The US must stand firm in preventing a Nuclear Iran

By Michael D. Evans

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped into the biggest travesty in the history of his nation. He will address a joint session of the United States Congress on Tuesday, March 3, for the third time as did only Netanyahu’s greatest hero, Winston Churchill before him. The invitation to Netanyahu has created a firestorm. The Obama administration has marched out all its big guns to attack the prime minister—from John Kerry to Susan Rice to President Obama himself. Protocol in politics is driving the controversy.

Mr. Netanyahu has been accused of using this opportunity as nothing more than a gimmick to drive votes in Israel for the upcoming elections on March 17--elections which were called by the prime minister. The absurdity of this accusation is that Iran is not an election issue. Israeli elections will be decided by economic issues. Before making that move, the prime minister had dismissed Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid for their lack of cooperation in running a cohesive government http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.629648. Median income in Israel has remained unchanged for decades while housing and education costs have skyrocketed.

The prime minister is coming to the States with a message; one that says America is leading the world in abandoning its original goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. This was the position of the Obama administration until November 2013. Rather than criticize the message, the strategy has been to attack the messenger, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Those who oppose Mr. Netanyahu are simplifying the message, saying this is foolishness by the prime minister; that the US will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Many Democrats are determined to show their disdain by boycotting the speech. President Obama’s national security adviser has stated, “I think it’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship [for the prime minister of Israel to address the United States Congress].” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/us/politics/susan-rice-calls-netanyahus-planned-visit-destructive-to-us-israel-ties.html?_r=0

All those on the Left have already judged the motives of Benjamin Netanyahu. Virtually none of them actually know the man. I have known him, his beloved father, Benzion, and his brother Iddo for more than thirty years. All three Netanyahu brothers—Jonathan, Benjamin and Iddo—served in the Sayeret Matkal. It is Israel’s top counterterrorism unit whose men are comparable to the finest US Navy Seals. Jonathan was killed during the raid on Entebbe on July 4, 1977 while attempting to rescue Israeli hostages.

When he is convinced his cause is a righteous one, Benjamin Netanyahu will not avoid confrontation. He saw his brother sacrifice his life for an honorable goal, a decision that led Benjamin into politics. His worldview concerning good and evil is not the major issue causing him to take risks—it is the only thing.  

The Netanyahus are a very pragmatic, principle-based family. If anyone has followed Benjamin through his career, he will have been seen as bold and courageous in standing up for his principles, no matter the cost. For nearly a decade Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying, “It’s 1938, Iran is Germany, and it is racing to acquire nuclear weapons.” http://genebrooks.blogspot.com/2006/11/its-1938-iran-is-germany.html.

Nothing has changed over the past nine years. Iran is still hard at work on acquiring nuclear capabilities while the world turns a blind eye.

If al Qaeda was on both US borders and had conducted over 1,000 terrorist attacks in this country, do you think there would be a debate on whether al Qaeda should be allowed to go nuclear? The reality is that this is exactly what Israel faces. The long arm of Iran has funded its proxies—Hamas and Hezbollah—for decades. Iran has done more than fund them; it has assisted in coordinating training with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard operating a state-within-a-state, both in Lebanon and Syria.

As a journalist, I was on the beachhead in Beirut on October 22, 1983, the night before the Marine barracks were attacked. I met with those young men that evening and then slept on the beachhead before Iranian proxies with the terrorist group Hezbollah murdered 241 American servicemen.

President Obama is appeasing Iran in an attempt to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assistance. Iran is currently fighting ISIS in Iraq with American support. He has changed his stance from “no nuclear Iran, period,” to “no nuclear Iran during my term of office.”

Benjamin is unquestionably the strongest prime minister in Israel’s history. He is certainly not in a panic over the election, and the last thing he would do is play such a card mere weeks before his countrymen go to the polls. I know him well and he is doing this because he genuinely believes in it, even if it costs him the election. Rather than impugning his character, Netanyahu should be applauded and presented with a Congressional Medal of Honor for his courageous stand against ground zero for world terrorism, Iran.

The Nero’s who fiddle while Rome burns will not save the world from a nuclear conflagration. It was Winston Churchill who said that the world lacked the “democratic courage, intellectual honesty, and willingness to act” in order to halt Hitler’s war machine in 1935. Had he been stopped, sixty-one million people would not have died. Perhaps Mr. Churchill would say the same today about Iran.

When Benjamin Netanyahu delivers his speech, there will indeed be thunderous applause coming from the balcony of heaven from at least one man—Winston Churchill.

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Dr. Michael Evans is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. His book, See You in New York, will be released soon.