Netanyahu's Speech Not Enough to Stop Appeasers of Iran

 

IBDEditorials.com

Urgent Call: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit Congress like a hurricane, warning that America will be imperiled by the Iran deal President Obama seems ready to sign. No wonder Democrats were furious.

The deft Bibi turned that to his advantage in what may have been the speech of the century in a packed House chamber, revealing just why Iran's appeasers feared his address.

He began unexpectedly lauding the most anti-Israel president in history for "all that President Obama has done for Israel," including "sensitive and strategic issues" that remain unknown to Americans and Israelis.

"But I know it," Netanyahu said, "and I will always be grateful to President Obama for that support."

Those gracious words belied the strong rhetoric to come. And nothing illustrated the effectiveness of the speech more than House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's tepid applause and early exit from the venue.

In one of his most stirring lines, Netanyahu warned "the battle between Iran and ISIS doesn't turn Iran into a friend of America" because the two "are competing for the crown of militant Islam . .. so when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy."

The main difference? "ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs."

He added, "to defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war."

Without revealing any intelligence, as the White House claimed he might, Netanyahu said the deal Secretary of State John Kerry is considering "would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure, providing it with a short break-out time to the bomb" of less than a year.

Meanwhile, "not a single nuclear facility would be demolished" and Tehran would construct "faster and faster centrifuges," shortening the "break-out time."

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, twice caught Iran "operating secret nuclear facilities in Natanz and Qom, facilities that inspectors didn't even know existed."

And Netanyahu cited the agency's head from 2013: "If there's no undeclared installation today in Iran, it will be the first time in 20 years that it doesn't have one."

He cited Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, stating Iran's plans for "190,000 centrifuges, not 6,000 or even the 19,000 that Iran has today, but 10 times that amount," which "could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal, and this in a matter of weeks" — a fact confirmed by Kerry.

At the same time, "Iran's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program is not part of the deal," so it could "deliver that nuclear arsenal to the far-reach corners of the earth, including to every part of the United States."

And sanctions lifted, Iran "can enjoy the best of both worlds: aggression abroad, prosperity at home."

Before any deal, Netanyahu said, Iran must stop its aggression, its funding of terrorism, and its threats to destroy Israel. "If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country," he said.

In a powerful flourish, the Israeli leader pledged that "the days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over."

Unfortunately, the days when free people succumb to wishful thinking about evil regimes are far from over.