This is my first diary in years but I feel compelled… I’m not used to all these fancy technological dohickies that have been added since last I visited, so I’m bare bonesing it.
I think the Iranian hostage quid pro quo dealeo has legs if given the (R)ight framing so this is my simple minded attempt to make what happened understandable to anyone who takes the time to read my blather. Fair Warning: Messaging the following in an 8 second sound bite is impossible so how are we going to spread this around my friends?
The simplest way to understand what happened is to think of the Obama administration as one side in a titanic multi level chess game and Iran’s leadership on the other side. Various levels of the board are political, financial, legal, geographic, just to name a few. The legal side of the funds battle was not favoring America. We could have just defied the rulings and held Iranian funds in spite of previous obligations, which appears to be what the Righties favor. Doing so would harm American interests by setting a precedent that we would not appreciate other nations taking in kind as a matter of course.
The solution was to reach a grand bargain which included the funds in question. It also included the nuclear deal and the prisoners held by Iran. Frankly I think it is instructive to understand that the President was able to reach this grand bargain with the Mullahs of Iran (the Death to America, flag and lighter crowd) but he could not reach such a deal with the Republican leaders of Congress!
That observation is less a reflection on the Presidents willingness to deal with international adversaries than on the absolutely toxic nature of what has become the modern American conservative movement.