Israel, Congress and the Iran Nuclear Agreement

Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu and his countless underlings in the United States are busy running around, telling all and sundry what a terrible thing the newly-approved nuclear agreement with Iran is for poor, defenseless little Israel. This agreement allows Iran to continue its peaceful use of nuclear power, yet denies it the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Preventing the construction of additional nuclear weapons in the world is a very good idea, as is worldwide nuclear disarmament. One thinks that that disarmament should start with the only nation on the planet to ever have used nuclear weapons, the United States, with a quick follow-up by the second most dangerous country in the world, Israel. However, this is a topic for a separate essay.

For most member of Congress, their first loyalty is to the lobby groups that fund their re-election campaigns, and the various Israeli lobbies are chief among them. And now many Democrats are faced with their worst nightmare: they have to either oppose a Democratic president, or oppose AIPAC (American Israel Political Affairs Committee). This is a serious dilemma. Oh, if only they just had to do what was best for the country! If U.S. politics and government existed to represent the needs of the U.S. citizenry! But no, we must not spend time on such fantasies. Doing what is best for the country and its citizens will not guarantee the funds to run a competitive re-election campaign, and most of us would love to have a high-paying job with numerous perquisites, where we could come and go as we please, and where there is no real accountability. That is the life of a typical member of the U.S. Congress.

But in order to understand where this Israeli hysteria is coming from, we must look at both Mr. Netanyahu’s fears and dire predictions. First, a look at his major fear.

‘The Iran deal threatens the very existence of Israel.’ Ho-hum. We keep hearing this, anytime anyone dares do or say anything in opposition to Israel. When someone suggests that perhaps United States aid to Israel, greater than that given to all other countries combined, could fantinapossibly go to better use serving the taxpayers whose pockets it is being extracted from, Israel interprets such ideas as anti-Semitic, clear evidence that another Holocaust is around the corner, and needing the support of the U.S. Congress to quash such destructive thoughts. If one mentions the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, suffering caused by the illegal Israeli blockade, Israeli spokespeople accuse the speaker of denying Israel its right to defend itself. Yet when Israeli government officials call Palestinians ‘beasts’, and advocate their complete annihilation, well, what does that really matter? Palestinians, obviously, do not ever suffer from prejudice, and they, unlike sacred Israel, have no right to defend themselves.

Now, let us look at Mr. Netanyahu’s dire predictions, all based on information invented in his shallow little mind.

Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Let’s look at the accuracy of Israeli predictions relating to Iran’s nuclear capacity.

* 1992: Iran was said by Israel to be three-to-five years away from having nuclear weapons.

* 1995: Same prediction: three-to-five years.

* 1996: Oops! The earlier predictions were inaccurate; Iran is now ‘getting extremely close’. ‘Extremely close’, of course, is relative. For example, the Crusades were extremely close to the invention of the automobile, when you consider the distance in time from the Ice Age to the invention of the internet.

* 2009: ‘Probably one or two years away’.

* 2012: Just ‘a few months away’.

Well, for over twenty years now, Iran has been just this close to having nuclear weapons with which to destroy defenseless Israel. In that span of time, one might ask how many people Iran has killed, compared to how many Israel has killed. Israeli crimes just against the Palestinians have killed far more people than Iran.

“They’re (Iran) going to get hundreds of billions of dollars to fuel their terror and military machine.” Well, Israel gets over $4 billion dollars annually from the U.S. to fuel its terror and military machine. Is Mr. Netanyahu jealous? He is reported to be negotiating for an increase from the U.S, because of the Iranian deal.

Iran is “killing everybody in sight in the Middle East”. One can always excuse a little hyperbole, especially in the emotionally-charged atmosphere of the Israel-U.S. Congress romance. Just last summer, Israel killed over 2,000 Palestinians, including over 500 children. Last summer, Iran killed…oh well, let’s not burden Israel with the need to cite facts.

“I think Iran has two paths to the bomb: One if they keep the deal, the other if they cheat on the deal.” It does not seem that the Prime Murderer considered another alternative: not agreeing to the deal at all. If Iran was, as Israel has been predicting for decades, just a few years from a nuclear weapon, what is the benefit of this agreement? Yes, some sanctions will be removed, but close monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program is part of the deal. If that country is so close to a nuclear weapon, why not just deal with the sanctions, and proceed with building nuclear bombs?

Mr. Netanyahu is not known for having a particularly accurate crystal ball. In 2002, the illustrious Prime Murder appeared before Congress to extoll the would-be advantages of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, with the subsequent removal of Saddam Hussein. Always happy to have the U.S. shed the blood of its own citizens to reorder the Middle East to his liking, Mr. Netanyahu said this: “If you take out Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you, that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region”. Thirteen years later, one waits in vain to see those ‘positive reverberations’.

And now he is throwing a hissy fit about the U.S.’s uncharacteristic use of diplomacy rather than bombs. The Israeli lobbies are out in force, targeting Democratic senators, especially those with dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, to oppose the agreement. Within the halls of Congress, all sorts of political jockeying is said to be happening, with some senators, most notably New York’s Charles Schumer, awaiting until the deal had enough support to sustain a presidential veto, before announcing their opposition. This way, they can, most importantly, be true to the Israeli lobbies that finance them, and, secondarily, still ensure the approval of the Iran agreement, seen as a ‘win’ for their fellow Democrat, President Obama. Any thoughts about the benefits to the safety of U.S. citizens, or keeping the Middle East in some semblance of stability, are not worthy of consideration. Personal financial goals, and winning the ‘us vs. them’, Democrat vs. Republican ‘contest’ are the only factors worth Congress’s time.

The outcome of the vote is still in question, although it appears that the deal will be approved. The damage to U.S. credibility has already been done, but the stranglehold that AIPAC has had over Congress and the White House for decades may finally have been broken. If so, then this peculiar ‘contest’ will have been worthwhile.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Propaganda, Lies and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars.