If You Like Your Uranium Enrichment Plan... Part Two

Following up on a previous post regarding the abysmal agreement obama reached with Iran, in which they got everything they wanted in exchange for a highly dubious promise to cut back on their uranium enrichment program ("We won't break this promise - cross out hearts!"), here's a look at (1) the duplicitous behavior of obama, and (2) some Americans barry threw under the bus to make the deal.

obama's Duplicitous Behavior

Top U.S. diplomats spent months meeting with Iranians in a series of secret, bilateral negotiations that hammered out most of the details of the nuclear deal with the Islamic republic - an agreement that is being criticized by Israel and some in Congress as giving away too much in exchange for too little.

The one-on-one discussions between Iran and the United States were personally authorized by President Barack Obama, who has long tried to open up the lines of dialogue between the Iranian government and the United States.

The talks were kept hidden even from America's closest friends, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago, and that may explain how the nuclear accord appeared to come together so quickly after years of stalemate and fierce hostility between Iran and the West.

But the secrecy of the talks may also explain some of the tensions between the U.S. and France, which earlier this month balked at a proposed deal, and with Israel, which is furious about the agreement and has angrily denounced the diplomatic outreach to Tehran.

Israel isn't the only U.S. ally to voice concerns over the deal. Saudi Arabia - the Sunni Muslim Middle East rival to Shiite Iran - has long taken a hard line against Tehran obtaining a nuclear weapon. France, too balked at the terms of the deal - even though that nation was part of the Geneva talks and eventually signed on.

That should tell you everything you need to know about the deal. Israel, the only western-style democracy in that part of the world (and the only one that doesn't treat women like second class citizens - or worse), is violently opposed to it. The Saudis have sided with the Jews against their fellow muslims in Iran. Hell, even the French showed more common sense and backbone than obama (even though they reverted to type and caved in at the end).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it best: "Today the world became a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world made a significant step in obtaining the most dangerous weapons in the world."

As for the Americans obama threw under the bus:

A retired FBI agent has become the longest-held American hostage in history, more than six years after he was kidnapped in Iran.

Seems like we could at least have gotten his release thrown in as part of the deal. Instead, obama issued the press release below after the agreement was signed.

Levinson isn't the only American held by the savages Iranians.

Saeed Abedini, an American citizen, has been imprisoned in Iran for more than a year for practicing Christianity. The talks over Iran’s nuclear program were seen by his family and those representing them as one of the most promising avenues yet for securing his release.

But the White House confirmed over the weekend that Abedini’s status was not on the table during those talks.

Why not?

One more:

Another case that has recently drawn public attention is that of Amir Hekmati, a U.S. Marine who was arrested in Iran in 2011 while visiting his grandmother.

He was detained on charges of spying for the CIA and sentenced to death. His family says the confession was coerced.

'Confession.' Yeah, right...

For an informed opinion, let's hear from a few of the original American hostages held by Iran back in the dark days of Jimmy Carter's administration.

...for many of the 66 Americans who were held hostage for 444 days at the start of the Iranian revolution, trusting the regime in Tehran feels like a mistake.

“It’s kind of like Jimmy Carter all over again,” said Clair Cortland Barnes, now retired and living in Leland, N.C., after a career at the CIA and elsewhere. He sees the negotiations now as no more effective than they were in 1979 and 1980, when he and others languished, facing mock executions and other torments. ... “And what do we get out of it?” asked Barnes. “A lie saying, ‘We’re not going to make plutonium.’ It’s a win-win for them and it’s a lose-lose for us.”

Retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, 83, called the deal “foolishness.”

“My personal view is, I never found an Iranian leader I can trust,” he said. “I don’t think today it’s any different from when I was there. None of them, I think, can be trusted. Why make an agreement with people you can’t trust?”

Why, indeed? That's the question I keep asking myself.

Sgt. Rodney “Rocky” Sickmann, 56, of St. Louis, then a Marine sergeant, remembers clearly being told by his captors that their goal was to use the hostages to humiliate the American government, and he suspects this interim deal is in that vein.

“It just hurts. We negotiated for 444 days and not one time did they agree to anything … and here they beg for us to negotiate and we do,” he said. “It’s hard to swallow. We negotiate with our enemies and stab our allies in the back. That doesn’t seem good.”

Leave it to a Marine to succinctly sum up the situation:"We negotiate with our enemies and stab our allies in the back."

That also sums up the obama presidency...