Lessons in extortion: Pyongyang sits the exam, Tehran takes notes

By ILYA MEYER
From an historical viewpoint it would be interesting to look back and see how future generations judge us for our passiveness today.
Over a period of eight years, in a shocking display of well-meaning naivete and ill-considered policy, US President Barack Obama protected, even rescued and aided, rogue regimes such as Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Fatah and others. Obama pulled back the Iran regime from the brink of collapse, firstly by refusing to offer even token moral support to the Iranian pro-democracy movement, and secondly by releasing hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen assets to Iran. The Iranian regime promptly used these funds to rearm both themselves and their Lebanese colonialist arm Hezbollah, then joined forces with Syria’s Bashar Assad as he went about massacring half a million of his own citizens and driving most of the rest into exile.
In addition, President Obama forced through a misguided, naive, unsafe and uncontrollable nuclear weapons deal that has left Iran holding all the cards while the West retains none. Over the decades, Iran and North Korea have worked closely together on a variety of nuclear-weapons and ballistic missile programmes. The parallels are stunning – not least in the way the mainstream media resolutely ignore them.
Instead, major media outlets such as CNN have just one item on their agenda: the vilification of the current US President and his removal from power, so he can be replaced with a candidate favoured by the previous US President – and the media.

Today we therefore have a comical, albeit nightmarish, reversal whereby a megalomaniac ruling in Pyongyang is being tacitly supported, certainly admired, by mainstream US media working against a sitting US President, because for the media it is more important to vilify Trump than it is to spotlight the security abyss Trump inherited from his predecessor.

The media are instead focusing on the limited options available to the current US president – each option worse than the previous one – while ignoring the fact that it is the previous US president who has delivered us into this impossible predicament.

Ultimately, however, as North Korea continues its escalations, the predicament still has to be resolved. Nevertheless, the media, led by CNN, ghoulishly clap their hands in delight at every injudicious comment made by Trump. The media laugh in derision at his suggested methods of containing the dangerous escalation by North Korea’s unelected strongman, because every such suggestion will of necessity plunge not just the US but much of the rest of the western world into military, industrial and commercial strife.

Meanwhile the media consistently ignore the fact that standing quietly on the sidelines watching this debacle unfold are the hardline mullahs of Iran. If the world community fails to deal robustly with Pyongyang as it continues its policy of extortion and brinkmanship, Tehran will quite naturally draw the logical conclusion that the world community will also hesitate to deal robustly with Tehran.

Which means that two rogue states with nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities – and intimate, long-term nuclear-weapons cooperation – will be calling the shots. While the media continue their sport of Trump-baiting. Blind and deaf to the emerging story they won't report until it becomes a reality – after which they will be unable to report it.



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