WarSclerotic

The fatal flaw in the Iran deal – The Washington Post.

President Hassan Rouhani waving to the crowd during his public speech at Massoumeh holy shrine in the religious Shiite Muslim city of Qom, on February 25, 2015. (Ho -/AFP/Getty Images)

A sunset clause?

The news from the nuclear talks with Iran was already troubling. Iran was being granted the “right to enrich.” It would be allowed to retain and spin thousands of centrifuges. It could continue construction of the Arak plutonium reactor. Yet so thoroughly was Iran stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that just last Thursday the IAEA reported its concern “about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed . . . development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Bad enough. Then it got worse: News leaked Monday of the elements of a “sunset clause.” President Obama had accepted the Iranian demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched uranium as they want.

Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone. Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would reenter the international community, as Obama suggested in an interview in December, as “a very successful regional power.” A few years — probably around 10 — of good behavior and Iran would be home free.

The agreement thus would provide a predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade resumed, oil pumping and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy.

Meanwhile, Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It’s not even part of these negotiations.

Why is Iran building them? You don’t build ICBMs in order to deliver sticks of dynamite. Their only purpose is to carry nuclear warheads. Nor does Iran need an ICBM to hit Riyadh or Tel Aviv. Intercontinental missiles are for reaching, well, other continents. North America, for example.

Such an agreement also means the end of nonproliferation. When a rogue state defies the world, continues illegal enrichment and then gets the world to bless an eventual unrestricted industrial-level enrichment program, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead. And regional hyperproliferation becomes inevitable as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others seek shelter in going nuclear themselves.

Wasn’t Obama’s great international cause a nuclear-free world? Within months of his swearing-in, he went to Prague to so declare. He then led a 50-party Nuclear Security Summit, one of whose proclaimed achievements was having Canada give up some enriched uranium.

Having disarmed the Canadian threat, Obama turned to Iran. The deal now on offer to the ayatollah would confer legitimacy on the nuclearization of the most rogue of rogue regimes: radically anti-American, deeply jihadist, purveyor of terrorism from Argentina to Bulgaria, puppeteer of a Syrian regime that specializes in dropping barrel bombs on civilians. In fact, the Iranian regime just this week, at the apex of these nuclear talks, staged a spectacular attack on a replica U.S. carrier near the Strait of Hormuz.

Well, say the administration apologists, what’s your alternative? Do you want war?

It’s Obama’s usual, subtle false-choice maneuver: It’s either appeasement or war.

It’s not. True, there are no good choices, but Obama’s prospective deal is the worst possible. Not only does Iran get a clear path to the bomb but it gets sanctions lifted, all pressure removed and international legitimacy.

There is a third choice. If you are not stopping Iran’s program, don’t give away the store. Keep the pressure, keep the sanctions. Indeed, increase them. After all, previous sanctions brought Iran to its knees and to the negotiating table in the first place. And that was before the collapse of oil prices, which would now vastly magnify the economic effect of heightened sanctions.

Congress is proposing precisely that. Combined with cheap oil, it could so destabilize the Iranian economy as to threaten the clerical regime. That’s the opening. Then offer to renew negotiations for sanctions relief but from a very different starting point — no enrichment. Or, if you like, with a few token centrifuges for face-saving purposes.

And no sunset.

That’s the carrot. As for the stick, make it quietly known that the United States will not stand in the way of any threatened nation that takes things into its own hands. We leave the regional threat to the regional powers, say, Israeli bombers overflying Saudi Arabia.

Consider where we began: six U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding an end to Iranian enrichment. Consider what we are now offering: an interim arrangement ending with a sunset clause that allows the mullahs a robust, industrial-strength, internationally sanctioned nuclear program.

Such a deal makes the Cuba normalization look good and the Ukrainian cease-fires positively brilliant. We are on the cusp of an epic capitulation. History will not be kind.

Dore Gold

Just last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s declared nuclear facilities, issued its latest report. As in previous reports, Iran’s stock of low-enriched uranium from all its nuclear facilities together continues to grow — it is now understood to be at 14,174 kilograms (31,248 pounds).

The report does not say this, but a quick calculation leads to the following disturbing conclusion: The roughly 8,000 kilograms (17,637 pounds) of that amount that are already in a gaseous form and can be injected into centrifuges for further enrichment are sufficient for at least seven atomic bombs. The speed with which the Iranians could do this largely depends on the number of centrifuges any future agreement will allow them to keep.

But the most disturbing part of the new report has to do with the ongoing concern of the IAEA with what it calls “the possible military dimensions” of the Iranian nuclear program. It refers to “undisclosed nuclear related activities,” which involve military-related organizations. According to the report, these activities include “the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.” In other words, Iranian work on a nuclear warhead.

The IAEA refers to a detailed study it presented a few years ago in 2011 on this subject. At that time the IAEA disclosed that the Iranians were working on “the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab 3 missile and replacing it with a spherical nuclear payload.” The Shahab 3 missile, which became operational in the Iranian armed forces in 2003, has a range of 1,300 kilometers (808 miles) and can reach Israel even when launched from Iranian territory.

The Shahab 3 has also been regularly displayed in Iranian military parades. On the missile carrier, on which it is transported, there is usually a sign attached stating that “Israel must be wiped off the map” (as was the case in 2004) or that “Israel must be destroyed ” (as in 2013).

By presenting the data it possessed on the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program, the IAEA completely contradicted Iran’s claim that it is only enriching uranium for civilian purposes, like the production of electricity from nuclear reactors. In 2011, the IAEA carefully checked the sensitive information it acquired about “a nuclear explosive device” and concluded it was “credible.” Now in its latest 2015 report, the IAEA added that it had since that time received more information that “further corroborated the analysis” from 2011.

Yet according to the latest IAEA report from last week, Iran was still hiding its military program. It refused to provide any details about the concerns raised in past IAEA reports. It also refused to give the IAEA access to its Parchin weapons facility, which the West had repeatedly requested.

Instead, Tehran tampered with the site making verification of any work on nuclear weapons more difficult for inspectors in the future: The Iranians poured asphalt on large areas inside of the Parchin complex, making soil samples for checking the presence of radioactivity hard to obtain. With no baseline on how far the Iranians have progressed in their weapons work, there is no way the new agreement can cover the whole issue of weaponization, leaving a huge hole in any agreement.

Iran dismissively stated that all these issues related to its military program were “mere allegations and do not merit consideration.”

Unfortunately, the P5+1 did not put the clarification by Iran of its past military activities as a requirement in its interim agreement with Iran in 2013. Originally, when the interim agreement was reached, the White House put out a “fact sheet” stating that the U.S. understood that Iran would have to address the military dimensions of its nuclear program, including the Parchin issue.

But that did not happen and nonetheless the P5+1 progressed with Iran nonetheless, focusing mainly on uranium enrichment, and here only partly. A senior U.S. official, who preferred to remain anonymous, stressed in a February 2014 press conference in Vienna, that this important issue of Iran’s past military activities was between the IAEA and Iran but was not part of the understandings between the P5+1 and Iran. Parchin illustrated the Iranian tendency to hide facilities from the West that were later discovered. It showed why it was so difficult to trust the Iranians to keep their written agreements.

Indeed, Parchin was not the only problem. This Tuesday, on Feb. 24, the MEK — the Iranian opposition group that disclosed in the past many of Iran’s secret facilities, like Natantz and Arak — made yet another revelation about the Iranian nuclear program during a press conference in Washington. It uncovered an underground facility near Tehran called Lavizan-3, where Iran was secretly developing a new generations of centrifuges that could enrich uranium at much greater speeds.

The U.S. has known for years about faster Iranian centrifuges, but the question that arises from this latest revelation is why Iran was determined to keep the production of these fast centrifuges a secret. Perhaps, the facility was part of a parallel nuclear program which would allow Iran to break out of any limitations that were instituted by the international community in the future.

The new agreement between Iran and the P5+1 that is presently being completed will leave Iran’s massive nuclear infrastructure largely intact. But if Parchin teaches the West any lesson, it is that Iran has not put its weaponization efforts on the negotiating table, nor will it. Neither has it agreed to allow its huge ballistic missile forces to become a subject of discussion. For that reason, Israeli spokespeople have been saying that Iran will be at the threshold of having nuclear weapons, and can be described as a threshold nuclear power. Undoubtedly, there are those in the West who are convinced that if Iran violates its agreement and crosses the threshold to assemble a nuclear weapon it would immediately face a strong reaction which could include the use of force.

There is an enormous problem for anyone who thinks that this last stage of assembling a nuclear weapon can be reliably detected. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made this point on April 11, 2010, when he appeared on the American news show “Meet the Press.” He stated: “If their policy is to go to the threshold but not assemble a nuclear weapon, how do you tell they have not assembled? I don’t know how you would verify that.” Gates understood how intelligence collection worked since he was head of the CIA in the 1990s.

The former head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, reached a similar conclusion in testimony he gave before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 20, 2014. He told the Congressmen bluntly: “Absent an invasive inspection regime, with freedom to visit all sites on short notice, American intelligence cannot provide adequate warning of Iranian nuclear developments.”

In short, Iran could acquire nuclear weapons without being detected unless a future agreement gave the West the right to move all over Iran with little notification. Given the struggle over Parchin and other sites, there is no indication that the West will have an inspection regime of this sort.

via Israel Hayom | The world moves toward a bad deal.

Obama’s Anti-Netanyahu Boycott Is Collapsing
The Front Page Mag February 18, 2015 by Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn

(I’m thinking we may need to look for possible networks that plan to carry Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress in its entirety. You know how difficult the media can be at times…putting it nicely. My guess is Cspan and Fox will do so. If you know of any confirmed sources in your part of the world let me know. I’ll include it in an update to this post or you can leave a comment. – LS)

The final numbers are not yet in, but it seems clear that the White House-orchestrated campaign to boycott Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress is collapsing.

Despite two weeks of intense anti-Netanyahu leaks, insults, and pressure, the White House has so far succeeded in persuading only a handful of Democratic members of Congress to stay away from the speech.

A grand total of two Senators and twelve Representatives have publicly announced that they are boycotting Israel’s prime minister. Assuming that those figures change only marginally in the days ahead, it will mean that 98% of the Senate and 95% of the House of Representatives will be in attendance.

(more…)

America and Israel: A love story – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: While Israeli public has been misled into thinking that we are in a crisis with US public, annual Gallop poll points to record high support for Israel.

For several weeks now, we have been hearing in the media thatIsrael’s relationship with the United States is ruined. “It’s irreversible,” one commentator prattled. “America has completely turned its back on us,” another commented. “The relations have never been so bad,” a third one added, and a fourth one concluded that “it’s hopeless and finished.”
The perplexed citizen asks himself how is it possible that one speech in the parliament, a place where the entire essence is to listen to speeches, managed to destroy our relationship with our great and historic friend. Can a decades-long alliance be erased in one moment?

Well, nothing of the kind has happened. America is not turning its back on us, and there have already been conflicts in the past, even greater ones, with the American administration on critical issues.

Fortunately, the prestigious Gallup research institute this week published its annual index, which at how the American public perceives Israel. The index has been published regularly for a quarter of a century now, since 1989, and includes a surprise for our commentators: A record high support for Israel. Seventy percent of Americans view Israel favorably.

Gallup poll shows 70% of Americans view Israel favorably (Photo: AP)

A look at the Gallup ranking of the Americans’ attitude towards Israel over the years points to a rise in this public’s support: In 1992, the overall American level of support for Israel was 47%, in 2000 it was 54%, and since then it has continued to climb to its current level. In other words, this is a demonstrated, strong friendship.

The survey was conducted after the alleged clashes with US President Barack Obama and after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention to address the Congress was already made public. So it seems that the commentators misled the Israeli public into thinking that we are in a crisis with the broad American public.

By the way, according to the survey, only 17% of the American public views the Palestinian Authority favorably – a pretty permanent rate, which is based – among other things – on the Muslim voice and on the voice of American Jews from the radical left.

An examination of the Democrats and Republicans’ attitude towards Israel reveals a difference: While the Republicans’ supporters are in love with Israel, with a record high support level of 83%, the Democrats’ support level fell to 48% this year. The Democrats, however, have never really liked Israel, and their support level since 1989 has always been below 50%, excluding last year when it reached 55%.

Jews in the United States tend to vote for the Democrats, but it seems that due to the hostile attitude towards Israel, some of them are beginning to move from the Democratic camp to the Republican camp. The change in the Jewish voting pattern should particularly concern the Democrats ahead of next year’s presidential election. They must rebuild the destruction created by the Obama administration if they wish to stop the Jewish shift towards their rivals.

The American public’s support is increasing also due to the global war on terror, as Israel and the US stand together in the Western civilization’s defense, and as Europe is being washed by Islam. The American public is aware of this very special alliance, which is not only built on interests but also on a shared goal to advance democracy and freedom in the world, in the spirit of Israel’s prophets.

Both Israel and the US are built on this noble purpose, which is exclusively unique to these two countries. The Obama administration may not share this goal, but the Obama administration will come to an end in about a year and a half from now.

Are these figures only reflecting a trend or also creating it? There isn’t a single Congress member or senator who hasn’t seen the Gallup data – who the American public loves – and whoever goes against the broad public will likely be punished by the public. It’s a shame that the Gallup index is not receiving much exposure in Israel.

The appalling talk of boycotting Benjamin Netanyahu – Opinion – Jerusalem Post.

As a liberal Democrat who twice campaigned for US President Barack Obama, I am appalled that some Democratic members of Congress are planning to boycott the speech of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3 to a joint session of Congress.

At bottom, this controversy is not mainly about protocol and politics – it is about the constitutional system of checks and balances and the separation of powers. Under the Constitution, the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies, and the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Congress has every right to invite, even over the president’s strong objection, any world leader or international expert who can assist its members in formulating appropriate responses to the current deal being considered with Iran regarding its nuclear-weapons program. Indeed, it is the responsibility of every member of Congress to listen to Netanyahu, who probably knows more about this issue than any world leader, because it threatens the very existence of the nation state of the Jewish people.

Congress has the right to disagree with the prime minister, but the idea that some members of Congress will not give him the courtesy of listening violates protocol and basic decency to a far greater extent than anything Netanyahu is accused of doing for having accepted an invitation from Congress.

Recall that Obama sent British Prime Minister David Cameron to lobby Congress with phone calls last month against conditionally imposing new sanctions on Iran if the deal were to fail. What the president objects to is not that Netanyahu will speak to Congress, but the content of what he intends to say.

This constitutes a direct intrusion on the power of Congress and on the constitutional separation of powers.

Not only should all members of Congress attend Netanyahu’s speech, but Obama – as a constitutional scholar – should urge members of Congress to do their constitutional duty of listening to opposing views in order to check and balance the policies of the administration.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Speaker John Boehner’s decision to invite Netanyahu or Netanyahu’s decision to accept, no legal scholar can dispute that Congress has the power to act independently of the president in matters of foreign policy. Whether any deal with Iran would technically constitute a treaty requiring Senate confirmation, it is certainly treaty-like in its impact.

Moreover, the president can’t implement the deal without some action or inaction by Congress.

Congress also has a role in implementing the president’s promise – made on behalf of the American nation as a whole – that Iran will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

That promise seems to be in the process of being broken, as reports in the media and Congress circulate that the deal on the table contains a sunset provision that would allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons after a certain number of years.

Once it became clear that Iran will eventually be permitted to become a nuclear-weapon power, it has already become such a power for practical purposes.

The Saudis and the Arab emirates will not wait until Iran turns the last screw on its nuclear bomb. As soon as this deal is struck, with its sunset provision, these countries would begin to develop their own nuclear-weapon programs, as would other countries in the region. If Congress thinks this is a bad deal, it has the responsibility to act.

Another reason members of Congress should not boycott Netanyahu’s speech is that support for Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. The decision by some members to boycott Israel’s prime minister endangers this bipartisan support.

This will not only hurt Israel, but will also endanger support for Democrats among pro-Israel voters. I certainly would never vote for or support a member of Congress who walked out on Israel’s prime minister.

One should walk out on tyrants, bigots, and radical extremists, as the United States did when Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction at the United Nations. To use such an extreme tactic against our closest ally, and the Middle East’s only vibrant democracy, is not only to insult Israel’s prime minister, but to put Israel in a category in which it does not belong.

So let members of Congress who disagree with the prime minister’s decision to accept Boehner’s invitation express that disagreement privately and even publicly, but let them not walk out on a speech from which they may learn a great deal and which may help them prevent the president from making a disastrous foreign- policy mistake.

Inviting a prime minister of an ally to educate Congress about a pressing foreign-policy decision is in the highest tradition of our democratic system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

Column One: In Israel’s hour of need – Opinion – Jerusalem Post.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice.

It is hard to get your arms around the stubborn determination of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. For most of the nine years he has served as Israel’s leader, first from 1996 to 1999 and now since 2009, Netanyahu shied away from confrontations or buckled under pressure. He signed deals with the Palestinians he knew the Palestinians would never uphold in the hopes of winning the support of hostile US administrations and a fair shake from the pathologically hateful Israeli media.

In recent years he released terrorist murderers from prison. He abrogated Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. He agreed to support the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. He agreed to keep giving the Palestinians of Gaza free electricity while they waged war against Israel. He did all of these things in a bid to accommodate US President Barack Obama and win over the media, while keeping the leftist parties in his coalitions happy.

For his part, for the past six years Obama has undermined Israel’s national security. He has publicly humiliated Netanyahu repeatedly.

He has delegitimized Israel’s very existence, embracing the jihadist lie that Israel’s existence is the product of post-Holocaust European guilt rather than 4,000 years of Jewish history.

He and his representatives have given a backwind to the forces that seek to wage economic warfare against Israel, repeatedly indicating that the application of economic sanctions against Israel – illegal under the World Trade Organization treaty – are a natural response to Israel’s unwillingness to bow to every Palestinian demand. The same goes for the movement to deny the legitimacy of Israel’s very existence. Senior administration officials have threatened that Israel will become illegitimate if it refuses to surrender to Palestinian demands.

Last summer, Obama openly colluded with Hamas’s terrorist war against Israel. He tried to coerce Israel into accepting ceasefire terms that would have amounted to an unconditional surrender to Hamas’s demands for open borders and the free flow of funds to the terrorist group. He enacted a partial arms embargo on Israel in the midst of war. He cut off air traffic to Ben-Gurion International Airport under specious and grossly prejudicial terms in an open act of economic warfare against Israel.

And yet, despite Obama’s scandalous treatment of Israel, Netanyahu has continued to paper over differences in public and thank Obama for the little his has done on Israel’s behalf. He always makes a point of thanking Obama for agreeing to Congress’s demand to continue funding the Iron Dome missile defense system (although Obama has sought repeatedly to slash funding for the project).

Obama’s policies that are hostile to Israel are not limited to his unconditional support for the Palestinians in their campaign against Israel. Obama shocked the entire Israeli defense community when he supported the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, despite Mubarak’s dependability as a US ally in the war on Islamist terrorism, and as the guardian of both Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and the safety and freedom of maritime traffic in the Suez Canal.

Obama supported Mubarak’s overthrow despite the fact that the only political force in Egypt capable of replacing him was the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the destruction of Israel and is the ideological home and spawning ground of jihadist terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and Hamas. Obama then supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime even as then-president Mohamed Morsi took concrete steps to transform Egypt into an Islamist, jihadist state and end Egypt’s peace with Israel.

Israelis were united in our opposition to Obama’s behavior. But Netanyahu said nothing publicly in criticism of Obama’s destructive, dangerous policy.

He held his tongue in the hopes of winning Obama over through quiet diplomacy.

He held his tongue, because he believed that the damage Obama was causing Israel was not irreversible in most cases. And it was better to maintain the guise of good relations, in the hopes of actually achieving them, than to expose the fractures in US-Israel ties caused by Obama’s enormous hostility toward Israel and by his strategic myopia that endangered both Israel and the US’s other regional allies.

And yet, today Netanyahu, the serial accommodator, is putting everything on the line. He will not accommodate. He will not be bullied. He will not be threatened, even as all the powers that have grown used to bringing him to his knees – the Obama administration, the American Jewish Left, the Israeli media, and the Labor party grow ever more shrill and threatening in their attacks against him.

As he has made clear in daily statements, Netanyahu is convinced that we have reached a juncture in our relations with the Obama administration where accommodation is no longer possible.

Obama’s one policy that Netanyahu has never acquiesced to either publicly or privately is his policy of accommodating Iran.

Since Obama’s earliest days in office, Netanyahu has warned openly and behind closed doors that Obama’s plan to forge a nuclear deal with Iran is dangerous. And as the years have passed, and the lengths Obama is willing to go to appease Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been left their marks on the region, Netanyahu’s warnings have grown stronger and more urgent.

Netanyahu has been clear since his first tenure in office in the 1990s, that Iran’s nuclear program – as well as its ballistic missile program – constitutes a threat to Israel’s very existence. He has never wavered from his position that Israel cannot accept an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.

Until Obama entered office, and to an ever escalating degree since his reelection in 2012, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has been such an obvious imperative among both Israelis and Americans that Netanyahu’s forthright rejection of any nuclear deal in which Iran would be permitted to maintain the components of its nuclear program was uncontroversial. In some Israeli circles, his trenchant opposition to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear capabilities was the object of derision, with critics insisting that he was standing strong on something uncontroversial while buckling on issues like negotiations with the Palestinians, where he should have stood strong.

But now we are seeing that far from being an opportunist, Netanyahu is a leader of historical dimensions. For the past two years, in the interest of reaching a deal, Obama has enabled Iran to take over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. For the first time since 1974, due to Obama’s policies, the Golan Heights is an active front in the war against Israel, with Iranian military personnel commanding Syrian and Hezbollah forces along the border.

Iran’s single-minded dedication to its goal of becoming a regional hegemon and its commitment to its ultimate goal of destroying the US is being enabled by Obama’s policies of accommodation. An Iran in possession of a nuclear arsenal is an Iran that can not only destroy Israel with just one or two warheads. It can make it impossible for Israel to respond to conventional aggression carried out by terrorist forces and others operating under an Iranian nuclear umbrella.

Whereas Israel can survive Obama on the Palestinian front by stalling, waiting him out and placating him where possible, and can even survive his support for Hamas by making common cause with the Egyptian military and the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the damage Obama’s intended deal with Iran will cause Israel will be irreversible. The moment that Obama grants Iran a path to a nuclear arsenal – and the terms of the agreement that Obama has offered Iran grant Iran an unimpeded path to nuclear power – a future US administration will be hard-pressed to put the genie back in the bottle.

For his efforts to prevent irreparable harm to Israel Netanyahu is being subjected to the most brutal and vicious attacks any Israeli leader has ever been subjected to by an American administration and its political allies. They are being assisted in their efforts by a shameless Israeli opposition that is willing to endanger the future of the country in order to seize political power.

Every day brings another serving of abuse. Wednesday National Security Adviser Susan Rice accused Netanyahu of destroying US relations with Israel. Secretary of State John Kerry effectively called him a serial alarmist, liar, and warmonger.

For its part, the Congressional Black Caucus reportedly intends to sabotage Netanyahu’s address before the joint houses of Congress by walking out in the middle, thus symbolically accusing of racism the leader of the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, and the leader of the most persecuted people in human history.

Radical leftist representatives who happen to be Jewish, like Jan Schakowsky of suburban Chicago and Steve Cohen of Memphis, are joining Netanyahu’s boycotters in order to give the patina of Jewish legitimacy to an administration whose central foreign policy threatens the viability of the Jewish state.

As for Netanyahu’s domestic opponents, their behavior is simply inexcusable. In Israel’s hour of peril, just weeks before Obama intends to conclude his nuclear deal with the mullahs that will endanger Israel’s existence, Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog insists that his primary duty is to defeat Netanyahu.

And as far as Iran is concerned, he acts as a free loader ad a spoiler. Either he believes that Netanyahu will succeed in his mission to derail the deal with or without his support, or he doesn’t care. But Herzog’s rejection of Netanyahu’s entreaties that he join him in Washington next week, and his persistent attacks on Netanyahu for refusing accommodate that which cannot be accommodated shows that he is both an opportunist and utterly unworthy of a leadership role in this country.

Netanyahu is not coming to Washington next Tuesday to warn Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, because he seeks a fight with Obama. Netanyahu has devoted the last six years to avoiding a fight with Obama, often at great cost to Israel’s national security and to his own political position.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.

http://www.CarolineGlick.com