While America and the world are distracted by crises ranging from the war in Ukraine to skyrocketing gas prices, perhaps the greatest danger of the 21st century is largely ignored: Iran with a nuclear arsenal.
In Israel, concerns about Iran developing nuclear weapons have been ongoing for almost a decade.
In 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama entered into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decried the “deal,” taking serious diplomatic actions. Donald J. Trump, then an outspoken businessman and later the 45th American president, shared the opinion of Israeli leadership. Trump described Obama’s JCPOA with such terms as “horrible” and “laughable.”
The JCPOA drafted by Obama and his European partners attempted to limit Iranian advancement toward uranium enrichment and the technology and infrastructure needed to create nuclear weapons. However, those limitations were only temporary, with most of them expiring within a decade. Obama’s approach was apparently to kick the can down the road.
Presuming future compliance, Iranian monetary assets frozen in international banks would be released to Tehran. Obama flew at least $400 million in cash stacked on pallets to Iran as part of a $1.7 billion payout related to a failed arms deal with the shah before the 1979 revolution of radical Islamists.
Since Iran is recognized as the world’s greatest sponsor of international terrorism, Trump and many in Washington — especially Republicans — worried that these monies would be used to fund violent attacks. Even John Kerry, then secretary of state, said in January 2016, “I think that some of [the money] will end up in the hands of the [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] or of other entities, some of which are labeled as terrorists.”
In April 2018, after an unprecedented espionage operation, Netanyahu released a massive cache of documents proving that Iran had lied about its supposed compliance with the JCPOA. Iran maintained a plethora of undisclosed facilities. Accordingly, Trump put the brakes on the JCPOA and reinstated crippling sanctions against Iran.
But now President Joe Biden and his colleagues are seeking a new agreement with Iran that is far worse than Obama’s original “deal.”
Many of the terms would expire in less than six years, and sanctions would be removed not only against Tehran but even against individual terrorists wanted by Interpol, including Mohsen Rezaei and Ali Akbar Velayati. Both were involved in terror attacks conducted by the IRGC, such as the Argentine-Israel Mutual Association bombing that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires in 1994.
To put it into perspective, Trump designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization. He further assassinated Iranian terrorists like Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC “Quds Force” (perversely named after a Persian and Arabic term for the holy city of Jerusalem). Key Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi complained and sought to take legislative action against Trump personally in response. Now, Biden & Co. may effectively pardon and grant immunity to Soleimani’s terrorist colleagues and literal partners in crime.
The U.S. under Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has shockingly allowed Russia to be a primary liaison during the recent round of negotiations with Iran, even during President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian dignitaries have inserted their own self-serving demands into the negotiations. Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov also boasted that “Iran got much more than it could expect” from the U.S.
All sides of Israeli parliamentary leadership seem to be in agreement that the new Iran “deal” under consideration by the Biden administration is simply unacceptable and will be ignored by the Jewish state. On March 13, Netanyahu released a video on Twitter with the caption, “Every American family should watch this video,” and said:
“The desperate rush to sign this flawed nuclear agreement with Iran is not only absurd, it’s downright dangerous. Yesterday, Iran fired missiles in the vicinity of the American consulate in Iraq, and the U.S. continues to charge ahead, along with the other powers, to sign a nuclear agreement that will give the ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal. It would also relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they … wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world.
This agreement is even worse than its predecessor, because in three years’ time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state. It will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs and it will have the [intercontinental ballistic missiles] to deliver them to any place in the United States.”
Netanyahu also explained that even if Iran does not deploy a developed nuclear arsenal, those weapons will serve as a protective “umbrella” to shield it from any military action in response to terrorism. In other words, the IRGC could launch attacks against American targets with no fear of repercussions. With Iran possessing nuclear weapons, the successors and colleagues of Qasem Soleimani would be protected from any kind of conventional military response by the U.S., Israel, et al.
Every American family should watch this video. pic.twitter.com/BVo5ZFJwKk
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 13, 2022
Israel has responded to Iran’s terrorism and nuclear aspirations with public rhetoric and visible military preparation ever growing in ferocity. In contrast, the Biden administration has shown nothing but abysmal American weakness with such disasters as the Afghanistan withdrawal as well as soft and ineffective attempts to rebuff the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
If Iran follows the typical Middle Eastern thought process of respecting strength while predatorily pouncing on weakness, the ayatollahs may very well shelve an attack on the Jewish state and instead go straight for the big prize of an unprecedented strike against the “Great Satan” of America.
Both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have long warned us about the diabolical dangers of a nuclear Iran.
And so far they have been right every single time.
It’s high time we start paying attention to the threat of Iranian terror attacks and even nuclear strikes looming just over the horizon.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
