For the last several weeks the American and the Israeli national press as well as the American Jewish press have debated the wisdom of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus decision to accept House Speaker John Boehners invitation to address a joint session of Congress concerning the Iranian nuclear program. President Obama has indicated quite clearly that he is most displeased by this prospect and has applied quite some pressure on Israel in an effort to force PM Netanyahu to cancel the speech; all to no avail. We might want to ask why Obama desires to scuttle such a presentation on the part of the Prime Minister and what drives Netanyahu to resist all this pressure.
Clearly Prime Minister Netanyahu and the bulk of Israels security apparatus view a nuclear Iran as an existential threat to the State of Israel; for thirty-six years the Islamic Republic of Iran has issued threats against Israels existence. Both of Irans Supreme Leaders the late Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini and current reigning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have called for the destruction of Israel and the liberation" of Jerusalem. Former Iranian Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have indicated their desire to see nuclear weaponry used against Israel. Given the animosity of the current Iranian regime towards Israel and its long history of supporting any and all terrorist movements attacking Jews and Israelis the Israeli assessment of danger in Iranian possession of nuclear weaponry capability is both prudent and warranted.
On the other side of the equation is President Obamas desire to strike a grand bargain with Iran. Faced with the threat of Sunni radicalism in the form of
al-Qaeda and now the Islamic State Obama and his administration hope that Irans Shiite animosity for the Sunnis will aid the United States in bringing the radical Sunni threat to an end. And indeed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (
Sepah-e Pasdaran) and its Qods Force (
Sepahe-Qods) units have bolstered the Iraqi Shiite militias allowing them to counter the military forces of the Islamic State in Iraq.
But the White House and its supporters are deluding themselves if they believe that Iran is prepared to abandon terrorism its desire for hegemony in the Persian Gulf and ultimately to spread its revolutionary Islamic message worldwide. President Obama may think that he is repeating Roosevelts deal with Stalin against Hitler but hes got the characters wrong. Iran is the new Nazi Germany as any moderate Iranian ex-pat can testify and permitting Iran a nuclear threshold capability is as wise as it would have been to allow Hitler a similar capability. I recollect that the Allies destroyed the German heavy-water plant in Norway during World War II to disrupt the fledgling Nazi nuclear program.
But dont listen to my biases; let the facts speak for themselves. Iran has been violating all the interim agreements concerning its nuclear program refusing to grant free access to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor its nuclear facilities to the point that last week the
IAEA inspectorsi suggested that Iran probably has more hidden facilities. The dissident anti-regime National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has revealed the existence of such hidden facilities several times over the last decade and a half including the revelation of a new site
Lavizan-3ii in the north Tehran suburbs just last week..
So too the Iranian regime has been engaging in a thirty-five year war against the United States and Israel by using proxies that it trains arms and supplies:
Hezbollah in Lebanon (with cells around the world) Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories (as well as
Hamas) the Houthis in Yemen the
Badr Brigade in Iraq as well as the
Jaish al-Mehdi Saraya al-Salam Asaib Ahl al-Haq Harakat al-Nujaba the Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas Iraqi Shiite militiasiii. Iran has supplied weaponry to the Islamist rebels in the Sinai and supports and supplies weaponry and training to both the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad with whom it has a mutual defense treaty and the regime of Sudans strongmanPresident Omar al-Bashir.
Given Irans lousy track record in adhering to restrictions cooperating with inspections by the IAEA ending support for terrorism and ending its bellicosity towards the Westsee its latest videos of
attacks on a mockup of an American aircraft-carrieriv this last weekthe prudence demonstrated by PM Netanyahu in questioning Irans sincerity makes more sense than Obamas quest for a very flawed treaty. Congress deserves to hear directly what Netanyahu has to say and should be directly involved in overseeing the terms of any treaty proposal. Our founding fathers knew what they were doing when they designed a tri-part government.
i Charles Krauthammer The fatal flaw in the Iran deal"
Human Events March 2 2015
http://humanevents.com/2015/03/02/the-fatal-flaw-in-the-iran-deal/?utm_source=hedaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl.
ii NCRI-US NCRI-US: Tehran terrified of revelation of secret nuclear site" PR Newswire February 27 2015
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ncri-us-tehran-terrified-of-revelation-of-secret-nuclear-site-300043106.html.
iii Jonathan Spyer & Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamim How Iraq Became a Proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran"
The Tower Issue 21 December 2014
http://www.thetower.org/article/how-iraq-became-a-wholly-owned-subsidiary-of-the-islamic-republic-of-iran/ and
http://www.meforum.org/4927/how-iraq-became-a-proxy-of-the-islamic-republic.
iv MEMRITVVideos Iranian Missiles Sink Life-Size Model of U.S. Aircraft Carrier in Strait of Hormuz Navy Drill"
You-Tube February 25 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrgLFcIMYDk.
