In the security world, the two requirements for carrying out any attack are widely known: intention and means. The Iranian leadership has made clear on many occasions its intention to destroy the state of Israel. The framework deal between Iran and the U.S. State Department, agreed upon in Lausanne, Switzerland, will give the most dangerous regime on earth an easy path to acquire nuclear weapons.
Congress’s most crucial foreign policy task of our time is to secure a better deal — one that dismantles and destroys Iran’s military nuclear infrastructure, and therefore prevents a massive destabilization of the Middle East and entire world.
Iran’s decades of exporting terror — through Hezbollah, Hamas or other means — has claimed many lives and served as a strategic but not existential threat to Israel and others. Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, however, represents an existential threat to Israel — the first in the Jewish state’s history.
The countries that have agreed to the interim deal are not existentially threatened by Iran. And all of the countries that are most threatened by Iran — namely Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — have not signed off on the agreement. This should give Congress pause and awaken a realization that for millions in the region, this is truly a question of life or death.
It would be wise to remember sentiments echoing back from the 1990s concerning a similar deal that the U.S. signed with North Korea. President Clinton used nearly the same words as President Obama when he spoke about a “breakthrough.” Yet less than ten years later North Korea became a nation with nuclear weapons.
Most strikingly, the negotiations continue as Iran is devouring states in the region with its hegemonic hunger, including Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Jordan has even renewed diplomatic contacts with Iran because the latter is now aggressively stationed on the Hashemite Kingdom’s northern border. Israel, and other countries as well, are very concerned about Iran’s expansionist march, and the fact that the world powers have continued negotiating at the very same time Iran massacres people in Yemen.
An old Arabic proverb says, “the one who receives lashes is not similar to the one who counts them.” The negotiating countries, led by the U.S., are counting the number of lashes that Israel and other U.S. allies will receive if this bad deal goes through.
Such lashes include a dramatically-emboldened Iran that will embark on more terror and conquest in the Middle East, increased weapons trafficking and funding for its paramilitary allies, a nuclear arms race in the region and ambiguity on whether breakout to a bomb will have been deceptively achieved.
Israel has faced many wars, intifadas and terror attacks in its young history, but never have we stared down the barrel of an existential threat as we do with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Congress has an obligation in this fateful period of history to assure that any deal dismantles and destroys Iran’s military nuclear infrastructure, so that military action is not needed.
If Congress tragically fails to rise to the task, Israel will shape its intelligence sensors to ring the alarm bell to the U.S. and other allies of any Iranian cheating on the deal. Israel will simultaneously make sure it has the modus operandi and tools to be capable of stopping Iran before its leaders acquire the means to carry out their intentions to destroy Israel.
On the commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, we were reminded that 75 years ago, the Jewish people had no defense capabilities to stop Hitler from his intention of wiping Jews off the earth. Those intentions, which were verbal and written in a well-known book at the time, are strikingly similar to words echoed from the dark halls of power in Tehran today.
But today, things are different. Iran must know well concerning its hunger to destroy Israel, that before it can gobble up the Jewish State for dinner, its nuclear capabilities will be taken for lunch.
Avi Dichter is a current Israeli Knesset member and former Shin Bet director, home front defense minister and internal security minister. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
