Steve Forbes
Forbes Staff
It is fitting and
proper–indeed essential for our very security–that Speaker John Boehner has
extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to
address Congress on Iran and its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and the
missiles to deliver them anywhere in the world. The invitation has bipartisan
support because many members on both sides of the aisle recognize the
fundamental threat to world peace that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Like
Winston Churchill in the 1930s with Nazi Germany, Netanyahu has been sounding
the alarm about Iran’s ominous nuclear and terrorist activities.
It’s a message much of
Europe and even segments of the US, particularly in the Obama administration,
don’t want to hear. The President has made clear his intense dislike of
Israel’s prime minister and his refusal to keep quiet about Obama’s desire to
conclude a Neville Chamberlain-like deal with Teheran. In a flagrant
interference in another country’s election, Obama operatives are working hard
in Israel to help bring down the courageous Prime Minister.
Congress needs to hear
first-hand the truth about what Iran is doing and the dreadful implications of
those activities.
Thanks to US leadership,
the ever-harder sanctions imposed over the years had taken a politically
damaging toll on the Iranian economy. The mullahs agreed to sit down with the
US and Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany to come up with an agreement
ostensibly to get Iran to back off its nuclear ambitions. Iran’s agenda was
simple: get the sanctions eased, and then with a loophole-ridden treaty, get
them removed altogether.
The basic problem
is that the Obama administration wants a deal–any deal–with Teheran and the
other parties to the talks are willing to go along in order to snag business
contracts with Iran, oblivious to the implications of a radical regime that
will be in the position to get the Bomb any time it wants.
Appeasers argue that
containment will work with a nuclear-armed Iran just as it did with the old
Soviet Union during the Cold War and thus there is nothing to really worry
about. Israel and other Mideast nations know better.
The Iranian government,
despite the immense corruption of many of its leaders, is a revolutionary
regime. Its actions over the years demonstrate that the rhetoric of its
officials is more than just hot air. Iran is terror central. It bankrolls and
provides arms to Hamas, Hezbollah and all sorts of Islamic terrorists
organizations. If the US tacitly concedes its resignation to Iran becoming a
nuclear power, then other countries will follow suite in creating their own
nukes, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
That kind of
proliferation enormously increases the chances of a nuclear war. We saw in 1914
how the then-center of civilization plunged into a catastrophic war. Even
during the Cold War, Washington and Moscow went to the brink of a nuclear
holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis. (President John Kennedy was acutely
aware during those fraught days of how events in 1914 ran away from European
leaders.) With nukes in so many unstable hands, a disaster is almost a
certainty. Moreover, the widespread knowledge of how to make the Bomb will
certainly fall into terrorist hands, which is why the US must prevent this
nuclear proliferation in the first place.
Ominously Iran has
apparently developed an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach not
only Israel but also Europe. It won’t be many years before the mullahs can aim
nuclear tipped missiles against the US. No surprise, the current negotiations
don’t cover Iranian missile development.
Another factor Obama and
his appeasement-minded minions willfully ignore is the existential threat Iran
poses to Israel. Given the size of the Jewish state, it has no room for error.
A nuclear-armed Iran will put Israeli leaders in a dangerous, hair-trigger
situation. Israel is a crucial US ally, strategically and morally. It is the
only durable democracy in the Mideast. With only 8 million people, Israel has
surpassed the European Union, with a population of over 400 million, in high
technology, rivaling Silicon Valley. It was born from the ashes of the
Holocaust. The destruction of Israel would mean, ultimately, the end of Western
civilization; the moral rot that would permit such an event would be just about
impossible to surmount.
It is not only Israel
that is appalled by what Iran is up to. When Israel very nearly undertook
preemptive action against Teheran in 2012, countries such as Saudi Arabia were
remarkably open about their support for Israeli military actions that would
destroy or cripple Iran’s nuclear facilities.
President Obama is
either oblivious to all this or feels that in his perverted worldview, these things
don’t much matter. Iran knows Obama desperately wants an agreement. It figures
that the more it refuses to accept Obama’s willingness to surrender, the more
concessions he will offer.
And spin to the
contrary, an agreement will be a surrender. For all intents and purposes, Iran
will be allowed to make a nuclear device any time it wishes. Obama and
Secretary of State John Kerry will proclaim that if Teheran goes to make the
Bomb, the US will have plenty of time to stop them before the Iranians can actually
do it. Nonsense. It is has already crossed a very difficult threshold on
uranium enrichment. The mullahs are moving ahead on the plutonium front.
Teheran has brazenly blocked the International Atomic Energy Agency from access
to its nuclear installations.
Congress is considering
legislation proposed by Sen. Robert Menendez (D., NJ) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R.,
Ill.) that would impose stiff sanctions on Iran if an agreement is not reached
by the deadline of June 30. Twice before, negotiation deadlines have been
extended. This would effectively tell Iran, put up or shut up. Obama is
naturally opposed. He wants nothing that might jeopardize his dangerous course
of abject appeasement of an evil regime. The President outrageously dragooned
British Prime Minister to play the role of unregistered lobbyist to call
Senators to block the Menendez-Kirk bill.
Which gets to why
Speaker John Boehner was well within his bounds to extend that invitation to
Netanyahu. Such a momentous treaty with Iran as desired by Obama must, under
the Constitution, be submitted to the US Senate for ratification. Obama has
trampled on the Constitution time and again–making laws and changing laws at
will–and wants no Congressional involvement precisely because the resultant
debate would glaringly show what a dangerously miserable deal he had cut. The
ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez,
recently declared: “The more I hear from the Administration and its quotes, the
more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Teheran.” When
President Obama declared in his State of the Union Address that Iran has
“halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of
nuclear material,” the guffaws could be loudly heard from every intelligence
agency in the world.
Congress is a separate
branch of government. Hearing directly from Netanyahu is well within its
prerogatives, especially on a matter as critical as this. By the way back in
2011, Speaker Boehner attempted to coordinate a Netanyahu invitation with the
White House. Naturally Obama gave Boehner the back of his hand by ignoring this
courtesy.
