Here are a few quotes to help you decide to read the entire essay of what the West is really up against. There’s not much to be optimistic about.
“So where does radical Islamism go when its traditional territories contract? It goes where resistance is lowest, and resistance in Europe has never been lower.”
“Europe is not short of blueprints for how this ends. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—the man who famously said that “democracy is like a tram,” and that you get off when you reach your destination—is the prototype, not the exception.”
“By the time anything from Saturday’s talks reaches an American hand, it will have passed through Tehran’s calculation, those same Pakistani interests, and Chinese intelligence services. For this reason, among many others, the question Saturday is not what Washington will gain but what it will give away in the process.”
We don’t have to be optimistic or pessimistic about the negotiations. We simply have to wait and see.
As I keep on reminding myself, a lot more countries are involved in this situation than just Iran and the US. Seven Sunni Arab states in the Gulf have seen their citizens killed and civilian facilities destroyed by Iran. Are they going to sit on their hands and accept whatever Iran & the US agree to?
Wealthy well-armed China, Japan, and South Korea are really beginning to suffer from Iran’s blockage of Hormuz. Will they be satisfied with whatever Iran & the US agree to?
Russia is benefitting tremendously from Iran’s actions. Is Russia going to quietly accept whatever some Iranians want to agree to?
Then there are the Euros – also suffering – but who cares about them? In principle, the Euros could demand a seat at the table, just as they have been doing in the Ukrainian war. But Euros and principle don’t belong in the same sentence.
Much of what you say is true. Ali’s main point, though, is that anything short of Iran’s complete defeat - as measured by zero capacity to enrich uranium and free navigation through Hormuz - will amount to mere bumps in the road on which Islam inexorably, over the long term, marches to completely subdue Western Civilization. It is well on the way. If the truce leads to the US giving away the advantage it has won in battle, it would be a great waste of a singular opportunity.
You are right the only thing which matters to the US is that Iran foreswears ICBMs and nuclear warheads which could threaten the Continental US – everything else is negotiable. Since Iran has told the world for years that it is not building long range missiles (Hmmm! Diego Garcia?) or nuclear bombs (Hmmm! Uranium enriched far beyond the level needed for nuclear power?), it should be no trouble for Iran to agree to those conditions.
Normal freedom of navigation through the Straits of Hormuz is a tricky one. It does not matter to the US, but it is very important to some people who matter to the US, like the Saudis. And it is also important to people to whom the US owes no favors, such as the Euros and the Chinese. Perhaps we will see a sincere but half-hearted US effort.
Some years ago, I was involved with a business that had a contract with Iran – very difficult people to deal with! President Trump may recognize the need to let the Iranians walk away from a negotiation with something that they (and the NYT) can represent as a triumph … as long as the US gets what is really important to us.
To my way of thinking - and consonant with Ali’s essay - is a forceful statement that the US will not acquiesce to Islamic supremacy across the globe. The trajectory of Europe is despicable and a betrayal of innumerable lives and uncountable treasure, over centuries in pursuit of human dignity and freedom. Europe is flushing down the toilet in real time. The UK is beneath contempt.
She has some interesting thoughts sometimes but, frankly, I’ve had quite enough of foreigners (especially Somalis) telling us how to run US foreign policy. I mean, it’s not even her region. Does she speak Farsi?
Her point is about Islam’s 1400 year aggression - on which she is quite knowledgeable - and its relentless pursuit of world hegemony. Iran is only a presently, especially aggressive and dangerous piece of that puzzle.
Gee, I dunno. The second paragraph is all about contemporary Iran:
Anyone acquainted with this regime’s forty-seven-year record of treating agreements as tactical instruments rather than binding commitments should have seen this coming.
So is the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that, etc. Only about halfway in does she start talking about the Ottomans. So, my point stands.
I am not sure how much weight we should place today on Islam’s undeniably expansionary past. Christianity too had some centuries of an expansionary past – yet just look at the fallen state of Christianity in Europe today!
Looking at the Islamic Middle East today, there is no doubt that the rather extreme Sunni Wahhabis are in retreat in Saudi Arabia. There is a magnificent Christian cathedral in Kuwait. Dubai is famous for its relaxed official attitude to non-Islamic private behavior, as long as it remains private. Arabs are definitely more religious than Europeans – but then, who isn’t these days?
Iran is a bit of a special case, where the issue is not just Islam but the fact that Iran has a theocratic government which is probably as unrepresentative of the Iranian people as the US Congress is of the American people.
The concern about Iran and nuclear weapons is that Iran would quite likely use them aggressively. The theocratic Shia regime is looking forward to Armageddon, and seemingly therefore has no fear of nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction. This is in marked contrast to Islamic Pakistan which has nuclear weapons for defense against nuclear-armed India but is very unlikely ever to use those nuclear weapons aggressively, because they are rationally afraid of MAD.
With all that said, I do have concerns about the highly visible rise of Islam in Europe. But the real problem there is the sickness & emptiness in the European soul. Far Lefties are encouraging the growth of Islam as a way to defeat the “normies”. If it was not Islam, those Euro Far Lefties would be doing something else equally as dumb.
If today is a leading indicator, there will be sufficient dhimmies to preserve the devices long enough for first use, no? Actually, if/when things get that far, the rest of the West will be sufficiently cowed that mere patience will likely suffice. The rate of collapse even now is literally breathtaking. The descent from the late 1930’s, when the West believed it was worth preserving and was united and willing and able to fight, is almost unimaginable. It is also profoundly sad that what was so hard won over millennia, is being discarded with such insoucience.
