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The Daily Signal
Congress Should
Listen to Netanyahu’s Warnings on the Obama Iran Deal
James Carafano
March 03, 2015
Jimmy Carter had one of the worst foreign and defense policy records of
any modern president. But, at least he cut one good deal. The speech by
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu before a joint session
of Congress makes clear President Obama can’t even match Carter’s level
of competency.
The high point of Carter’s presidency took place a little over a year
after he took office, brokering the Camp David Accord, a peace
agreement between Israel and Egypt. The deal endures to this day. It
was realistic. Both sides wanted peace. Peace was what they got.
Netanyahu made the case before Congress that the White House’s efforts
to negotiate a deal with Iran have about as much in common with the
Camp David Accords as an SNL skit has with a State of the Union
Address. The administration’s proposal is anything but a realistic plan
for peace.
A real peace plan would demonstrate that all sides were committed to
not adding more nuclear weapons powers to the Middle East. The deal as
it stands does the opposite—it preserves the nuclear option for
Iran—and as result will prompt other regional powers to hedge their
bets and prepare to go nuclear as well rather than live in Tehran’s
nuclear shadow.
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The proposed multi-year moratorium doesn’t end concerns that Iran will
build a bomb and put nuclear warheads on long-range missiles. Rather,
under the agreement, Tehran can walk up to the edge of becoming a
declared armed-nuclear state with a robust missile force and sit there.
That hardly sets the condition for sure peace in our time.
Meanwhile, even the shaky stalemate proposed by the agreement rests on
the assumption that Tehran won’t follow North Korea’s path to breakout
status by cheating on the agreement and then abrogating the deal when
it no longer suits the regime.
At the same time the price for Obama’s peace comes pretty high. Tehran
demands significant and immediate sanctions relief. That means more
money for a corrupt regime with one of the world’s worst human records
to perpetuate strangled hold over the people of Iran.
Obama’s deal also means more money for Tehran to prop-up the likes of
Hezbollah, Assad, Hamas, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and murderous
unaccountable Shia militias in Iraq (which are as big a threat to the
future of the country as ISIS). As one of the world’s premier
state-sponsors of terrorism, enabling and emboldening Iran’s efforts to
reshape the region by force of arms and slaughtering innocents doesn’t
make the prospects for peace in the region any brighter.
All the partisan controversy and vitriol over Netanyahu’s speech cannot
obscure that the White House has no good answers to the legitimate
concerns he raised.
In the end, it was appropriate for the issue to be brought before
Congress. There are only two powers capable of preventing Obama sealing
a deal with Iran and cementing his legacy as a far-worse foreign policy
president than Jimmy Carter. Tehran, of course, could string-out
negotiations or sink the deal with even more outrageous demands to be
given more for giving up very little.
The only other voice capable of interceding with the president is
Congress. Having all the facts of what is at stake before them before
they decide what to do makes sense. That fact made this speech worth
hearing.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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