Thirty two years ago Ronald Reagan introduced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to the world with this quote: “We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.” Derided by the left as being scientifically impossible and having the potential of reigniting the arms race with the Soviets, “Star Wars” as they called it, became a sufficient worry for the Soviets that it actually hastened their demise.

Later that year in one of my Political Science classes we discussed peace treaties in general and those with the Soviets in particular. Given the history of failed treaties from Munich to Moscow, the professor asked a simple question: “If it’s someone’s goal to kill you, to destroy you, is it unreasonable to expect them to lie about it in the first place?” The obvious answer was no, it’s not unreasonable at all.

That apparently is not a concept Barack Obama has ever picked up on. Today when it seems that we are but days or weeks away from an agreement with the Iranians – not to be confused with a treaty –the obviousness of that reality is crystal clear. In seeking to garner support for his “agreement” with Tehran, President Obama said this: “Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has said that Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon,“

As these words came off of the President’s lips, he had never sounded more like Neville Chamberlain, who on September 30, 1938 told the world: “This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ‘ … We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.” Less than one year later Hitler invaded Poland… not surprisingly, in concert with the Soviets.

Apparently, in Barack Obama’s world, we’re supposed to believe what the leaders of a terrorist state say… but only sometimes. When they endorse an EMP attack against the United States that would leave half the country in a blackout for months… not so much. When they suggest Israel, our strongest ally and the only liberal democracy in the region should be annihilated…nah.  When they boast about cheating on the last nuclear agreement they entered into with the West… obviously not.

Of course we all know that Iran has a checkered past… the taking of American hostages in 1979, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, their longtime financial support for Hezbollah and Hamas, the US embassy attacks in 1998 and of course their active support for those fighting the US in Iraq for much of the last decade. But maybe they’ve changed over the last few years. (Or maybe in the last few hours as apparently just yesterday Supreme leader Ali Khamenei called for “Death to America“.) Maybe they’ve seen the error of their ways, washed their hands of their terrorist proxies and turned over a new leaf… No, not really. At least not according to the governments of Israel in 2012, Peru in 2013 and Uruguay just last month.

One has to ask, how is it even remotely possible that President Obama would consider an agreement with a country with more than three decades of duplicity and active support for terrorism against the United States and its allies? Why would he want to make life easier for a serial terrorist regime by pushing to drop sanctions against them?  How is it even possible he would consider an agreement that would facilitate the world’s most dangerous regime maintaining its nuclear capabilities and beginning a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile neighborhood? How is it possible that a Harvard trained lawyer would think that a fig leaf of an international “agreement” would somehow keep a duplicitous regime – that boasts of cheating on just such agreements – from actually developing a nuclear weapon?

Is his need to validate his unwarranted Nobel Peace Prize so strong that he will put the world at risk? Does he so feel the need for a foreign policy “victory” of some sort that he will put the security of the United States in peril? Is his narcissism so great and his belief in his ability to bend the world to his will so absolute that he need not bother to actually pay attention to reality? Is he a Manchurian plant?  Or has the marijuana and cocaine he did in school finally caught up with him and started to impair his brain function?

Whatever the explanation, Barack Obama’s willingness to ignore reality that virtually everyone else on the planet can see and plunge the nation and the world into a universe where a messianic regime preparing for the “end of times” is on the road to nuclear weapons is the ultimate betrayal of his office. If he goes ahead with his agreement with Iran he will not only be seen as the anti-Ronald Reagan, he will rightly go down in history as the 21st century’s Neville Chamberlain.  Hopefully the cost of Obama’s folly won’t be nearly as high as that paid for Chamberlain’s appeasement.  That might really tarnish his Nobel Prize.