Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran must be prevented from having nuclear weapons
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks on Iran and his relationships with former President Obama and President Biden on 'Life, Liberty & Levin.'
Halfway across the globe, the brave women in Iran are standing up and speaking out after the callous murder of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Iranian regime. Motivated by pent-up anger and courage, protesters are taking to the streets as women removed their hijabs and stepped out in public in Western style clothing. In response, Iranian leaders have launched attacks to restore obedient order, shutting off access to the internet, detaining journalists and even killing those who step out of line.
While the people of Iran fight for basic human rights, President Joe Biden has intensified negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran — the world’s largest state sponsor of terror — to establish a new nuclear deal weaker than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), giving them the ability to restore their nuclear proliferation program.
Biden’s current negotiations with Iran will end in a one-sided agreement that heavily benefits Iran and enables its nefarious actions. We expect the new Iran deal to be a shorter agreement that includes more sanction relief and fails to resolve the shortcomings of the 2015 JCPOA, which failed to hold Iran accountable. Currently, in the draft agreement, there are reportedly provisions that may leave Iranian nuclear thresholds intact, like nuclear centrifuges, allowing them to threaten the U.S. and quickly launch an attack on our homeland.
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Peaceful nuclear programs do not hide ongoing activities. We should not be so ignorant as to think that Iran will be a good faith actor when afforded these freedoms. There has been and will be ongoing nuclear work that Iran has hidden from regulators regardless of any JCPOA agreement. Even during this most recent negotiation, Iran has facilitated through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ongoing efforts to assassinate U.S. officials like former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In 2019, it was reported that Iran-backed militia were responsible for the killing of over 600 American soldiers in the Iraq War. I am not sure how it could be any clearer to this administration that Iran cannot be trusted. Handing them more power, freedom and funding when it comes to their nuclear program will not rein in this rogue regime.
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 5, 2019. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/Pool (REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/Pool)
A nuclear Iran will also enable many of our adversaries around the world. In 2015, the week after the JCPOA, Iran and China signed a 25-year understanding on how the two countries could deepen their relationships as part of the Belt and Road initiative. China is the leading illicit importer of Iranian oil, importing about 400,000 barrels a day. China is likely to seek port access and deepen ties should sanctions be lifted.
Furthermore, China has already showed signs of aligning itself with Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to exploit Afghanistan’s significant supply of rare earth minerals, which includes uranium, a critical element used in the development of nuclear weapons. More concerning, the United States’ botched withdrawal from Afghanistan will allow China a clear route to Iran to carry out these exchanges, and with no U.S. presence on the ground we will have no intel on this unholy alliance. With Tehran and Beijing strategically aligned, Iran would benefit significantly from China’s newfound supply of uranium.
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Biden’s weakened Iran deal would reportedly also release up to $275 billion in frozen reserves to Iran, and it is almost certain Iran would use this funding to perpetuate terrorist activities. Furthermore, if sanctions tied to terrorist financing are relieved, experts have warned this is an opportunity for Putin to use banks in Iran for money laundering purposes, circumventing international sanctions placed on Russia for their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Additionally, this would present a significant homeland security threat as this money could be used to finance Iran’s ongoing cyber campaigns to target our critical infrastructure and to exert foreign influence campaigns in our elections, as was recently highlighted by the administration’s own intelligence community in a joint Cybersecurity Advisory warning of malicious cyber activity by advanced persistent threat actors affiliated with the IRGC. These countries are already strengthening their alliance as a massive of flow of weapons have been reported from Iran into Russia to arm the hostile country in its assault on Ukraine.
Aggressive nation states across the world are emboldened by Biden’s failed foreign policy decisions. The world is a less safe place with Biden at the helm of the free world. This deal with Iran will set into motion a destructive domino effect that is the culmination of the Biden administration’s failed policies with regard to Iran, Russia, the People’s Republic of China and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
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When the U.S. has weak leadership and fails to project power on the global stage, it creates a power vacuum that our foreign adversaries are happy to fill. This is a time for strength, not weakness. A nuclear Iran presents an imminent threat to the U.S. homeland and our allies around the world. Under no circumstances should the Biden administration continue these short-sighted, thoughtless and dangerous negotiations with Iran.
Any move by the Biden administration to provide any relief to Iran would be a historic mistake that repeats failed appeasement attempts of the past.