The headlines are stark indeed. “Israel Readies
a Pre-Emptive Strike.” Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be working to persuade
reluctant members of his coalition cabinet to go along with
such a military option against Islamist Iran. The
Huffington Post’s British edition first
reports Netanyahu saying this:
“One of those regional powers is Iran, which is continuing
its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran would
constitute a grave threat to the Middle East and the
entire world, and of course it is a direct and grave
threat on us.”
The report goes on:
One day later, defence minister Ehud Barak, struck a
similar tone. “A situation could be created in the Middle East in
which Israel must defend its vital interests in an
independent fashion, without necessarily having to
reply on other forces, regional or otherwise,” he said.
Ehud Barak’s comments are most interesting. He was the
Labor Party Prime Minister in 2000 who offered the Palestinians 97
percent of the territory they claimed as theirs,
reserving only those limited regions thought absolutely essential
to Israeli security. The Palestinians balked and
commenced yet another “intifada” uprising. The leaders of the PLO
(Palestine Liberation Organization) preferred to send
stone-throwing teenagers to confront armed Israeli soldiers
and tanks rather than engage in serious negotiations
for peace.
Ehud Barak could qualify as an Israeli “dove,” but he is
first and foremost a soldier and an Israeli patriot.
It’s not so surprising that the hawkish Benjamin
Netanyahu should be talking of a military strike against Iran. When
Ehud Barak joins this conversation, you know it’s
serious.
This is a most serious situation. No one knows what might
happen if Israel strikes the Iranian nuclear weapons
research stations. What is clear is that the efforts
of the Obama administration to restrain Iran over the past three
years have been an utter failure.
After extending an “open hand instead of a clenched fist”
to the Iranian mullahs, President Obama saw his
proffered olive branch stomped into the dust. He even
sent Persian New Year greetings to the Iranian people and their
dictatorial rulers. When Iranians rose up in the
streets following fraudulent elections in June 2009,
the Obama administration weakly claimed it did not want to
“interfere” in an internal matter for Iran. The fact
that Iran is daily interfering with internal affairs
all over the Middle East seemed not to faze this
administration.
The Obama administration invested precious time and
resources in getting toothless sanctions voted by the
UN. Russia and China made sure these sanctions didn’t
bite. And Tehran has the active support of Venezuela’s
anti-American Hugo Chavez in laundering its
petro-dollars. Three U.S. administrations have said that a
nuclear Iran is “unacceptable.” But beyond that, they have done
little to make it unacceptable.
We in the U.S. are understandably focused on our stricken
economy and our presidential elections. Distractions
like “Occupy Wall Street” could not come at a better
time to keep Americans from thinking long and hard about the
gravest danger in the world: A nuclear Iran with intent to use
those weapons for terror purposes.
The recent discovery of a bomb plot in Washington, D.C.,
should sober us all. The Shiite Muslim rulers of Iran
were said to be preparing to set off a bomb in the
favorite Georgetown restaurant of the Saudi ambassador to the
U.S. They were more than willing to kill hundreds of
innocent Americans in their drive to murder a hated
Sunni Muslim foe.
As terrifying as that prospect was, the mullahs’ real
purpose in assassinating the Saudi envoy would have been to show us
they could as readily place a nuclear weapon in
our nation’s capital, raising the death toll from
scores of innocents slaughtered to perhaps hundreds of
thousands. And a national government crippled.
One thing should be clear: If Israel strikes Iran’s
nuclear weapons facilities, it will not be a first
strike. Iran has been waging war against Israel for
decades. Iran’s Ahmadinejad has announced to the world that
Israel will be “wiped off the map.”
Tehran has been arming Hezbollah in Southern
Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza for years. These cats’ paw terror
groups have been doing Iran’s bidding in murdering
Israelis, kidnapping their soldiers, and raining
rockets down on Israeli settlements.
Israel’s dovish Defense Minister Ehud Barak is giving fair
warning to the Obama administration: Israel will act
to defend itself whether other powers take part or not.
The right of self-defense is an inalienable right. The
reason Israel was created was so that Jews would have
a national home and would not have to rely on the
kindness of strangers. If Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear
weapons program, we cannot say we have not been
warned. Not much this administration has done in the
Middle East should give Israelis confidence that they
can rely on their feckless friends in Washington to support
them when push comes to shove.
