Dick Cheney’s staggering Iran hypocrisy: Why we need to ignore his sinister war games at all costs

The former vice president is saying whatever he can to torpedo negotiations with Iran. Here's what he's not saying

MARCY WHEELER

The photo accompanying a Washington Post article published yesterday, which reported on a letter signed by nearly 200 Generals and Admirals opposing the Iran deal, showed Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin. This matters because Boykin took part in Operation Eagle Claw, the failed 1980 attempt to rescue the Americans taken hostage in the embassy in Iran. More recently, Boykin played key roles running the Bush Administration’s covert operations, ultimately serving as one of DOD’s top intelligence officials. He’s best known for a 2003 speech he gave in uniform, pitching the War on Terror as a crusade against Satan. “We’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. … And the enemy is a guy named Satan.” Boykin’s inclusion on the letter associates the opposition to the Iran deal with his Islamophobia, though the vast majority of those who signed the letter have no such stain on their record.

Two other signatories — John Poindexter and Richard Secord — offer perhaps a more troubling indicator of how familiar the propaganda campaign against a nuclear deal with Iran is. Both men were key players in — and then National Security Advisor Poindexter was tried for — the Iran-Contra scandal. Thus, these two men, who claim that an agreement to forestall nuclear weapons would “enable Iran to become far more dangerous [and] render the Mideast still more unstable,” were key players in doing just that, back when they armed Iran in the 1980s.

Again, most signers of the letters aren’t notorious for their extra-legal efforts to sow chaos in the Middle East for fun and — in Secord’s case — profit, but the involvement of Poindexter and Secord taint the effort nonetheless.

Above and beyond the involvement of these unscrupulous figures, there is one attempt to defeat the Iran deal that actually does discredit all others: former Vice President Dick Cheney’s plan to give a speech at American Enterprise Institute on September 8, one week before Congress will vote on the deal.

Before joining the Bush Administration, Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney opposed sanctions against Iran because American businesses would be “cut out of the action” (Halliburton is still one of the biggest likely beneficiaries of the easing of Iran sanctions).

Cheney spent much of the Obama Administration thwarting negotiations with Iran at a much earlier stage in its nuclear program. Had those negotiations happened then, they might have mitigated the concerns he and others now express about the nuclear deal. Indeed, as Poindexter had years earlier, Cheney’s office reportedly worked back channels to undercut the Iranian regime just as negotiations began.

Cheney’s real contribution to the Iran situation he claims to despise, however, was in championing a war against Iraq to undercut Weapons of Mass Destruction — including a nuclear program — that didn’t exist. The war created a vacuum of power in the region and a Shia-led government in Iraq, both of which Iran managed to exploit to increase its regional posture. While railing against Iran, Dick Cheney made it stronger. At the same time, the Bush (and Obama) Administration’s successful regime change in Iraq and Libya, but not in North Korea, showed the value of a nuclear program as a deterrent against US-led regime change.

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