{"id":12255,"date":"2023-11-01T11:20:58","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T09:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=12255"},"modified":"2024-02-24T21:34:02","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T19:34:02","slug":"iran-is-no-mere-adversary-it-is-americas-mortal-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/iran-is-no-mere-adversary-it-is-americas-mortal-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran is no mere adversary, it is America’s mortal enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Todays democratic softness toward Iran began in 2007, when Barack Obama claimed his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was imprisoned by \u201cWashington Groupthink.\u201d<\/span><\/h3>\n

President Joe Biden has been speaking passionately, empathetically, about Israel, spearheading Western resistance to the barbaric Hamas threat. He articulated a central mission for his administration, America, and the civilized world: saving Israel, and crushing Hamas. Yet Biden\u2019s passion ebbs when facing an enemy behind at least 24 recent drone strikes against American troops, wounding 24 soldiers. Biden must start uttering that four-letter word \u2013 Iran, recognizing\u00a0this deadly adversary<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and America\u2019s mortal enemy.<\/p>\n

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Biden keeps claiming there\u2019s no clear proof that Iran was behind October 7. Yet Iran armed, trained, and funded Hamas. It sounds like America\u2019s spies aren\u2019t providing proof of Iranian support to avoid responsibility for missing the signs of an impending attack.<\/p>\n

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Hamas\u2019s October 7 massacre<\/a>\u00a0should teach Americans not to underestimate their enemies \u2013 if they call for your destruction, they\u2019re calling for your destruction. With Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria attacking, Biden should lash back, reinstating a missile embargo, and imposing crushing economic sanctions.<\/p>\n

Americans\u2019 circumspection regarding Iran is mysterious. True, every American leader has criticized Iranian offenses. Nevertheless, too many Democrats hesitate, engage, and cajole the mullahs, rather than shunning, decrying, boycotting, and walloping them. Too many acknowledge Tehran as an adversary \u2013 but don\u2019t see the regime as an enemy.<\/p>\n

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Adversaries are rivals with competing interests, whom you have to confront sometimes; enemies are evil threats who make your blood boil.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, politicians have enemies they love to hate. The Russian marauder Vladimir Putin and North Korea\u2019s tyrannical Kim Jong Un, lead most Americans\u2019 most-hated-foreign-leader list.<\/p>\n

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But, sometimes, politicians are cursed with enemies they wish they could love. For decades, most Republicans didn\u2019t hate Saudi Arabia enough, despite the 1970s oil embargo and the 15 Saudi-born suicide-hijackers on 9\/11. Saudi Arabia\u2019s brutal rub-out five years ago of one man, journalist Jamal Khashoggi, ended the establishment\u2019s pro-Saudi love-in. As Saudi Arabia became less medieval, and more pro-Israel, murdering this popular Washington Post columnist blackened Saudi Arabia\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

Similarly, too many left-wingers, who abhor dictatorship, rationalize Palestinian crimes as justified by Israeli oppression \u2013 even when committed against Palestinians.<\/p>\n

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Still, America\u2019s tiptoeing around Iran is puzzling, especially for Democrats. When Iranians held Americans hostage, they made Jimmy Carter look wimpy, causing Ronald Reagan\u2019s 1980 win. Democrats claim to champion women, gays, religious freedom, and human rights, yet Iran\u2019s theocrats are abusive, sexist, homophobic, and repressive.\u00a0Democrats are \u201canti-nuke,\u201d yet the Iranian regime keeps rushing toward nuclear weaponry while scheming against Big Satan \u2013 America \u2013 not just Little Satan, Israel.<\/p>\n

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Even now, few Americans can name the 22-year-old whose\u00a0murder by Tehran\u2019s morality police<\/a>\u00a0triggered last year\u2019s grassroots protests throughout Iran \u2013 or the Iranian prisoner who won the Nobel Peace Prize just weeks ago (Mahsa Amini and Narges Mohammadi). These courageous women\u2019s names \u2013 and other Iranian heroes \u2013 should be on every democracy-lover\u2019s lips.<\/p>\n

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Todays democratic softness toward Iran began in 2007, when Barack Obama claimed his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was imprisoned by \u201cWashington Groupthink.\u201d Clinton supported the Iraq War, which Obama opposed.Envisioning \u201ca new era of American diplomacy,\u201d Obama insisted \u201cWe need a president who is willing to talk to all nations, friend and foe\u201d \u2013 especially Iran\u2019s mullahs. Obama mocked Clinton and George W. Bush as addicted to war-war. This reflected Obama\u2019s post-Vietnam rejection of American exceptionalism and his hostility to \u201cAmerican imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The CIA coup<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As president, addressing Muslims on his 2009 Cairo trip, Obama essentially apologized for America\u2019s \u201crole\u201d in overthrowing \u201ca democratically elected Iranian government.\u201d Some scholars dispute this stick-figure \u201cAmerica bad\u201d twistory. \u00a0Iranians elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. But he started consolidating power, dissolving the Majlis, Iran\u2019s parliament.<\/p>\n

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One American diplomat cabled Washington from Tehran warning that Mosaddeq would establish a \u201cdictatorship.\u201d Moreover, the CIA stirred the Iranian public but didn\u2019t engineer the entire coup. As usual, history is more complex than the propagandists\u2019 spin.<\/p>\n

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Still, the 1953 CIA coup \u2013 70 years ago \u2013 supposedly proves America\u2019s original sin-ism, the progressive critique dismissing America as toxic globally and not a force for good. That misreading shaped Obama\u2019s worldview. It kept him pulling punches with Iran, from failing to champion Iranian dissidents\u2019 Green Revolution in 2009 to producing 2015\u2019s poorly negotiated nuclear agreement.<\/p>\n

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Exploiting these guilty feelings, the mullahs keep out-foxing America, especially under Democratic administrations. Still, even if President Biden isn\u2019t denouncing Iran directly, the mullahs and Hamas may have overplayed their hand.<\/p>\n

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October 7 woke up \u201cSleepy Joe.\u201d He is on fire, speaking with moral authority and renewed energy. He has embraced Israel so tightly \u2013 it\u2019s no constricting bear hug \u2013 and his political success now depends on Israel\u2019s military success. If Donald Trump can pin the Afghanistan debacle, the Ukrainian stalemate, and a degraded Israel on Biden, the Democrats might as well rename the White House, Trump Tower.<\/p>\n
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In his recent Oval Office address following his lightning Israel visit, Biden said: \u201cIt\u2019s natural to ask: Why does this matter to America? You know, history has taught us that when terrorists don\u2019t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don\u2019t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction. They keep going, and the cost and the threats to America and to the world keep rising.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Biden\u2019s affirmative, eloquent support for Israel suggests he might be finally ready to confront Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran\u2019s theocrats who oppress the Iranian people, wreak havoc in the Middle East, and threaten America too. Let\u2019s hope so, before it\u2019s too late, er \u2013 before these evil forces do even greater damage.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

Gil Troy, is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian, and, most recently, the editor of the three-volume set \u2013 Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Published by Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/div>\n
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