Saudi Arabia’s Barbaric Executions

America’s longstanding alliance with the House of Saud is no reason for the Obama administration to do anything less than clearly condemn this foolhardy and dangerous course with a more robust response than its call Monday for both sides to exercise restraint.

.. Saudi Arabia’s income has sharply declined as a result of the prolonged drop in oil prices — caused, in part, by the regime’s insistence on maintaining production levels — and the government has announced cutbacks in the lavish welfare spending that Saudis have long taken for granted. The executions provided both a sectarian crisis to deflect anger over the cutbacks and a graphic warning of what can befall critics.

How They Failed to Block the Iran Deal

The debate on the deal throughout was only ostensibly on its merits. The Republicans’ contempt for Obama—as a Democrat, as a black person, as, in the view of many of them, an illegitimate president—was clear to any close observer. For the first time in US history, the opposition party thumbed its nose at the president by inviting the head of another nation—Netanyahu—to address Congress to urge rejection of an international measure the president supported. When Secretary of State John Kerry, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appeared before it to testify on the agreement, he was greeted with overt contempt by its Republican members.

.. The lead in opposing it was taken by AIPAC, which aligns itself on Israel’s security matters with the Likud party and its leader, Netanyahu. (When the more peace-minded Yitzahk Rabin was prime minister, his relationship with AIPAC was rocky.)

.. Each side had support from Israeli officials: current ones were against the deal, while former heads of intelligence and the military said that it was good for Israel’s security.

Iran: The Obamacare of Foreign Policy

The deal will become the “Obamacare of foreign policy,” Nicholas Burns, a Harvard professor and former under secretary of state, told me. Yes, it will. That is, something sensible (at least in the eyes of most people across the world) to which Republicans will never acquiesce and which they will try to use in every conceivable way to undermine a president they loathe.

Obama reads Iran better than his critics

Mr Obama has taken the opposite tack. A realistic negotiator puts himself into his adversary’s shoes. The starting point on Iran is that its desire to go nuclear is entirely rational. US-led coalitions have invaded two of Iran’s direct neighbours, Iraq and Afghanistan in the past 15 years. American troops are still there. As a rule, the US does not invade countries that have nuclear weapons. Moreover, the US labelled Iran part of the “axis of evil” in 2002, at a time when Tehran wanted to help the US in Afghanistan, where they shared enmity with the Taliban (as they still do). Mohammad Khatami, the moderate cleric who was then Iran’s president, had also signalled a nuclear deal was possible. Had President George W Bush responded, a far better one would have been available. Instead, he branded Iran evil. Unsurprisingly, Tehran stepped up its clandestine efforts.

.. It is possible, as Mr Obama’s critics predict, that Iran will spend much of the estimated $100bn in unfrozen assets on regional proxies — Hizbollah at the forefront. So what? Compared to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) and its mimics, Hizbollah is a restrained actor. Its theology is absolutist and it has carried out terrorist attacks. But it is not a death cult. In a world of bad choices, boosting Hizbollah’s clout is an acceptable price to pay for a deal that delays — and possibly dispels — the spectre of a Middle East nuclear arms race

.. Diplomatic norms prevent Mr Obama from pointing out that Iran is a more promising candidate for peaceful change than Saudi Arabia. Unlike that country, Iran has a quasi-democracy. About half of its university graduates are female. There are competing power centres within Iran’s theological regime. Prospects for further relaxation are easy to imagine.

.. There is also the small matter of how to defeat Isis. Without Iran’s help, the US would be in far worse straits.