IS BARACK Obama mad or bad, or both? Why has he sold out to Iran on the nuclear weapons issue? He says he is confident his deal will mean that Iran will never produce an atomic bomb and he adds: “Not because they don’t have the knowledge – which is easy to acquire – but because the West will operate a comprehensive inspection system.”

This is, to put it politely, nonsense. The weapons inspectors won't be granted access to all Iran’s military facilities.

Of course, the Iranians will continue their uranium enrichment programme until they have made the bomb and all the while lyingly protest that they are doing nothing of the kind. That is how they have operated for the past 15 years and their persistent deviousness has paid off. Why should they do anything differently in future?

Israel’s President Netanyahu has called the deal “a stunning mistake”. That was putting it mildly. Iran declares regularly that its intention is to “wipe Israel off the map”. The country is only the size of Wales, so one decent-sized atom bomb should do the trick. Israel cannot tolerate this continued threat to its very existence. The Israeli government and opposition parties – for all their bitter disagreements on many other matters – are as one on this. What responsible government could ever tolerate a 24/7 threat of obliteration? And they won’t tolerate it. Disgracefully, there are many in the West who think that the obliteration of Israel would be no bad thing.

Whatever else the Israelis are, they are exceedingly clever, ingenious and determined and their military intelligence will know precisely what is going on in the Iranian nuclear production plants. They will find a way of putting an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – as they destroyed Iraq’s bomb factory at Ozirak in 1981.

But leave aside the nuclear issue and the threat to Israel for a minute and look at some of the other consequences of Obama’s insane and treacherous sell-out. Since the return of the Ayatollah in 1978, Iran has been one of the world’s most successful promoters and exporters of terrorism. They are paymasters of the hideous group Hezbollah, also the Houthis in Yemen. The nuclear deal means sanctions on Iran will be lifted and soon they will find themselves with an additional $160 billion to spend on advancing their terrorism projects.

There is worse. The Middle East is a boiling cauldron of sectional hatreds and violence – and I’m not referring only to Assad’s Syria or the barbarous exploits of Islamic State. There is the little matter of the thousand-year-old attrition between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Saudi Arabia is fervently Sunni and the Iranians are Shia. Those two countries are the region’s superpowers and most of the local conflicts are proxy wars between them. So while the US and other western countries foolishly turn a blind eye to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, we should not expect the Saudis to do likewise. They will want the bomb too, and the result will be a catastrophic nuclear arms race in the most volatile area in the world.

Meanwhile, the western media is cheering Obama’s deal from the rafters as “a new dawn” and “the most significant move towards a lasting peace since the end of the Cold War.” (Just for the sake of completeness, the Cold War hasn’t actually ended).

You know what this sickening cheering reminds me of? The appeaser Chamberlain, his bit of paper and “peace for our time”. That was back in 1938. And, of course, you know what happened in 1939.