Obama’s rank smell of defeat is the West’s unwanted fragrance

Congrats this week to oddball scientist, Christian Poincheval, for an invention which, if not mind-blowing, should certainly improve the winds of any environment he inhabits.
   So ashamed of the odours emitting from his derrière, the flatulently-challenged Frenchman has created a pill to make farts (sorry, but there’s no other word for it) far less objectionable, with bouffée aux chocolat and attar of roses highly recommended.
   A consignment of the wonder drug might be welcome at the White House, where the air is rank with the stench of defeatism, after the latest round of talks with Iran over the ayatollahs’ A-bomb ambitions unsurprisingly ground to another impasse.
   On reflection, impasse is probably a misnomer if you’re a member of Tehran’s Team Jihadi and its camp-followers in Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other motley bigots, ever willing to perform acts of mass destruction on behalf of their patrons, the saintly mullahs.
   Because Christmas – even if they think it’s a pagan festival – has come early for them. And it is hugely due to the magnanimity of lame-duck President Barack Obama, who continues to achieve the near-impossible feat of buddying up to the West’s worst foes, whilst making enemies of the West’s best friends.
   In defiance of ultimatums dating back over 12 years to fess up to the truth behind its multi-billion-dollar nuclear agenda, in Vienna last week Iran once again danced rings round negotiators from the UN Security Council permanent members: America, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany, the so-called P5+1.
   By all means send your International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to see our bustling bazaars, admire our wondrous mosques and the ancient ruins of Persepolis, said the smiley Iranians.
   The IAEA tourists might even be lucky enough to see dissenters’ corpses dangling from cranes or the regular, pro-regime demos, so well choreographed sceptics might be inclined to believe they aren’t quite as ‘spontaneous’ as the local, state-controlled media reports.
   But let’s forget any silly notions about UN watchdogs taking a peek at our subterranean atomic secrets – all purely for domestic electricity purposes, of course.    
   Okay, IAEA chief, Yukiya Amano, is furious, demanding Iran ‘provides timely access to all relevant information, documentation, sites, material and personnel,’ and wants an explanation about explosives tests that could be used to develop nuclear detonators.
   But, after a dozen years of conflabs, what’s the rush?
So why don’t we just forget that November 24 deadline for these ‘final talks’ we set last January – after the last round of ‘final talks’ failed – and take a time-out until, say, next July before we chat again?
   Meanwhile, our tens of thousands of centrifuges will continue to spin, we’ll avoid any messy, new sanctions Obama’s Republican rivals want foisted on us and thanks again for lifting that ban on us selling oil and unfreezing our overseas billions.
   All agreed? Great! So adios, ciao, toodle-pip or whatever they say in Farsi. Oh, and have a nice day.
   The only plus is that US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has racked up so many Air Miles visiting the five plonkers+one, he can afford unlimited tickets on Richard Branson’s £100,000-a-seat rocket ship, should it’s ever be deemed space-worthy. If I’m sounding flippant over a situation so dire as this, when the sponsor-in-chief of world terrorism is winning yet more time to weave its web of evil, I make no apologies. Because this never-ending charade has become the mother of all diplomatic farces.
   The responsibility lies at the feet of two men: an American president, who – whether he likes it or not – speaks for the free world and acts like a ditherer, and his adversary, a religious fanatic, hell bent on resurrecting the ancient Persian Empire’s hegemony across today’s incendiary Middle East.
   With his peacenik default setting, Obama’s messianic belief he could end all conflicts has morphed into a perilous vision of a wobbly-kneed, accident-prone, token presidency, derided by every AK47-toting jihadi.
   To underline his detachment from reality, the other day he fired his Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel, viewed by Oval Office confidants as having fallen under the spell of America’s military, who recognise apathy when they see it.
   In contrast, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khemenei, is a hardline Islamo-fascist, rapidly imposing his Shia extremist ideology across the Levant – from Tehran to Beirut, Baghdad and beyond – by means of ruthless violence and toxic, diplomatic blackmail.
   One man seeks only to placate his foe; the other only to subjugate or annihilate all who oppose his pitiless ambition. And you don’t need me to identify which is which.
   So imagine the nightmare scenario that would unfold from a thermonuclear Iran, which once used unarmed children as cannon-fodder to test the whereabouts of minefields in the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with their tiny feet.
   Israel – a Western democracy if not by location in the cauldron of hate – is already on notice from Iran’s former president, the odious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that it will be ‘wiped off the map’, so would have no recourse but to retaliate in nuclear like for like.
   Saudi Arabia, like Israel a snubbed US ally, would seek its own Armageddon weapon to protect the Sunni Islamic states from Shia vengeance, and probably turn to Pakistan for an off-the-shelf A-Bomb.
   Teheran’s proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon – which last week boasted it had received the latest Fateh-class, Iranian missiles – and Hamas in Gaza would be further embolden by Obama’s inertia to pose an even greater, real and present danger to Egypt and the Jewish state.
   Meanwhile, Syria and Iraq would continue to burn while Obama fiddles and the self-styled Islamic State would continue to attract wannabe jihadis from its international reservoir of psychotic talent, if only to defend the Sunni cause against rampant Shiites.
   If these are not sobering enough thoughts, add to them the direct threat to the West from the snaking tentacles of Iran’s Republican Guard, prompting and funding terror attacks in our homelands by its covert agents or ‘lone wolf’ self-starters.
   However, one ray of hope is on the horizon: Obama, the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time, has less than two years to serve.
   The only doubt is whether we can survive that long.
 
  To read more of Hugh Ash’s comments, follow his award-winning online blog – Views From The Mallorca Pier – at hughash.wordpress.com