where I stand:

The Iran nuke deal would be OK if …

Mon, Aug 31, 2015 (2 a.m.)

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Brian Greenspun

The words “never again” won’t let me sleep.

And why should they? When Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jewish men, women and children as well as millions of other human beings he believed unworthy of life, the word Holocaust was given a new meaning. It became synonymous with the utmost depravity of humankind and the low-water mark of man’s inhumanity to man.

Faced with the aftermath of the Nazi destruction, the world’s Jews vowed to never again stand by idly when madmen rose among us with similar intent — against the Jewish people or any people who were set upon merely for who they were. And most of the rest of the world agreed.

Hence, the state of Israel was born as the homeland for the Jews. It was not only the fulfillment of a millennial dream of the Jewish people to return to their biblical home, it was a concrete reaction to the need for a place for Jews to seek refuge should the world would turn upon them again.

Israel’s birth was extremely difficult. The armies of five surrounding Arab countries arrayed against the underarmed farmers of Israel, poised to annihilate the newly formed country and drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea.

My father was among a group of volunteers, many from the United States who were recent veterans with plenty of World War II experience, who did what they could to make sure the fledgling Israel was not a stillborn country.

Their service in Israel’s time of need was not only at great personal peril to themselves and their families, it came at a high price — especially for those who were convicted by their own country for violating laws that were meant to prevent justice for people who needed it.

I grew up in a family proud of my father’s sacrifice and with the full knowledge that doing what is right is sometimes most difficult.

As a Jew and as an American, I am focused at this time on the role my father and his colleagues played in those early days of Israel. Men and women risked everything to help people threatened with destruction just because of who they were and not what they did.

Today I find myself in a similar position to that which caused my dad to knowingly and unflinchingly violate the laws of the United States. No, my risk is nothing compared with his. He risked death, he risked jail and he risked the loss of his family.

The position I find myself in today is one in which the fate of Israel may well hang in the balance, and it is time for me not to act but to speak. I have a much easier task.

But the risk is the same. If we get this wrong, there could be no Israel.

I am talking about what to do about the nuclear agreement among Iran, the United States and others in which Iran has agreed to forgo nuclear weapons for 10 years or so in exchange for removing crippling economic sanctions and freeing as much as $60 billion with which it can continue its mischief and mayhem throughout the Middle East. That mischief is so great that the United States has labeled Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, a designation it so richly deserves.

My friends want to know what I think. Perhaps they expect that because my father risked so much and worked so hard for peace and the security of Israel, I have some inside track on the right course of action. I don’t. All I really have is an instinct from decades of living history in my father’s home, heeding the lessons he taught, and trying to understand the meaning of his words as he shared his thoughts about his own actions.

I want very much to believe that Iran, once an ally of the United States, could be so again if only we give it the chance by agreeing to the sanctions relief that is before the Congress for approval.

I also want very much to believe the United States could hold its own in a negotiation with Iran, a country that practically invented the art and science of the deal, in a manner that allows us to stand a chance of striking a reasonable bargain.

I also want to believe that Iran, a country that has always said one thing while it openly and brazenly does another, would actually keep its word and do that to which it has agreed.

And finally I want very much to believe that our president and his administration, which thinks it has covered all angles so Iran has no place to go but along the narrow path of honor, has done just that.

Alas, I just can’t get there.

Ronald Reagan said trust, but verify. Iran does not deserve our trust, and the agreement provides some loopholes in the verification process through which nuclear-capped intercontinental ballistic missiles might be driven — or, at least, hidden.

Iran professes to have made a deal for a new era while it continues to mouth the same old rhetoric about annihilating Israel as well as the great Satan — that is us — and we are giving it $60 billion to help it along.

If the United States would insist that Iran forgo its support of Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups that kill innocent Israelis as well as U.S. soldiers trying to save the Middle East from itself, supporting this deal might be worth the risk.

If Iran, which has forsworn nuclear weapons in the agreement, would allow anytime, anywhere inspections and a destruction of its full and potential military nuclear capacity, I would say supporting this deal is a good start to getting Iran back into the fold of more civil societies.

If Iran would just stop providing assistance to groups of terrorists whose mission it is to kill Americans, if it would just say “no more” to terrorism, supporting this deal would be worth the risk.

But none of that, at least as far as our president and secretary of state are concerned, has been done. And why? Because Iran would not make that part of the deal.

I don’t doubt for a moment the president’s sincerity in believing this is a good deal for the United States and her allies. But I do doubt the reality.

And I doubt very much that this agreement relieves the insufferable angst with which Israel must live on a daily basis and the paranoia with which it must plan to keep living in light of the money and freedom Iran will now have to continue to make good on its existential threat to that tiny country — our best friend in the region, Israel.

I remember the nuclear test-ban treaties the United States entered into when it and the Soviet Union were the two superpowers and had the nuclear capability to destroy the Earth many times over. We were adversaries but managed to make those agreements, which provided some sanity to our own bit of madness.

Only once did the U.S.S.R. or the U.S. threaten the other with annihilation, at least not in a way that we should have taken it seriously. Mutually assured destruction meant something in those days.

Iran is different, and times are different. Every other word from Iran’s lips involves annihilating Israel and destroying the United States and her friends. Those words are coupled with the actions of a state sponsoring terrorism with money, weapons, training and every other kind of support necessary for the suicidal tendencies of hopeless people yearning for a cause. Unlike the U.S.S.R., Iran is serious about its destructive language and actions. And it has shown no letup.

All of which brings me back to never again. If the Congress supports the agreement and Iran keeps its word and stops killing our servicemen and women, then it is a brave and bold step President Barack Obama has taken toward a safer and saner Middle East.

But if we are wrong and Iran plays us for a foolish country that wants peace and shuns a just and necessary war and, as a result, emerges not only with billions of dollars but with a nuclear arsenal to threaten the world, we have made a grave mistake.

It only takes one nuclear bomb to destroy Israel, her people and the dreams of the rest of the world. And that risk is just too much to absorb without a greater showing of respect for our country and Israel by Iran.

Friends should not let their friends be driven into oblivion.

Never again means what it says. Never again shall we put the Jewish people at risk of annihilation. Never again shall Jews, on their own, allow that to happen. The warning signs are there; they emanate from the mouth of Iran’s supreme leader.

He has told the world about his plans to destroy Israel and the Jewish people who live there. Only naïveté or foolishness would cause us to not take him at his word and prepare for the worst.

And for certain, allowing Iran to have its cake (its nukes) in what is really the blink of an eye and eat it, too, without the need or the willingness to mitigate the invective and to change its murderous ways is to ignore the plain language of the clear and present threat to the Jewish homeland and the rest of the Western world.

I, for one, am not prepared to take that risk. It is better that we take a different risk.

It seems probable to me that this agreement will have the necessary votes to be implemented despite the fact that most or all Republicans and a number of Democrats have acknowledged they would vote against it. I understand why it will pass. Reasonable people of goodwill and good intentions can see the agreement as good and bad; it is not a sure thing either way.

But what is a sure thing is the need for the United States to not only stand behind Israeli security but alongside it and even in front of it. This agreement may work to curtail Iranian nukes, but it doesn’t do anything to curtail Iran’s death wish for Israel.

Our good Sen. Harry Reid has struggled with his decision, which is to support the Iran deal, because he has always been a champion of Israel’s right to exist and live in peace. It is in his core and is part of who he is. I believe he will do all he can to make sure Israel remains safe and secure.

I have heard personally from President Obama that he will never put Israel in jeopardy. He looked me in the eye and told me he had Israel’s back! And I believe him.

But I also believe ensuring Israel’s qualitative superiority in the region — the very basis of U.S.-Israeli relations since its birth — requires our country to make sure Israel has the weapons and qualitative superiority that will be required in a world with a potentially nuclear Iran. Fifteen years is really a blink of the eye.

That means deterrence — the policy that managed to keep the world safe during the Cold War — must be the guidepost for Middle Eastern policy going forward.

We have the ability to deter and destroy any Iranian capacity for nuclear weapons. I don’t believe Israel does, short of the ultimate response.

Middle East expert Dennis Ross and Gen. David Petraeus agree the best way to make this agreement work — to ensure Iran keeps its word — besides verification and vigilance is the knowledge that Israel has the ability to destroy any Iranian nuclear capacity.

That means when senators and representatives vote for this agreement, they must also vote to provide Israel with the means to make that tiny country militarily superior. The massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) is a 30,000-pound bunker buster that can destroy the most hardened Iranian nuke sites. The MOP plus the means to deliver it and destroy any Iranian target (the B-2 bomber and related defensive add-ons) will give Israel the deterrence capacity to keep Iran from moving against the Jewish state or its neighbors.

If Iran gets nukes in a few short years and uses them against Israel, the United States still will exist. Israel won’t. If an American president in a few years balks at a military strike against a nuclear Iran, for certain the Israeli prime minister won’t. It is just that simple.

The United States soon will vote to hand over $60 billion to Iran, a terrorist nation, which it may use to threaten its neighbors from a renewed position of strength. The United States, while stopping Iran from achieving nuclear bomb-owning status for now, could likely be setting the stage for a terrorist Iran to threaten the entire Middle East in just a few years with nuclear bombs aplenty. And, until then, it can continue its own brand of mischief, which is responsible for death and mayhem on a daily basis.

The least we can do for our friend and ally Israel is to make sure it has everything it needs to defend itself should our dreams for Iran be dashed and our nightmares realized.

And I mean everything.

We owe it to Israel, we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the common sense that tells us “never again” has a meaning that allows for nothing less.

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Sun.

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