Caroline Glick presents an overview of current affairs in the Middle East and the profound impact upon Israel. As usual she gives us the most significant elements of recent events and the outlook is bleak as options continue to decrease. It looks more and more like war will be coming to the region, but we already knew that.
The world powers assembled at Lausanne, Switzerland, with the representatives of the Islamic Republic may or may not reach a framework deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But succeed or fail, the disaster that their negotiations have unleashed is already unfolding. The damage they have caused is irreversible.
US President Barack Obama, his advisers and media cheerleaders have long presented his nuclear diplomacy with the Iran as the only way to avoid war. Obama and his supporters have castigated as warmongers those who oppose his policy of nuclear appeasement with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.
But the opposite is the case. Had their view carried the day, war could have been averted.
Through their nuclear diplomacy, Obama and his comrades started the countdown to war.
In recent weeks we have watched the collapse of the allied powers’ negotiating positions.
They have conceded every position that might have placed a significant obstacle in Iran’s path to developing a nuclear arsenal.
They accepted Iran’s refusal to come clean on the military dimensions of its past nuclear work and so ensured that to the extent UN nuclear inspectors are able to access Iran’s nuclear installations, those inspections will not provide anything approaching a full picture of its nuclear status.
By the same token, they bowed before Iran’s demand that inspectors be barred from all installations Iran defines as “military” and so enabled the ayatollahs to prevent the world from knowing anything worth knowing about its nuclear activities.
On the basis of Iran’s agreement to ship its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, the US accepted Iran’s demand that it be allowed to maintain and operate more than 6,000 centrifuges.
But when on Monday Iran went back on its word and refused to ship its uranium to Russia, the US didn’t respond by saying Iran couldn’t keep spinning 6,000 centrifuges. The US made excuses for Iran.
The US delegation willingly acceded to Iran’s demand that it be allowed to continue operating its fortified, underground enrichment facility at Fordow. In so doing, the US minimized the effectiveness of a future limited air campaign aimed at significantly reducing Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
With this broad range of great power concessions already in its pocket, the question of whether or not a deal is reached has become a secondary concern. The US and its negotiating partners have agreed to a set of understanding with the Iranians. Whether these understandings become a formal agreement or not is irrelevant because the understandings are already being implemented.
No sanctions legislation that Congress may pass in the coming months will be able to force a change in Iran’s behavior if they are not accompanied by other coercive measures undertaken by the executive branch.
And so we are now facing the unfolding disaster that Obama has wrought. The disaster is that deal or no deal, the US has just given the Iranians a green light to behave as if they have already built their nuclear umbrella. And they are in fact behaving in this manner.
They may not have a functional arsenal, but they act as though they do, and rightly so, because the US and its partners have just removed all significant obstacles from their path to nuclear capabilities. The Iranians know it. Their proxies know it. Their enemies know it.
As a consequence, all the regional implications of a nuclear armed Iran are already being played out. The surrounding Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are pursuing nuclear weapons. The path to a Middle East where every major and some minor actors have nuclear arsenals is before us.
Iran is working to expand its regional presence as if it were a nuclear state already. It is brazenly using its Yemeni Houthi proxy to gain maritime control over the Bab al-Mandab, which together with Iran’s control over the Straits of Hormuz completes its maritime control over shipping throughout the Middle East.
Then of course there are Iran’s terror proxies.
Hezbollah, whose forces now operate openly in Syria and Lebanon, is reportedly active as well in Iraq and Yemen. These forces behave with a brazenness the likes of which we have never seen.
Hamas too believes that its nuclear-capable Iranian state sponsor ensures that regardless of its combat losses, it will be able to maintain its regime in Gaza and continue using its territory as a launching ground for assaults against Israel and Egypt.
Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq have reportedly carried out heinous massacres of Sunnis who have fallen under their control and faced no international condemnation for their war crimes, operating as they are under Iran’s protection and sponsorship. And the Houthis, of course, just overthrew a Western-backed government that actively assisted the US and its allies in their campaign against al-Qaida.
For their proxies’ aggression, Iran has been rewarded with effective Western acceptance of its steps toward regional domination and nuclear armament.
Hezbollah’s activities represent an acute and strategic danger to Israel. Not only does Hezbollah now possess precision guided missiles that are capable of taking out strategic installations throughout the country, its arsenal of 100,000 missiles can cause a civilian disaster.
Hezbollah forces have been fighting in varied combat situations continuously for the past three years. Their combat capabilities are incomparably greater than those they fielded in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There is every reason to believe that these Hezbollah fighters, now perched along Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, can make good their threat to attack and hold fixed targets including border communities.
While Israel faces threats unlike any we have faced in recent decades that all emanate from Western-backed Iranian aggression and expansionism carried out under a Western-sanctioned Iranian nuclear umbrella, Israel is not alone in this reality. The unrolling disaster also threatens the moderate Sunni states including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The now regional war in Yemen is but the first act of the regional war at our doorstep.
There are many reasons this war is now inevitable.
Every state threatened by Iran has been watching the Western collapse in Switzerland.
They have been watching the Iranian advance on the ground. And today all of them are wondering the same thing: When and what should we strike to minimize the threats we are facing.
Everyone recognizes that the situation is only going to get worse. With each passing week, Iran’s power and brazenness will only increase.
Everyone understands this. And this week they learned that with Washington heading the committee welcoming Iran’s regional hegemony and nuclear capabilities, no outside power will stand up to Iran’s rise. The future of every state in the region hangs in the balance. And so, it can be expected that everyone is now working out a means to preempt and prevent a greater disaster.
These preemptive actions will no doubt include three categories of operations: striking Hezbollah’s missile arsenal; striking the Iranian Navy to limit its ability to project its force in the Bab al-Mandab; and conducting limited military operations to destroy a significant portion of Iran’s nuclear installations.
Friday is the eve of Passover. Thirteen years ago, Palestinian terrorists brought home the message of the Exodus when they blew up the Seder at Netanya’s Park Hotel, killing 30, wounding 140, and forcing Israel into war. The message of the Passover Haggada is that there are no shortcuts to freedom. To gain and keep it, you have to be willing to fight for it.
That war was caused by Israel’s embrace of the notion that you can bring peace through concessions that empower an enemy sworn to your destruction. The price of that delusion was thousands of lives lost and families destroyed.
Iran is far more powerful than the PLO. But the Americans apparently believe they are immune from the consequences of their leaders’ policies. This is not the case for Israel or for our neighbors. We lack the luxury of ignoring the fact that Obama’s disastrous diplomacy has brought war upon us. Deal or no deal, we are again about to be forced to pay a price to maintain our freedom.
As with today’s politicians who are trying to make deals with Islamic countries who are determined to destroy any opposition to the Muslim ideology, and eventually give Muhammad’s barbaric false religion a theocratic empire that dominates the world through jihad, Chamberlain did not fully understand the evil with which he was making deals.
Chamberlain’s the guy that believed Adolf Hitler was a character that could be negotiated with, and Neville was a part of a European team that formed a disastrous deal with Nazi Germany that gave a part of Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1938 as a peace offering to the furious fires of Nazi Germany’s inevitable war march. Hitler was happy to receive the gift, that Czechoslovakia had no say in, and then promptly invaded Poland the following year.
President Barack Obama is acting much like Neville Chamberlain did, heralding a deal with Iran over their nuclear endeavors that is being put together. Obama practically called the deal “peace in our time,” and then warned the Republicans, who are not so fast to trust Iran, that they better forget about their constitutional authority to take action against the final deal that is in the works at this moment.
You cannot reason with the unreasonable. After this deal, Iran will demand more, and Islam will demand more. Deals will continue to be made, until so much is given away that no more can be given. And then, while the appeasers are patting themselves on the backs, claiming they have brought peace to our time, war will be waged, because Islam will wait no longer.
The leftists, upon reading this, will call me a “scare-monger”, or an “Islamaphobe,” or whatever else they can muster, and that is fine. Those that questioned Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement received the same kind of attacks. Neville Chamberlain is now remembered as the idiot that trusted Nazi Germany, and Barack Obama and his merry crew of appeasers will be remembered in history as the idiots that led us into World War III, because they were willing to trust, and work with, an ideology that cannot be trusted, and with whom deals are only temporary in nature. Islam honors treaties only as long as the agreement benefits them, and then, they break them. Historically, that is a constant reality. Islam cannot be trusted. Just ask Israel.
Obama’s actions are no longer just actions dangerous to our American System. Now, the lives of people around the world are in danger because of his radical leftist actions. The “diplomacy” he claims he is pursuing is setting the world up for the next world war.
Barack Obama calls the agreement that is now appearing on the horizon “a good deal, a deal that meets our core objectives…if Iran cheats, the world will know it.”
But the world (meaning the leftist politicians standing with Obama regarding this deal) will do nothing about it if Iran “cheats.” The appeaser will only try to appease more, and the Muslim nations know it. After this deal, the next deal will be a deal giving away pieces of Israel to the enemy in the hopes it will bring peace (under the guise of a “two-state solution”). . . just like Neville Chamberlain did with Czechoslovakia for Germany. And like in 1938, the message is, “We are too cowardly to stand against you, we are willing to give you anything you want to keep the peace, so do as you will.”
So while Obama threatens Congress not to get in the way, or authorize new sanctions on Iran, Muslim nations are rubbing their hands together waiting for the next gift they will get from Obama and his global minions - all the while giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all the more reason not to trust this administration, and forcing Israel to plan its own defense when the Iran agreement Obama is so proud of hits the fan.
A few brief observations for now:
First, some context:
Second, the deal itself:
- The Government of Israel says the results of the agreement “would threaten the survival of Israel” since it would put Iran on the legal path to The Bomb.
- Democrats and Republicans and Middle East experts of all stripes are warningthe Iranians are not to be trusted and the and far too many dangerous concessions are being made.
- Even the liberal Washington Post editorial board, generally good friends and strong supporters of the President, are stunned by the magnitude of the concessions and note in a new editorial, “Obama’s Iran deal falls far short of his own goals.”
So yes, the deal is bad. Very bad. But let’s not panic. After all, is it not curious that the deal was announced on the eve of Passover and Easter?
- The Biblical story of Passover reminds us that there is a sovereign, holy, all-seeing, all-mighty God who loves Israel, and will protect His people, even knowing our weaknesses, sins and flaws.
- The Scriptural account of Passover reminds us that God vows to bring judgment on nations who seek to curse and destroy Israel and the Jewish people, and do not repent.
- Passover also tells us that God will protect anyone and everyone from divine judgment — not just Jews — if they place their faith in the blood of the perfect lamb.
- What’s more, the Biblical story of Easter — the death and resurrection of Jesus our Messiah, our Passover lamb — teaches us that God loves the whole world, both Jews and Gentiles.
- The Biblical account of Easter teaches us that God doesn’t want His judgment to fall on anyone. Rather, the Lord God Almighty offers salvation, forgiveness, great hope and eternal life to all who will repent and receive Jesus as Messiah, Savior and Lord.
We certainly need to pray for our leaders and for the peace of Jerusalem at this critical time. We need to pray this deal is changed and cannot put Iran on the legal path to nuclear weapons.
We certainly need to pray for our leaders and for the peace of Jerusalem at this critical time. We need to pray this deal is changed and cannot put Iran on the legal path to nuclear weapons.
That said, this is not a season to fear our enemies. It is a season to draw close to the Lord, read His Word, and discover (or rediscover) His love for all people.
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2 comments:
Something I'm finding a lot about Jade Helm 15 is people keep referring to it as "China In Control" Jade = China. Helm = Control. I find that very intriguing.
honestly, it just makes my blood boil to think that ninny, that girly boy who illegally occupies the WH would dare give iran the time of day much less waste good ink to sign a "peace treaty:...a country who yells death to America and isreal...it takes all my strength to be Christian like in these days with what the evil ones are doing...
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