Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed American Jews in a conference call on Tuesday, August 4. He delivered a strong and steady message about why the Iran deal, the JCPOA, is the wrong deal to make with Iran.
Netanyahu’s essential message was that the nuclear deal negotiated by the P5+1 with Iran will not achieve what it was intended to achieve. Instead of ending nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, he said, it will trigger the biggest nuclear weapons race ever, in the most volatile area of the world. And that is because Iran will be allowed to attain its goal of attaining nuclear weapons capability through one of two pathways, the shorthand for which is “Keep or Cheat.”
Iran will be able to develop nuclear weapons with the international community’s official hecksher, at the end of the deal, or even earlier, if it cheats on the deal.
Netanyahu hit all the significant points he has been making throughout his campaign against Iran’s race to nuclear weapons capability. He articulated them succinctly, and substantively addressed the counter-points made by the deal’s proponents.
The Prime Minister also stated calmly that the issue is not a partisan one, nor is it a personal one. Netanyahu even said that he believes U.S. President Barack Obama truly believes the deal is the best way to go to block Iran’s efforts towards nuclear weapons capability. But Netanyahu disagrees with that assessment.
He pointed out that Iran should have been given an either/or choice, and instead it was given a take-it-all choice. Iran wants to have nuclear weapons capability and it wanted to have sanctions lifted. The current deal, the JCPOA, lifts the sanctions and lights the way for Iran to have nuclear weapons.
KEEP OR CHEAT – EITHER WAY IRAN HAS SHORT PATH TO THE BOMB
The key points that Netanyahu laid out are all subparts of the basic premise, which is that the deal will not prevent Iran, the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world, from becoming a nuclear threshold state. He referred to this as the “Keep or Cheat” concept – either Iran will keep the deal, in which case it will have a relatively short path to the bomb, or it will cheat on the deal, in which case it will have an even shorter path to nuclear weapons capability.
In the short term, even embracing the absurd notion that Iran will not cheat, in the blink of an eye – just ten short years – Iran will almost immediately be able to build a few nuclear weapons, followed soon thereafter by hundreds and thousands of them.
But there is no credible evidence that Iran will not cheat, and every available kind of evidence, especially past history, that it will cheat on the deal.
Netanyahu swept aside the claims by the deal’s proponents that intelligence and inspections will prevent Iran from cheating. He pointed out that neither inspections nor intelligence were able to detect or deter North Korea from developing nuclear capabilities.
$ TRILLIONS FOR TERRORISM
The lifting of sanctions will mean an enormous infusion of cash to Iran. Everyone is aware of the $100 – 150 billion in nearly immediate sanctions relief, but Netanyahu pointed out that if you look at it over the course of the whole deal, the number is exponentially larger. He posited that even if Iran only uses one-tenth of those funds to support its terrorist sidekicks such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that will still be trillions of dollars that will be invested in making the world dangerous for democracy and those who love it.
Netanyahu said that the kind of money which will be made available to Iran to further fund terrorism could turn its terrorist sidekicks into the equivalent of terrorist super powers.