Big mistake
In my opinion, it would be a big mistake for Democrats to boycott Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech because Israel is facing an existential threat from Iran. It’s not just Israel that is threatened by Iran, but also our allies in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, the other five Gulf states, Jordan, and Egypt as they see Iran openly, and it seems successfully, working toward nuclear status.
The issue is not Netanyahu’s behavior, but how to stop Iran. It was evident from the interim agreement with Iran that the U.S.-led negotiators had crossed their own previous red line. Having pledged they would never allow Iran to enrich uranium, they signed a deal that allows it to do precisely that, and to become a nuclear threshold state with the capacity to make the bomb.
Negotiations have already failed as Iran continues with their nuclear weapons creation. Iranian military leaders admitted recently to building and operating missile-manufacturing plants in Syria, where it
was also revealed that Tehran is helping to build a secret nuclear facility. Iran has begun construction on two new nuclear plants as negotiations with America over its contested program continue in Geneva, according to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Now we hear from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif that all sanctions against his country should be lifted, declaring that if they had been intended to stop its nuclear ambitions they had failed. He said when sanctions had been imposed, Iran had 200 centrifuges, and “now we have 20,000.”
Despite all that information, we heard President Obama say in his State of the Union speech, “Diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran. We’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.” He then vowed to veto any new sanctions bills that supposedly threaten to undo that progress.
Selma Prager
Springfiel
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