Iran And The M.O.U. – Pretense Or Otherwise?

“For me, I think it’s over,” Trump said. “As far as I’m concerned it’s just a waste of time.”

“They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time. They’re liars, they’re cheats. They’re sick people.”

A lot of people have been saying that for a long time.  In point of fact, among conservative commentators reaction to the MOU could be divided between those that thought the negotiations were genuine and thought we; therefore, gave up way too much and those that knew Iran was never sincere and the MOU would end up, as it now has, in the shredder.

I honestly find it hard to believe that the president really thought Iran were negotiating in good faith.  History made it plain they were incapable of such.  Truly the MOU was a stinker if we thought it would hold and I don’t think the president is that dumb.  So then the question shifts – why did we go through this pretense?  Two possible reasons spring to front of mind.  One was to appease the isolationist branch of Republicans.  The other was an effort to calm the war to aid the mid-terms.  But it is also possible we needed time to regroup or we had to appease some allies.  I am sure if I noodled on it longer I could come up with some more.  Regardless, it should now be evident that the MOU was a sham – the negotiations a pretense for some reason or the other, probably a combination of reasons.

Speaking generally, we went through this pretense because we had to appease somebody.  Not someone on the Iranian side – there is no one on the Iranian side save for the regime proper, and they are known liars and cheats to use the presidents terms.  Rather, it was necessary to appease a significant portion of the rest of the world that simply does not understand that there is genuine evil in the world and that the only way to deal with it is to destroy it.  We had to prove to them, one more time, that the only way to end the scourge that is Iran and all the evil that emanates from it as terrorist acts by its proxies was to kill it.  What makes me truly sad is we will likely have to prove it again.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked a lot about “cheap grace.”  By that he meant:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

I would summarize it by saying cheap grace is cheap because it fails to understand just why grace is necessary.  It views God’s grace as saying the easy “Bless you” after a sneeze rather than as the overcoming, through massive sacrifice and discipline, of the deep and abiding evil that resides in the human heart that it actually is.

The Iranian regime is that deep and abiding evil given governmental powers.  No simple “Bless you” is going to banish it. I do not envy the president the political calculations he faces.  Too many still fail to understand just how heinous such genuine evil is.  All I know is nothing short of its obliteration will rid us of its menace.