|
Elections Have Consequences
The commentary below is an insightful analysis of how Iran is responding toPresident Obama’s clear signals as to what his Iran policy will be. One weekago Iran launched a domestically manufactured satellite on a ballistic missilethat has a range of up to 3,000 kilometers.
In other words, Iran has demonstrated it has the capability to launch conventionaland nuclear warheads with a range of as much as 3,000 kilometers.
During the presidential campaign, at times candidate Barack Obama made it clearthat a nuclear Iran was “unacceptable.” But these statements were wrapped inhis broader foreign policy theme – that it was time for the U.S. to changecourse and diplomatically engage countries like Iran.
Anyone who even remotely appreciates the horrors of war hopes that diplomaticefforts and/or various non-military sanctions will be successful in“persuading” Iran to abort its nuclear weapons program.
But let’s be realistic here. There is little evidence that existing sanctionshave had any impact in changing the Iranian government’s behavior. The Islamistregime continues to move full-speed ahead toward the acquisition of nuclearweaponry. As Iran moves ever closer to achieving this goal, will the Obamaadministration be willing to do what is necessary to prevent a nuclear Iran,what Obama has termed “unacceptable”?
February 07,2009
Israel'sFateful Elections
By CarolineGlick
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/israels_fateful_elections.html
Tuesday's general elections will officially end the briefest and mostnonchalant electoral season Israel has ever experienced. Regrettably, theimportance of these elections is inversely proportional to their lack ofintensity. These are the most fateful elections Israel has ever had. The eventsof the past week make this point clearly.
On Monday Iran successfully launched a domestically manufactured satellite on aballistic missile called the Safir-2 space rocket. Since the launch, expertshave noted that the Safir-2 can also be used to launch conventional andnonconventional warheads. The Safir-2 has an estimated range of 2,000-3,000kilometers. And so the successful satellite launch showed that today Iran iscapable of launching missiles not only against Israel, but against southernEurope as well.
Many Israeli leaders viewed Monday's launch as a "gotcha" moment. Foryears they have been saying that Iran's nuclear program is a threat to globalsecurity - not merely to Israel's. And Monday's launch demonstrated that theywere right all along. Israel isn't the only country on Iran's target list.
Unfortunately for Israel, the international community couldn't care less. Itsresponse to Teheran's latest provocation was to collectively shrug itsshoulders.
On Wednesday emissaries of the five permanent members of the UN SecurityCouncil and Germany convened in Wiesbaden, Germany, to discuss their jointpolicies toward Iran in the aftermath of the satellite launch. Some Israelisargued that Iran's provocation forced these leaders' hands. Their reputationsfor toughness were on the line. They would have to do something.
Unfortunately for Israel, the emissaries of Russia, Britain, China, France,Germany and the US are more interested in convincing the mullahs that they arenice than in convincing them that they are tough.
Far from deciding to take concerted action against Iran, the great powers didnothing more than wish the Obama administration good luck as it moves todirectly engage the mullahs. As their post-conference press release put it, thesix governments' answer to Teheran's show of force was to "agree toconsult on the next steps as the US administration undertakes its [Iranian]policy review."
As President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have explained,the US is reviewing its policy toward Iran in the hopes of finding a way todirectly engage the Iranian government. While they claim that the aim of thesesought after direct negotiations will be to convince the mullahs to give uptheir nuclear weapons program, since taking office the new administration hassent out strong signals that preventing Iran from going nuclear has taken abackseat to simply holding negotiations with Teheran.
According to a report in Aviation News, last week the US Navy prevented Israelfrom seizing an Iranian weapons ship in the Red Sea suspected of carryingillicit munitions bound for either Gaza or Lebanon. A week and a half ago, theUS Navy boarded the ship in the Gulf of Aden and carried out a cursoryinspection. It demurred from seizing the ship, however, because, as Adm.Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained on January27, the US believed it had no international legal right to seize the vessel.
In inspecting the ship the US was operating under UN Security CouncilResolution 1747, which bars Iran from exporting arms. The US argued that itlacked authority to seize the ship because 1747 has no enforcement mechanism.Yet the fact of the matter is that if the US were truly interested inintercepting the ship and preventing the arms from arriving at theirdestination, the language of 1747 is vague enough to support such a seizure.
And that's the point. The US was uninterested in seizing the ship because itwas uninterested in provoking a confrontation with Teheran, which it seeks toengage. It was not due to lack of legal authority that the US reportedlyprevented the Israel Navy from seizing the ship in the Red Sea, but due to theadministration's fervent wish to appease the mullahs.
Today the ship, which was sailing under a Cypriot flag, is docked in the Portof Limassol. Cypriot authorities have reportedly inspected the ship twice, havecommunicated their findings to the Security Council, and are still waiting forguidance on how to deal with the ship.
ALL OF this brings us back to next Tuesday's elections. With the US effectivelygiving up on confronting Iran, the entire burden for blocking Iran's quest fornuclear weapons falls on Israel's shoulders.
This means that the most important question that Israeli voters must askourselves between now and Tuesday is which leader and which party are mostcapable of achieving this vital goal?
All we need to do to answer this question is to check what our leaders havedone in recent years to bring attention to the Iranian threat and to buildcoalitions to contend with it.
In late 2006, citing the Iranian nuclear menace, Israel Beiteinu leader AvigdorLieberman joined the Olmert government where he received the tailor-made titleof strategic affairs minister. At the time Lieberman joined the cabinet, thepublic outcry against the government for its failure to lead Israel to victoryin the war with Iran's Lebanese proxy Hizbullah had reached a fever pitch. Thesmell of new elections was in the air as members of Knesset from all partiescame under enormous public pressure to vote no confidence in the government.
By joining the government when he did, Lieberman single-handedly kept theOlmert government in power. Explaining his move, Lieberman claimed that thedanger emanating from Iran's nuclear program was so great that Israel could notafford new elections.
But what did he accomplish by saving the government by taking that job? Theshort answer is nothing. Not only did his presence in the government make noimpact on Israel's effectiveness in dealing with Iran, it prolonged thelifespan of a government that had no interest in forming a strategy forcontending with Iran by two years.
In light of this fact, perhaps more than any other Israeli politician,Lieberman is to blame for the fact that Israel finds itself today with noallies in its hour of greatest peril. Had he allowed the people to elect morecompetent leaders in the fall of 2006, we might have been able to takeadvantage of the waning years of the Bush administration to convince the US towork with us against Iran.
Then there is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. If Lieberman was the chief enablerof Israel's incompetent bungling of the Iranian threat, as Israel's chiefdiplomat, it is Livni - together with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - who deservesthe greatest condemnation for that bungling.
Throughout her tenure as foreign minister and still today as Kadima's candidatefor prime minister, Livni claims that she supports using diplomacy to preventIran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But in her three years as Israel's topdiplomat, Livni never launched any diplomatic initiative aimed at achievingthis goal. In fact, she has never even publicly criticized the European andAmerican attempts to appease the mullahs.
Livni has remained silent for three years even though it has been clear forfive years that the West's attempts to cut a deal with Teheran serve no purposeother than to provide the Iranians time to develop their nuclear arsenal. Shehas played along with the Americans and the Europeans and cheered them on asthey passed toothless resolutions against Iran in the Security Council which -as the Iranian weapons ship docked in Cyprus shows - they never had theslightest intention of enforcing.
As for Defense Minister Ehud Barak, as a member of the Olmert government, hismain personal failure has been his inability to convince the Pentagon toapprove Israel's requests to purchase refueling jets and bunker buster bombkits, and to permit Israeli jets to fly over Iraqi airspace. To achieve theseaims, Barak could have turned to Israel's friends in the US military and inCongress. But he did no such thing. And now, moving into the Obamaadministration, Israel finds itself with fewer and fewer allies in Washington'ssecurity community.
For the past several years, only one political leader in Israel has had theforesight and wisdom to both understand the dangers of Iran's nuclear programand to understand the basis for an Israeli diplomatic approach to contendingwith the threat that can serve the country's purposes regardless of whether ornot at the end of the day, Israel is compelled to act alone.
In 2006, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu took it upon himself to engage theAmerican people in a discussion of the danger Iran poses not only to Israel butto the world as a whole. In late 2006, he began meeting with key US governorsand state politicians to convince them to divest their state employees' pensionfunds from companies that do business with Iran. This initiative andcomplementary efforts by the Washington-based Center for Security Policyconvinced dozens of state legislatures to pass laws divesting their pensionfunds from companies that do business with Iran.
Netanyahu also strongly backed the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs'initiative to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an internationalwar criminal for inciting genocide. Both the divestment campaign and thecampaign against Ahmadinejad have been Israel's most successful publicdiplomacy efforts in contending with Iran. More than anything done by thegovernment, these initiatives made Americans aware of the Iranian nuclearthreat and so forced the issue onto the agendas of all the presidentialcandidates.
Instead of supporting Netanyahu's efforts, Livni, Barak and Lieberman havedisparaged them or ignored them.
Because he is the only leader who has done anything significant to fight Iran'snuclear program, Netanyahu is the only national leader who has theinternational credibility to be believed when he says - as he did this week -that Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Likud underNetanyahu is the only party that has consistently drawn the connection betweenIran, its Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi and Afghan terror proxies, its Syrianclient state and its nuclear weapons program, and made fighting this axis theguiding principle of its national security strategy.
GIVEN THE US-led international community's decision not to prevent Iran fromacquiring nuclear weapons, it is clear that in the coming months Israel willneed to do two things. It will need to put the nations of the world on noticethat they cannot expect us to stand by idly as they welcome Iran into thenuclear club. And Israel will need to prepare plans to strike Iran's nuclearinstallations without America's support.
More than ever before, Israel requires leaders who understand the gravity ofthe hour and are capable of acting swiftly and wisely to safeguard our countryfrom destruction. Only Netanyahu and Likud have a credible track record on thissubject.
For the sake of our country, our nation and our posterity, it is ourresponsibility to consider this fact when we enter the voting booths onTuesday.
|
