Sleeping with the Enemy?

Shortly after his inauguration, President Barack Obama apparently began a courtship with Iranian leaders. The strategy was to ultimately reopen embassies with a full-fledged ambassadorial staff in both Washington and Tehran as a prelude to full diplomatic status. Flights between the United States and Tehran would be available, and Iranians would be allowed visas to enter the US. That was designed to lead to talks regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions. The hand was extended; the mad dog responded accordingly—it bit the hand.

I am outraged and you should be, too. Iran has spent eight years killing thousands of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with the use of improvised explosive devises. The most lethal IEDs were manufactured in Iran for the implicit purpose of killing US troops. Or how about the thousands of soldiers wounded, with missing limbs, or burned beyond recognition compliments of Iran? We did nothing.

Iranian leaders have been responsible for the murders of more than 1,000 innocent Jews in Israel through terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the PLO, all of which are armed and funded by Iran. Neither can we fail to mention the 17 US citizens murdered at the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, or the 241 servicemen killed by Islamic Jihad at the Marine barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983. I know of this firsthand as I had slept on the beachhead rather than in the barracks the night before the attack. Also on the list is Master Chief Robert Dean Stethem who was beaten to death in June 1985 by a Hezbollah terrorist onboard TWA Flight 847. That same month William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut was tortured to death by Hezbollah.

Marine Colonel William Higgins was taken hostage by Hezbollah in 1988 while serving with UN peacekeepers in Lebanon and hanged sometime later. Nineteen US Air Force personnel were murdered in June 1996 when the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia were bombed. Several members of the Saudi branch of Hezbollah were later indicted in US federal court. The most recent plot on US soil included the attempted assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US, Adel Al-Judeir, and the subsequent plan to bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, DC. These are all the Iranian plots which have been uncovered.

According to an Israeli newspaper, Maariv, Iran’s leaders “opposed any sign of normalization with the US, and refused to grant a ‘prize’ to the Americans.” Our ally, Israel, would have been strongly opposed to such a move by the Obama White House given the threats of total annihilation that have issued forth  from Tehran’s Holocaust-denying government.

In early October, reports leaked from “unknown sources” that in Geneva in 2009, the US and Iran had agreed to discuss the formulation of a plan to discuss Iran’s rogue nuclear program. The accounts were dismissed as false both by the White House and Tehran. However, according toMaariv, US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns had met with the Iranian nuclear envoy.  The meeting supposedly was held during the time that Tehran officials were meeting with five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (known as the P5+1.)

If verifiable, it would reinforce what seems to be President Obama’s desire to snuggle up to Middle Eastern potentates and mullahs. It could directly affect sanctions imposed on Iran in an attempt to halt its nuclear program. Since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the US and Iran have had no diplomatic interaction except through a third country.

Apparently, in their refusal to open talks with Obama, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei are concerned that normalizing relations with the US would lessen the hold of the fanatical Shi’a Muslim regime.

It appears that Tehran may have had a change of heart, but that report has again been denied by US officials. In recent weeks, the New York Times and NBC reported that Ahmadinejad may be open to discussions, but only after the election on November 6.  Obviously, he wants to know with whom he would be negotiating.  The Obama administration denied the story, but seems always ready to bargain with the terrorist state.

My good friend, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya’alon said he was aware of the meetings. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman with whom I recently had dinner was hopeful that Obama’s denial of contact with Iran was correct. A nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran’s Shi’a Muslim majority would be an outright threat to any hopes of peace in the Middle East. Israel continues to consider the possibility of a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Sanctions designed to influence Iran’s leaders to abandon the program have been in place for some time,yet Ahmadinejad remains defiant and determined.