To the editor:
Perhaps the troubled soul of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain might rest somewhat easier now that U.S. President Barack Obama and his feckless secretary of state have eclipsed Chamberlain’s historically naïve 1938 declaration of “peace in our time” with their own version of that statement in celebrating the recent lifting of oil production and monetary sanctions against a recalcitrant Iran — a result of the horribly flawed nuclear ban treaty championed by the current administration.
While that deal may or may not slow Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it has effectively opened the spigot of Iranian oil production and hundreds of millions of previously embargoed Iranian monetary assets — allowing that nation to much more effectively spread its dominating influence over the Iran-Iraq-Syrian crescent and further erode any U.S. investment and influence in international energy production.
Furthermore, any administration claim that sanctions could be reimposed if Iran misbehaves is blunted by the fact that other signatories of the treaty — notably China and Russia — greatly profit from the lifting of sanctions against a very good industrial and military client and would be loath to reimpose sanctions.
In short, a true vacuum created by U.S. military and foreign policy missteps have now significantly limited our own options and influence in the area, and have made the Middle East a much more dangerous region of the world. Unfortunately, I now feel that any hope of “peace in our time” in the Middle East has considerably diminished.
David A. Nealy
Greenwood
