Obama’s New Year’s Gift to Israel: an Iranian Nuclear Warhead

Gidon Ben-Zvi is posting this piece on behalf of one                  Harry Ben-Zvi, full time Las Vegas wheeler dealer and part time political philosophizer. Gidon accepts full responsibility for any outbursts of enlightenment that may break out following a perusal of Heshy’s piece.

Thank you and Chag Sameach to all!

US President Barack Obama has long since made peace with the existence of a nuclear armed Iran- but won’t admit it until after the upcoming November 6 presidential election.

The president will surely receive a majority of the American Jewish vote, which is far too sympathetic and progressive to be offended by his latest rebuff of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

While catch phrases such as “all options are on the table” are honey in the ears of those who may be concerned about a nuclear armed Iran, the actions of the current American president are both tired and dangerous – having been taken from the playbook of former US President Bill Clinton: simply swap out yesterday’s Pyongyang for today’s Tehran.

At best, the Obama administration is naive in its belief that a nuclear North Koreahas not changed the balance of power or had much of an adverse effect on American interests in Asia. And this naivety has begot a lazy, reactive, complacent US foreign policy for if things didn’t turn out too terribly in North Korea, why should a bomb-toting Iran have an adverse effect on US interests in the Middle East?

The progressive, Western worldview is based on a misplaced rationalization: Iran would never place its stockpile of nuclear armaments, not to mention the current regime of Koran-thumping thugs, at risk by actually pressing the red button to launch a nuclear strike. Such a rose-tinted analysis perceives Iran’s nuclear aspirations as little more than the pursuit of a bully stick.

Progressive, Western logic would be wrong.

Regarding nuclear armament, there is a fundamental difference between open, democratically elected regimes that serve at the behest of their citizens – and therefore must provide a certain degree of peace and prosperity to retain power – and authoritarian regimes that rule at the expense of their citizens and require a perpetual state of conflict to consolidate power. If conflict is the mother’s milk of bloody dictatorships, one probably would not want to arm Iran with nuclear weapons.

Regarding North Korea,Pyongyang is actively selling its nuclear know-how to ‘progressive’ regimes like Damascus and Tehran. Furthermore, North Korea’s nuclear ‘deterrent’ has only calcified the Hermit Kingdom’s hold on power.

And how about a nuclear Iran? The Islamic Republic is currently expanding its sphere of influence by controlling the Shia leadership in neighboring Iraq, as well as funding Bashar Assad’s bloody campaign against the Syrian rebels; Tehran has provided Damascus with advanced missiles; Tehran is in a state of war with Israel and has repeatedly and openly declared its intent to destroy the Jewish state and has taken concrete steps to implement this foreign policy objective; Tehran has created and funds the Shia terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon, which currently has an estimated 40,000 rockets and missiles and has already fired thousands of rockets into Israel; Tehran is also funding Hamas in the Gaza strip and has supplied that Muslim Brotherhood offshoot with weapons, which the terrorist organization hasn’t been deterred from using – to the tune of thousands of rockets, mortars and missiles – against Israel.

Left unchecked, Tehran will use its pursuit of nuclear weapons as a catalyst for another regional war against Israel. The goal of such a conflict would be to further decrease Israel’s role as a regional deterrent for the implementation of mad plans by mad men and continue to increase Shia’s influence in the region.

More alarmingly and relevant to those who could care less about tiny Israel, Iran would become a regional super power in the most volatile neighborhood on earth.

Finally, a nuclear armed Tehran will also have a destabilizing effect on the oil rich Sunni regimes, which are not only neighbors with Iran but have sizeable Shia communities, many of whom live on top of sizeable oil reserves within these Sunni sheikdoms.

And so while the vast majority of American Jews continue to dance to Obama’s tune, their Israeli brothers and sisters continue to stock up and gas masks. Unfortunately, a sweet-talking US president’s vague promises don’t provide much cover against an incoming missile.