“Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iranians are increasingly impatient with Europe’s lack of concrete steps to protect Iran from Trump’s severe sanctions, and the frustration made for a tense visit Tuesday by German foreign minister Heiko Maas to Tehran.”
University of Michigan comedian Juan Cole is one of academia’s biggest apologists for everything connected to the Islamic world. He is also one of those dime-a-dozen Israel bashers you find on university campuses.
Even the most die-hard useful idiots have a hard time justifying Iran’s Islamic regime. That’s the government who held our diplomats hostage for 444 days when we had a feckless president named Jimmy Carter in office. That’s the regime that calls for death to America while promising to wipe Israel off the face of the map. That’s the regime that persecutes religious minorities and hangs gays in public using construction cranes. That’s the regime that shoots down protesters in the streets. And finally, that’s the regime that is the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism world wide.
So when we finally get a president like Donald Trump, who hits this criminal regime with sanctions rather than give it hundreds of millions of dollars like Barack Obama did, one might think that he (Trump) would get universal support in the US. Not from the academic types. Certainly not from Juan Cole.
In Cole’s bizarrely-named blog, Informed Comment, he describes how the mullahs are cracking down on Germany, whose foreign minister, Heiko Maas, has just visited Tehran, telling him that Germany is not doing enough to counter Trump’s measures.
https://www.juancole.com/2019/06/germany-keeping-nuclear.html
Of course, any time Iran feels that another country is not doing “the right thing”, there is the implied threat that people will start dying in that particular country. That doesn’t seem to phase Dr Cole one bit. After all, in Cole’s eyes, it is Trump who is the bad guy. How dare he abrogate that historic treaty engineered by Obama? Doesn’t he trust the Iranians to keep their word?
Of course, the feckless Mr Maas (no doubt clutching his umbrella) hastened to placate the Iranians, according to our reporter, Dr Cole.
Which apparently, didn’t satisfy the friendly mullahs, which should have given Juano his first clue that Iran is being run by a bunch of arrogant jerks.
“Soon” did not impress Iran.Indeed, some Iranian newspapers subjected Maas to vicious caricatures.”
It seems all that has gone over Cole’s head since he joins in on the “condemnation” of the hapless Germans as he concludes:.
“Likewise, European governments have been pusillanimous in defying Trump’s priorities. The nuclear deal did not address ballistic missile tests, so Iran is not violating the deal when it pursues that capability. Yet whenever a Trump official comes to Europe, the locals all just fall in line condemning Iran for missile tests, which looks an awful lot to Tehran like a capitulation to Trump’s breach of the deal.
If Maas really wants to save the 2015 nuclear deal, he has to find a way to do more than pay lip service to it.”
All of which might lead one to ask which side Juan Cole is on, but that would just be a rhetorical question, wouldn’t it?