efforts to build an oral history of the Obama presidency …. Peter Baker's lengthy report leads with the story behind Joe Biden's decision not to run for president in 2016, as well as a vague allegation about racism in the GOP toward Obama. That leads to another revelation that certainly seems a lot more newsworthy at the moment than either of the two topics Baker presents in the twenty-two paragraphs that precede it.
“In Obama's first term, he assembled his national-security team to generate "fresh ideas" for how to approach the threat posed by Iran. Dennis Blair, Obama's first director of national intelligence, made the mistake of taking Obama literally rather than seriously, he told the Miller Center. Blair outlined the options, and asked Obama the key question ... which ended his career in the administration:
Still, not all skepticism about Mr. Obama’s Iran policy came from outside the building, and not everyone felt that their opinions were necessarily welcome inside the building. Dennis C. Blair, who served as director of national intelligence until he was pushed out, described a meeting that was advertised as looking for fresh insights on Iran.
“When it came my turn to speak at this meeting,” Mr. Blair recalled, “I said, ‘Mr. President, you really just have one decision to make. It’s really important, but it’s only a single one. Are you going to tolerate Iran having a nuclear weapon or not?’” If no, he said, then that would prompt certain espionage and military options. If yes, then it would require ways to contain and deter a nuclear-armed Iran.
But evidently, Mr. Blair’s contribution peeved the slow-to-anger president. “The president took me aside after that meeting and said, ‘Denny, don’t ever put me on the spot like that again,’” Mr. Blair recalled. “I said, ‘What?’ I mean, I didn’t say, ‘What?’ but I said, ‘Yes, sir, Mr. President. I certainly won’t.’” But Mr. Blair said, “I was kept out of meetings from that time forward.”
“Blair was, of course, correct. The real question on Iran was precisely that question: would the US be able to "tolerate" and contain a nuclear-armed Iranian theocratic regime? The US missed the chance to keep North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, as we discovered in 2006 with their first test of a nuclear weapon. We have been forced ever since to "tolerate" its nuclear status and to focus on containment instead. However, the Kim dynasty does not have the same non-rational orientation as the Iranian regime; Kim Jong-un wants power, not to accelerate a messianic religious vision of Armageddon. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) works with rational dictatorships, but not with religious fanatics who see a nuclear conflagration as a feature rather than a bug in their theology.
“Obama clearly didn't want to hear that "fresh idea," let alone deal with it in a meeting where he'd have to choose an answer to that question. The meeting went worse for Blair than the NYT's brief mention suggests, as Fox News points out:
Blair described the meeting as one that had been presented as an opportunity to provide input on Iran policy, and he made the "mistake" of thinking Obama was honestly looking for "fresh insights."
Blair served as Obama's DNI from the start of his presidency in 2009 until he resigned at Obama's request in May 2010.
“Blair didn't just get frozen out; he got pushed out for asking the one question that really mattered. Obama eventually answered the question with his "Iran deal," the executive agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which limited Iranian nuclear activity for only a few years with few commitments on verification, while not bothering to address the other threats Iran posed – ballistic missile systems and its terror proxies. Obama and Kerry front-loaded the JCPOA with US concessions and payments to Iran, allowing its backers to argue that the US had a sunk cost in the agreement and therefore had little choice but to see it through to completion.”
Obama's "fresh idea" on Iran had always been appeasement, followed by limited containment and an exit from the region. Every policy Obama adopted pointed toward that strategy. He chose to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran that would have used those weapons to seize control of the region, destroy Israel, and eventually provoke a war with massive destruction as a way to immanantize the Twelfther eschaton. Thanks to Blair's testimony, we know that Obama deliberately chose that policy rather than force Iran to end its nuclear program altogether.
“One might conclude that this nugget is particularly relevant today, in the current war, where Donald Trump clearly chose the opposite answer to Blair's question. A news outlet could have been expected to use this revelation to explore the current conflict and its full context as its main topic. Instead, while the NYT did at least include this passage, it buried it almost to the end of a 27-paragraph musing on the "oral history" of Obama's presidency, with about half of it devoted instead to Joe Biden's butthurt over Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“Talk about burying a lede ... ”
