President Obama still believes in the cult of personality—his personality.

Here is the headline on Atlantic scribe Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview on Iran with President Obama:

“Look . . . It’s My Name on This”: Obama Defends the Iran Nuclear Deal

That’s right. President Obama’s argument as to why we should accept his nuclear deal with Iran boils down to this: his name is on it. That should be enough, World.

As the man who promised you could keep your doctor now says:

“Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this,” he said, referring to the apparently almost-finished nuclear agreement between Iran and a group of world powers led by the United States. “I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our profound national-security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down.”

In a piece headlined “Me, Myself and Iran,” the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto points out a special feature in Mr. Obama’s earth-shattering (possibly literally) egotism:

Note further that the president frames his argument not in terms of how “history” will view him but how his future self will (“20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing”). In other words, the putative incentive depends crucially on the expectation that Obama will acknowledge error or failure. To say the least, that is not his strong suit ….

Folks (as President Obama might call us), this is about a nuclear deal with a murderous regime that threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and calls the United States the Great Satan. And the president can offer no better rationale for accepting it than that his name is on it. He doesn’t put forth a single argument other than that.

But of course, this is how he “argues”: he doesn’t make points, discuss the issues, and then sell a program. He merely posits that he is right and others are wrong, always because of base and selfish motives. By now, most of us know that he is in over his head and that, if he were to try to discuss, say, the federal budget, with Rep. Paul Ryan, he would quickly resort to character destruction to cover his ignorance.

The president is often like a little boy who hasn’t mastered the facts, hasn’t done his homework, so he bluffs. He calls those who would thwart him names. He urges us to do something with historic implications merely because his name is on it! He does not adduce throughout the Goldberg interview a single reason, as reason is commonly understood, for supporting his Iran deal.

Because he won't (can't?) argue his points and expects something to be believed or obeyed merely because he says so, Mr. Obama often seems more like a prince than a president. Or a cult figure.

But on one aspect of the Iran deal the president was alarmingly cogent. On this one aspect of the deal, he has an absolute grasp of the facts. And it should scare the living daylights out of you.

If you read the Goldberg interview, it is alarmingly obvious that President Obama does understand exactly what is in this deal for the Iranian regime. Goldberg begins this segment of the interview worrying about negotiating with an viciously anti-Semitic regime:

I also raised another concern—one that the president didn’t seem to fully share. It’s been my belief that it is difficult to negotiate with parties that are captive to a conspiratorial anti-Semitic worldview not because they hold offensive views, but because they hold ridiculous views. As Walter Russell Mead and others have explained, anti-Semites have difficulty understanding the world as it actually works, and don’t comprehend cause-and-effect in politics and economics. Though I would like to see a solid nuclear deal (it is preferable to the alternatives) I don’t believe that the regime with which Obama is negotiating can be counted on to be entirely rational.

Obama responded to this theory by saying the following: “Well the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations. You know, if you look at the history of anti-Semitism, Jeff, there were a whole lot of European leaders—and there were deep strains of anti-Semitism in this country—”

Digest that: President Obama knows that the deal he is likely to offer will be accepted by the mullahs because they know it will help them stay in power. We, the United States, are going to prop up the Iranian mulluhs! The United States doesn’t have the authority it used to have in the Middle East, but we should all hate to see what is left of it used to help maintain this regime. President Obama has always had odd notions about Iran. He resisted calls to help Iranian dissidents in the streets when he was first in office, and James K. Glassman and Michael Doran have suggested that he sees Iran as the retion's next hegemon and that he approves this.  

In an article headlined “Iran Deal: Nuclear Mystery Solved,” Glassman and Doran wrote of an explanation for the seemingly incompetent nuclear negotiations with Iran:

There is, however, another explanation – a far more troubling one. Rather than merely being feckless, the administration may actually have a long-term plan, and this initial nuclear deal is only a tactic in a broader strategy. The overall aim is a strategic partnership with Iran because the administration sees that country as the only island of stability in a sea of chaos and violence.

Iran has a population of 76 million, a government that hasn’t changed in 34 years, and a GDP greater than Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, and Yemen combined. No one knows who will be running Egypt or Saudi Arabia a few years from now, but Iran has withstood a serious rebellion with impressive resilience – and has rescued the Syrian regime from an even more threatening uprising.

That, at any rate, is how a self-styled realist might view Iran. Blinkers are clearly required. The administration has to ignore what a tilt to Iran would do to relations with the Israelis, Saudis, and Sunnis in general. It has to ignore that the United States has traditionally stood for freedom and against religious tyranny – both for moral and practical reasons. But what are the other choices? The Iranian temptation is strong.

Yes, President Obama’s name would be on this deal and thus write large in a new and more dangerous Middle East.

But, when it all goes south, don't expect him to take any responsibility. That's for other people.