Politics is often laced with irony. One irony of our time is that the man whom some Chicago Jewish leaders called “the first Jewish president” is the man who could end up destroying Israel.
Jewish leaders such as Abner Mikva, Newton Minow, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, Lester Crown and Bettylu Saltzman rushed to embrace hometown candidate Obama and only saw the Obama they wanted to see.
Joel Sprayregen, former chairman of the Chicago Jewish Community Relations Council, however, pointed to what should have been obvious: The president’s political leanings are not left — they are far left. The ideology he brought to foreign affairs would prove to be disastrous for both America and Israel.
Given Barack Obama’s background, the agreement with Iran at Israel’s expense should surprise no one.
Iran is going to have nuclear weapons. Unless we are willing to launch a strategic bombing campaign, we cannot stop them. And this administration is not going to do that. We know it; the Iranians know it.
Iran is not going to launch a first strike against Israel. The mullahs are not stupid, nor do they believe in the imminent eschatology they preach. People who believe in the end of times do not open foreign bank accounts.
Iran wants nuclear weapons in order to neutralize Israel’s ability to use the threat of a nuclear strike against its enemies. Iran wants to destroy Israel — not by launching nuclear weapons, but by overrunning Israel with massive conventional forces.
Nearly every Jewish leader is an expert on peace. But to understand peace, you have to study war. A third-year West Point cadet knows something the self-proclaimed peace experts do not: how to defeat Israel. It is a textbook exercise, because Israel is vulnerable both in the north and at its narrow center. You overwhelm Israel by attacking first, breaking it up geographically, preventing its reserves from being fully mobilized and crippling its air force. This takes inordinate planning, the willingness to accept massive casualties and the ability to acquire large numbers of soldiers and modern weapons. The Iranians have the resources to do all of that.
Israel’s strategic vulnerability pushed its quest for a nuclear arsenal. Israel also has developed a formidable second-strike capability, meaning that it could absorb a first strike and still launch a nuclear attack. The final option of Israeli military strategy is the Samson option, which is to be implemented if certain red lines are crossed. Israel would then launch a devastating nuclear strike on the invading country. Whether the option means Israel would countenance its own destruction is questionable.
Iran perceives, correctly or incorrectly, that Israel will not be able to use the nuclear option because Iran, under this new agreement, ultimately will neutralize that option. All the agreement does is give legitimacy to Iran’s nuclear enrichment that will lead to a breakout to weapons capacity. Israel would have been better off if the Obama administration had done nothing.
As Iran now emerges as a stronger power, increased pressure is being put on Israel to roll back its boundaries to the 1948 cease-fire lines, what former foreign minister Abba Eban called the Auschwitz boundaries. Israel is a country with no strategic depth. It was strategic depth that enabled Russia to defeat both Napoleon and the Nazis. A country that weakens its strategic depth invites its own destruction.
Obama has strengthened Israel’s strongest enemy while weakening Israel. This has been part and parcel of the Obama administration’s policy since the first term, when in 2009, it departed from established U.S. policy that affirmed Israel’s nuclear ambiguity and exempted it from concerns of nonproliferation. For the first time, an American administration named Israel as one of four nuclear powers that had not signed the nonproliferation treaty.
Iran eventually will build sufficient atomic weapons to neutralize Israel’s nuclear arsenal. When Iran attacks Israel, there will be no calls for a cease-fire in the United Nations.
The foundations for Israel’s destruction have been laid by the “first Jewish president.” For those who have long touted Israel’s invincibility and its need to take risks for peace because of its nuclear arsenal, that invincibility will no longer exist. Israel will either bomb Iran now or await its own destruction later.
Abraham H. Miller taught political science for more than 30 years at the University of Illinois, U.C. Davis and the University of Cincinnati, and was a counterterrorism consultant to the Department of Justice and to the Henri Dunant Institute of the International Red Cross in Geneva. He lives in Walnut Creek.