Obama mulls deal with devil as Iran proposes nuclear pact

The tests of leadership keep coming for Barack Obama. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the future of Western civilization might hang on whether he passes them.

Obama finally answered the 3 a.m. phone call about Islamic State and, despite initially claiming it could be a “manageable problem,” he is showing signs of understanding the intrinsic evil. At the UN, he called it a “network of death” and said, “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

It is a reflection of his stubborn, warped view that it took him 13 years after 9/11 to come to that obvious conclusion. Yet even as his ­underwhelming military campaign gets started, the Leader of the Free World must now face the Mother of All Evil.

That would be Iran and its ­nuclear program.

The mullahs and their so-called moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, are playing a devilish game by trying to win a pass on their nukes in exchange for helping combat ­Islamic State.

Rouhani said at the UN that a ­nuclear deal would result in a “greater focus on some very important ­regional issues — such as combating violence and extremism in the region.”

Translation: Let our nukes alone, and maybe we’ll think about helping you fight Islamic State.

For America and the West, it’s a bad deal, a rotten deal, for a million reasons. Iran is a sponsor of global terrorism and armed groups that killed US and allied soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is helping Syria’s Assad slaughter rebels and it executes dissidents, gays and Christians in its own country.

It also threatens to wipe Israel off the map.

Against that bloody backdrop, to think for a minute Iran is suddenly serious about being an ally against Islamic State is delusional. Whatever Rouhani is selling, the value would be minimal and the price ­unaffordable.

All of which makes it absolutely terrifying that Obama is said to be considering a version of Iran’s offer. Some accounts say he would allow it to keep thousands of centrifuges while cutting the stockpiles of uranium gas needed to make warheads. Other reports say he’s willing to settle for dismantling piping to the centrifuges.

Either deal would give Iran control over when to go nuclear and amounts to a betrayal of Obama’s repeated promise to prevent it from getting nukes. He has softened sanctions and dropped threats of military action, clear signs he is adopting a containment strategy.

That’s nuts. A nuclear-armed Iran would result in an arms race in the Mideast and spark a nuclear exchange within five years, according to a widely shared theory of American military analysts. And it wouldn’t necessarily involve just Israel, with Saudi Arabia already warning it will get nukes if Iran gets them.

Obama knows all of this, but he created this box for himself. He gave ground to both Islamic terrorists and Iran, and now faces a Faustian bargain: surrender to one to ­defeat the other.

To borrow one of his favorite phrases, it’s a false choice. No trade-off will work because Iran and Islamic State are both evil.

They are theological rivals — Iran is Shia, Islamic State is Sunni — but share a goal of establishing a caliphate and imposing Sharia law. Both are sworn enemies of individual and religious liberty.

Accepting an Iran nuke or an ­Islamic State ultimately amounts to the same thing: appeasement of the very cancer we must defeat.

Containment of either is an illusion for us and guarantees victory for them.
Well played, Jeter

You must see the video of Derek Jeter’s final moments in Yankee Stadium. The winning hit was something, but his post-game interviews actually were more striking. He talked of crying during the game, fears of “losing it” and praying the ball wouldn’t be hit to him. He confessed his stoic demeanor all these years didn’t come naturally, that he had “tricked myself” into denying pain and frustration.

No shrink would advise that, but I’m reminded of what Abraham Lincoln supposedly said about complaints Gen. Ulysses Grant drank too much:

“Find out what whiskey he drinks and send all of my generals a case, if it will get the same results.”

Lincoln never found Grant’s equal, and New York will never know another Derek Jeter.
The Hill-for-Pres initiative

There were some interesting exchanges at the Clinton Global Initiative the other day. Interesting because they show how blurred the lines are between the family foundation and you-know-who’s presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton led a discussion on women’s rights, saying, “We cannot grow the global economy if we do not open the doors to women.” Did she have a particular woman in mind?

There was no need to parse Bubba when he asked if Latin America offers “more space for women to live up to their leadership potential in politics.” So subtle!

It would be nice if the IRS were even mildly curious about whether the foundation is a campaign front that uses tax-deductible contributions for purely partisan purposes.

Oops, I forgot. Those standards apply only to conservatives.
Blasio’s new bag on police searches

After taking a short subway ride, Mayor de Blasio tried to persuade New Yorkers not to worry about underground terror attacks.

“People should go about their business as they normally would,” he said. “You may be asked to open your bags. Don’t be alarmed.”

Whew, OK — but wait, what did he say? Who is going to open my bags? I thought stop-and-frisk was offensive and unconstitutional and just, you know, so Bloombergian.

Yet there was de Blasio, giving heavily armed cops in Kevlar the blessing to search anybody they wanted. They didn’t need to give a reason, fill out paperwork or keep track of how many blacks and whites they stopped. And no inspector general or hyper civilian complaint board would punish them.

This was a wholesale violation of civil rights, at least according to the logic of de Blasio’s anti-police rants under the previous mayor.

Don’t get me wrong — I applaud the Big Fella’s about-face on police tactics. But, in legal terms, I don’t see much difference in allowing cops to search everybody on the subway on the basis of an unverified tip, while barring them from doing stop-and-frisk on the basis of searching for actual criminals and killers.

Yes, terrorism has the potential to cause mass casualties. But thousands of New Yorkers were saved over the years by cops aggressively taking guns and criminals off the streets. For the individual, dead is dead, and if stop-and-frisk is good enough to protect us from terrorists, it’s good enough to protect us from everyday thugs.

There is another irony in de Blasio’s blessing. Because he lacks federal clearance, he’s not even permitted to know classified intelligence about terror threats.

Maybe one day he’ll tell the truth about why.

New York Post