U.S. Vice President Mike Pence demanded that the European Union join with the United States and withdraw from the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, which America left last year. The United States reimposed sanctions that were lifted in the agreement, but Pence noted “some of our leading European partners have not been nearly as cooperative. In Fact, they have led the effort to create mechanisms to break up our sanctions.”
Pence said the time has come for Europe to decide whether it stands with democracy or with Iran. “It is an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the EU and create still more distance between Europe and the United States,” he said, if European nations continue to encourage local businesses to invest in the Iranian economy.
Pence warned “the Iranian regime openly advocates another Holocaust” in the Middle East. He added that the Islamic Republic the “greatest threat to peace and security” in the region.
Pence also joined Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki in honoring the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 who rose up against the German Nazis in a last-ditch bid for survival.
Joined by their wives, the three men participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial. A cantor recited a prayer in Hebrew as the couples faced the memorial together with representatives of Poland’s small Jewish community.
Pence and Netanyahu followed with talks in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, located on the same square in the heart of the former ghetto. The Museum tells the story of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Polish lands.
Netanyahu wrote in the guest book of the museum: “May the spirit and heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish resistance fighters who staged the first organized uprising against Nazi occupation in all of occupied Europe be an eternal reminder of the dangers of powerlessness in the face of tyranny.”
Speaking with the vice president, Israel’s prime minister noted that it was just 75 years ago that the Jewish people were “absolutely defenseless.” But the young Jewish heroes in the Warsaw Ghetto, he said, with “literally their last ounce of strength withstood against the thousands of Nazis troops. They said if we must die let us die as free men and women and let us save the honor of the Jewish people.
“Little did they know that they were actually in many ways symbolizing the rebirth of the Jewish people, the rebirth of the Jewish state which was soon to come and the rebirth of the Jewish army that now protects the Jewish future.
“When the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place no one came here to help us. Today we have built our own capacities to defend ourselves but we have a great friend and the greatest friend of all is the United States of America. There is no alliance like ours. There is no partnership like ours.
“There is a deep bound of sympathy and identification between the American people and the people of Israel and vice versa. We know that we have no better friend in the world than the United States of America. And we have I’m sure an equal knowledge on your part that you have no better friend and ally than Israel.
“We have no better friends. We know it.”