The Return of the Echo Chamber - How the Obama-era communications infrastructure is working to rope Trump into the next JCPOA

Iran can’t have a nuclear bomb, says Donald Trump, so it can’t be allowed to enrich uranium—not now, not ever. Accordingly, former Barack Obama aides responded favorably to news that Vice President JD Vance told the Iranian delegation he met with in Pakistan last weekend that he was willing to erase his boss’s red line and offer Iran a deal that allows it to enrich after 20 years.

“If they could get Iran to suspend for even a few years, that is superior to what we got,” said Robert Malley, the former Obama official who negotiated the 2015 Iran deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Malley funded an Iranian influence operation while working at the International Crisis Group and then pushed its operatives into the State Department when he rejoined the government in the Joe Biden administration. He managed the Iran file until he was suspended for allegedly mishandling classified intelligence. Here the seasoned bureaucrat was trying to bait Trump by appealing to his vanity: Wouldn’t the president jump at a deal with Iran that’s better than the one Obama got?

Malley uses honey to try to lure Trump back into the agreement he withdrew from during his first term, and others think vinegar is the way to go. “Trump’s failed war has eliminated the power of America’s military threats,” says Trita Parsi, the U.S. green card-holding Iran lobbyist. According to the head of the Quincy Institute, funded by Charles Koch and George Soros, which served as a conduit between Iranian officials and Obama aides during the lead-up to the 2015 Iran deal, Trump doesn’t have any other choice but the Iran deal. The onetime JCPOA publicist David Ignatius agrees with Parsi. “Trump has no appetite for further armed conflict,” writes the Washington Post columnist who played a leading role in promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory. “He knows that the upsides are limited and the tail risk, as financial traders like to say, is large.”

Trump doesn’t like that Vance offered the Iranians a moratorium. He told the press he doesn’t want the Iranians “to feel like they have a win.” But the Democratic Party officials, media, and think-tank experts who made up the Obama administration’s Iran deal echo chamber are determined to make Trump lose. It doesn’t matter that U.S. forces have decisively routed the regime, laid waste to its nuclear and ballistic missile program, and imposed a naval blockade destined to hollow out the country’s economy. If they can push Trump into a version of the JCPOA, then Obama wins the peace.

The return of the echo chamber means that the communications infrastructure Obama aides built more than a decade ago to deceive the American public about the nature of the JCPOA and to steamroll their elected representatives into supporting it has become a permanent feature of our political and media landscape. And that has consequences far beyond the making of U.S. Middle East policy.

It’s important to remember that the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory was simply a function of how the Iran deal echo chamber was repurposed to target Trump. Obama and his aides employed the same network of Democratic operatives, intelligence officials, policy experts, and, most crucially, the media; it’s not a coincidence that Ignatius, for instance, played a part in both information operations. Last year, Ben Wittes, Russiagate impresario and editor of the Brookings Institution’s journal Lawfare, hired Ariane Tabatabai, a pro-Iran influence operative that Malley brought into the State Department—a stint that ended just this week.

But personnel are interchangeable; what drove the success of the echo chamber is technique. A decade before MAGA influencers declared war on expertise and establishment-media gatekeeping to protect their privileged dissemination or withholding of information, the Obama comms apparatus had burned down genuine institutional knowledge. What was left of the press, and the expert class the media quoted, was one voice in unison supporting Obama’s deal—that was the echo chamber.

It was obvious to anyone who understood the English language that the restrictions on Iranian nuclear activities in the JCPOA were going to expire, and that once they did, the regime would have a fully functional nuclear weapons program. After all, they were called “sunset” clauses. But genuine nuclear and arms agreement experts—even journalists like my colleagues at Tablet—who pointed out the obvious were shouted down by the echo chamber. Actually, Obama says the deal means “Iran will not get its hands on a nuclear bomb.”

American voters have been wandering in a wilderness of lies since the JCPOA, which is to say that the present skirmish is about not only shielding Iran’s nuclear weapons program from Trump and Israel but also fortifying the foundations of our current information ecosystem, for the cruelties inflicted on the public designed to destabilize American society, like Russiagate and COVID-19 lockdowns, have their origins in the 44th U.S. president’s calculated lies to ensure that an anti-American regime came in possession of the world’s deadliest weapon.

The JCPOA was designed to protect Iran’s nuclear weapons program until the regime could protect it itself. Thus, while the JCPOA put time-limited restrictions on the nuclear program, it undid restrictions on Iran’s conventional ballistic missiles program. This meant that by the time the restrictions on its nuclear activities expired, Iran would have an enormous arsenal of ballistic missiles to defend the nuclear program against Israel and any U.S. president willing to take military action to end it. As Iran’s conventional arsenal was approaching that point of no return, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to see Trump in his Florida home at the end of December.

This was the imminent threat to the United States—not that the Iranians were about to nuke American cities and landmarks, but that if Trump didn’t act, a fully loaded ballistic missile arsenal would buy the Iranians as much time as they needed to reconstruct their nuclear facilities after the United States’ and Israel’s June campaign. And soon it would be difficult, if not impossible, to stop the Iranians from building a bomb.

The Trump administration set four clear goals: to eliminate Iran’s navy, most of which is now at the bottom of the sea; to further degrade its nuclear and ballistic missiles facilities, much of which have been either destroyed or severely damaged; and to end the regime’s support for regional proxies, like Hezbollah, now being rolled up by Israel’s Lebanon campaign.

Trump says he’s ready to end the war, save for one last thing: a thousand pounds of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which the Iranians could conceivably turn into a bomb. The administration knows where it is, buried under the rubble left by a B-2 bomber attack during the June strikes. Either the Iranians can hand it over or the United States will take it. But, as Vance told the media after returning from Pakistan, the HEU and no enrichment are Trump’s two red lines.

Vance isn’t an Obama mole, but as leader of the GOP’s so-called restraintist—i.e., isolationist—camp, he shares many of the Obama faction’s ambitions and anxieties, especially regarding Israel, its place in our foreign policy, and how pro-Israel voters shape our domestic politics. While Obama and his circle are fixated on the Jews, restraintists like Tucker Carlson, Vance’s friend and the man usually credited with the vice president’s meteoric political career, are determined to marginalize evangelical voters.

The Obama faction and Vance’s restraintists are therefore structurally aligned, and the former are confident they have a shot at forcing Trump to accommodate Iran because they have a man on the inside pushing things their way. As Carlson put it, “There are people in the White House … working really hard, really late, trying to fix this, to get a peace, even one that diminishes us.”

For the sake of his political future, Vance wants at the very least to distance himself from what allies like Carlson describe as a costly war of choice that serves only Israeli, not American, interests. Thus, it’s hardly surprising that his status as the Cabinet member most opposed to the Iran campaign was the cornerstone of a recent New York Times article contending that Netanyahu fooled Trump into the war. According to the Times, during planning for the war, America’s number two official told the number one, “You know I think this is a bad idea. But if you want to do it, I’ll support you.”

Trump couldn’t have liked a leak showing that Vance publicly prioritized his political profile over showing unified support for the president’s Iran policy at wartime. So the vice president was sent to Pakistan to fail at winning a diplomatic solution to a war he opposes while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vance’s rival for Trump’s 2028 endorsement, was invited to party with the boss at an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight in Miami.

The Iranians’ reputation as tough negotiators is largely owed to U.S. officials who seek to accommodate Tehran even if it diminishes the United States, like those Obama deputies who negotiated the JCPOA. But in this case, the Iranians really would have to be intransigent because the uranium is the only thing they have left resembling deterrence. The U.S. naval blockade neutralized Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz, and with Hezbollah fighting for its life, the regime’s top proxy force is out of the picture. All Tehran has left is its adversaries’ concern that somehow, in the middle of a massive military campaign that’s trashed Iran’s nuclear program, the country might yet build a bomb and find some way to push it across a neighbor’s doorstep. Of course, by not handing over the uranium, the Iranians are risking more of Trump’s devastating war, a bad option—but from their perspective, in for a penny, in for a pound. And giving up the HEU is tantamount to complete surrender.

In short, there was no chance of a diplomatic solution since Trump’s red lines are indelible and the Iranians’ are existential. Vance’s task was essentially to offer the Iranians compensation packages: When you give up the goods, we’ll lift sanctions worth this much now and another portion at a future date—and, of course, we will give assurances that neither we nor the Israelis will liquidate you. If you don’t accept the terms, the war will resume until we get what we want.

Naturally, the Iranians rejected Trump’s red lines, which Vance nonetheless characterized as “progress.” On Tuesday, the vice president said, “I think the people we’re sitting across from wanted to make a deal.” But whether the Iranians showed flexibility, as Vance says, is irrelevant to Trump’s policy since his red lines are not negotiable. But the prospect of more negotiations is highly important to Vance, whose own camp warned him that his failure to end Trump’s war would make him complicit in it and ruin his shot at the White House.

Trump has staked his legacy to a war he’s all but won, and he says he wants everything. “I don’t want 90 percent. I don’t want 95 percent,” he says he told his negotiators. “I told them, ‘I want everything.’” If he doesn’t get it, the predecessor who plotted against him, and the possible successor who’s undermining his war policy, will decide not only the Iran campaign but also Trump’s place in history—as well as the fate of the echo chamber that was put in place to sell the Iranian nuclear bomb and that has been at the center of a decade’s worth of campaigns to deceive the American public.

I know many will say that Iran would never use a nuke against countries that have more nukes than they have. But this arithmetic does not stop Iran from striking stronger countries with their usual terror attacks. And what if Iran uses a proxy to deliver a nuke to a port? How do you determine who did it?

Sadly Iran will get the nucs if they dont already have them from
China N Korea or Russia.
These Axis of Evils may have give it to them .
What is stopping them ?

I believe Iran would use their nukes when they have a military capable missile to deliver them against us and Israel. They want their 12th Mahdi to return.

Solar panel prices are now cheap.

The idea that sunny Iran needs to go nuclear to be able to export more oil is now outdated.

“What is stopping them ?”

China and Russia have Muslims and Iran may become bossy if Iran has nukes.

North Korea has plutonium bombs. It can only make a few each year at most. Maybe it might take more than a year to make enough plutonium for a single bomb. It would take dozens of H-bombs to blow up metropolitan Los Angeles.

It’s doubtful that China N Korea or Russia would provide nukes to Iran bec they know Iran would use them rather than have them as a deterrent.

How long Tehran would halt enrichment?

Forever (sunny Iran can use solar panels, which are now cheap)

Regain access to billions in frozen funds?

$15 million per kilogram of U-235 in highly enriched uranium per year turned over (440kg of 60% - $3.96 billion/year)

per top model centrifuge turned over within 30 days
$10 million first 500
$5 million all others

per previous top model
one-fifth the amounts

$50 million/quarter if no attacks from Lebanon
$20 million/quarter if no attacks from Gaza
$100 million/quarter if Israel is not attacked

As for the blockade:
1. Iran can get stuff by rail from China and via the Caspian Sea from Russia
2. Iran has about 90 million people and its domestic gasoline market is about as big as that of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia combined.

Iran has a pipeline that bypasses Hormuz. It is 42-inches in diameter and probably has a capacity of 1 million barrels per day. Its eastern terminal is about 200 miles from Pakistan.

https://www.gem.wiki/Goureh-Jask_Crude_Oil_Pipeline

WIKI

In 2007, Vance left the military and used the G.I. Bill to study at Ohio State University. He graduated with highest honors in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and philosophy. In 2010, Vance entered Yale Law School, where he won a staff position on The Yale Law Journal and worked with a group of its editors who primarily checked citations. Vance’s future wife was the journal’s executive developmental editor. At Yale, he befriended fellow Ohio native and future Republican politician Vivek Ramaswamy. During his first year, Professor Amy Chua persuaded Vance to begin writing his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JD_Vance

Absolutely! I posted this the other day. Most Americans do not have an understanding of what motivates these crazy zealots. They will never agree to give up the bomb. They need to be taken out.

Call your Congressman:

I think the Congress should place a special 100% income tax on tariff refunds and use the proceeds to pay citizens with insured motor vehicles about $600/each for gas price help.

I do see the setting up of Ez 38-39 coming to fruition. We might damage Iran with this war, but we won’t destroy them as they will join forces for the assault on Israel again.

The chessboard is being set.

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