Iran President Quotes

When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…

Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America.

In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the Neo-Con-Artists seized the economy and added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defence, three times more for gasoline and home-heating oil and twice what we payed for health-care. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health-care, their pensions; trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war payed for with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the President's oil men are maneuvering on Iraq's oil. Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Borrowed money to start a hot war with Iran, now we have another cold war with Russia and the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

SO NOW IT’S 1979. Year of the Goat. The Earth Goat. Here are some things you might remember. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected prime minister. Idi Amin had fled Uganda. Jimmy Carter would soon be facing the Iran hostage crisis. In the meantime, he was the first and last president ever to be attacked by a swamp rabbit. That man could not catch a break.

Christians can no longer refer to 'our troops' or 'our history' because of their new identity. Fabricated boundaries and walls are removed for the Christian. One's neighbor is not only from Chicago but also from Baghdad. One's brother or sister in the church could be from Iran or California—no difference! Our family is transnational and borderless; we are in Iraq, and we are in Palestine. And if we are indeed to become born again, we will have to begin talking like it, changing the meaning of we, us, my, and our.

From Olsen's Nation: "Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one. Standing as one, the world now sincerely regrets Iran’s nuclear program." — President Bodvar Olsen, fifth State of the Union address

Not too long ago, the man who was then the president of Iran was quoted as saying that Jews descended from monkeys and pigs.

Presidents lie all the time. Really great presidents lie. Abraham Lincoln managed to end slavery in America partially by deception. (In an 1858 debate, he flatly insisted that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in states where it was already legal — he had to say this in order to slow the tide of secession.) Franklin Roosevelt lied about the U.S. position of neutrality until we entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Though the public and Congress believed his public pledge of impartiality, he was already working in secret with Winston Churchill and selling arms to France.) Ronald Reagan lied about Iran-Contra so much that it now seems like he was honestly confused. Politically, the practice of lying is essential. By the time the Lewinsky story broke, Clinton had already lied about many, many things. (He’d openly lied about his level of commitment to gay rights during the ’92 campaign.) The presidency is not a job for an honest man. It’s way too complex. If honesty drove the electoral process, Jimmy Carter would have served two terms and the 2008 presidential race would have been a dead heat between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

Still, despite controlling both houses of Congress during the second Reagan administration, they let a brain-dead right-wing president get away with carrying out an HBO miniseries’s worth of Iran-Contra crimes, which was pathetic. And here’s a dose of irony to sweeten the pill: Reagan selling arms to Iran in order to fund rape squads in Central America really did make Watergate look like a “third-rate burglary.” So if libs want to keep holding up Watergate as a historic triumph for the forces of good, they’ll have to admit that letting Reagan off the hook represents a far greater historic triumph for the forces of evil.

Or take the opportunity offered to the United States following the attacks of September 11, 2001, when both Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mohammed Khatami condemned the Sunni al Qaeda terrorism in no uncertain terms and Iranians held vigils for the victims in the streets of Tehran...or the help Iran gave to the US-led coalition against the Taliban later that year; or the Iranian offer for substantial talks following the fall of Baghdad in the Spring of 2003.

What the [Clinton/Lewinsky scandal] showed was that a matter of personal behavior could crowd out of the public's attention far more serious matters, indeed matters of life and death. The House of Representatives would impeach the president on matters of sexual behavior, but it would not impeach him for endangering the lives of children by welfare reform, or for violating international law in bombing other countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan), or for allowing hundreds of thousands of children to die as a result of economic sanctions (Iraq).

As we headed into the final year of the Obama presidency, we inhabited two distinct worlds. In one, we’d achieved a global climate change agreement, the Iran deal was being implemented, the economy was growing, twenty million people had signed up for healthcare, and Obama’s approval rating was rising. In another, Republican presidential candidates were painting a picture of a dystopian nightmare of crime, rampant immigration, ISIL terrorism, and wage stagnation in America. Because the two realities were so far removed from each other, and because Obama wasn’t running, it was hard to do anything but put our heads down and focus on what we could get done.

They intended to use America’s absence from the world scene to overthrow the Saudi king, expropriate the wealth of his branch of the royal family and its supporters, reconcile with Iran and Syria, and establish a modern technocratic caliphate using science and technology to raise the standing of the Muslim world to heights not seen in a thousand years.

The “Muslim speech,” as we took to calling the second major address, was trickier. Beyond the negative portrayals of terrorists and oil sheikhs found on news broadcasts or in the movies, most Americans knew little about Islam. Meanwhile, surveys showed that Muslims around the world believed the United States was hostile toward their religion, and that our Middle East policy was based not on an interest in improving people’s lives but rather on maintaining oil supplies, killing terrorists, and protecting Israel. Given this divide, I told Ben that the focus of our speech had to be less about outlining new policies and more geared toward helping the two sides understand each other. That meant recognizing the extraordinary contributions of Islamic civilizations in the advancement of mathematics, science, and art and acknowledging the role colonialism had played in some of the Middle East’s ongoing struggles. It meant admitting past U.S. indifference toward corruption and repression in the region, and our complicity in the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government during the Cold War, as well as acknowledging the searing humiliations endured by Palestinians living in occupied territory. Hearing such basic history from the mouth of a U.S. president would catch many people off guard, I figured, and perhaps open their minds to other hard truths: that the Islamic fundamentalism that had come to dominate so much of the Muslim world was incompatible with the openness and tolerance that fueled modern progress; that too often Muslim leaders ginned up grievances against the West in order to distract from their own failures; that a Palestinian state would be delivered only through negotiation and compromise rather than incitements to violence and anti-Semitism; and that no society could truly succeed while systematically repressing its women. —

I'm not issuing some naïve plea for civility or bipartisanship here, or pretending that the opposing sides in this fight are intellectually equal. We have irreconcilable visions of the kind of country we want this to be: some of us would just like to live in Canada with better weather; others want something more like Iran with Jesus. My cruelest hope for the Tea Party is that one of their candidates wins the nomination for the presidency and they implode of their hubristic stupidity. But at least when I hear about them now, instead of reflexively picturing some braying ignoramus like Michele Bachmann, I try to remember that Matt [a friend of the Author's, ed] is out in that crowd somewhere, too. God agreed to spare Sodom if ten good men could be found within its walls (Abraham had to haggle him down from fifty). He ended up napalming those perverts anyway but the basic principle of sparing the sinner for the sake of the righteous, or the shithead for the sake of the basically okay, remains sound.

After successfully tackling the family’s living quarters, Farah decided to carve out a public role for herself. She became patron of the national organization that helped orphans and children abandoned by their parents and supported national groups representing underprivileged youngsters, the handicapped, the deaf, and the blind. … She accepted the presidency of the Lepers’ Aid Association at a time when the Muslim clergy refused to administer to lepers or even set foot in Iran’s two isolated leper colonies.

During his first months in office Clinton did not think of Afghanistan as a major base for international terrorism, he told colleagues years later. He was more seriously concerned about state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iraq and Iran, and about Shiite groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, which had killed dozens of Americans during the 1980s. Clinton knew nothing of bin Laden during the first few years of his presidency. As for Afghanistan’s war, the issue languished mainly from inertia, Lake said later; it had not been a major issue in the late Bush administration, either.3

The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan’s collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow—and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked—people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American.

When Libya fought against the Italian occupation, all the Arabs supported the Libyan mujahideen. We Arabs never occupied any country. Well, we occupied Andalusia unjustly, and they drove us out, but since then, we Arabs have not occupied any country. It is our countries that are occupied. Palestine is occupied, Iraq is occupied, and as for the UAE islands... It is not in the best interest of the Arabs for hostility to develop between them and Iran, Turkey, or any of these nations. By no means is it in our interest to turn Iran against us. If there really is a problem, we should decide here to refer this issue to the international court of Justice. This is the proper venue for the resolution of such problems. We should decide to refer the issue of the disputed UAE islands to the International Court of Justice, and we should accept whatever it rules. One time you say this is occupied Arab land, and then you say... This is not clear, and it causes confusion. 80% of the people of the Gulf are Iranians. The ruling families are Arab, but the rest are Iranian. The entire people is Iranian. This is a mess. Iran cannot be avoided. Iran is a Muslim neighbour, and it is not in our interes to become enemies. What is the reason for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, and for killing of one million Iraqis? Let our American friends answer this question: Why Iraq? What is the reason? Is Bin Laden an Iraqi? No he is not. Were those who attacked New York Iraqis? No, they were not. were those who attacked the Pentagon Iraqis? No, they were not. Were there WMDs in Iraq? No, there were not. Even if iraq did have WMDs - Pakistan and India have nuclear bombs, and so do China, Russia, Britain, France and America. Should all these countries be destroyed? Fine, let's destroy all the countries that have WMDs. Along comes a foreign power, occupies an Arab country, and hangs its president, and we all sit on the sidelines, laughing. Why didn't they investigate the hanging of Saddam Hussein? How can a POW be hanged - a president of an Arab country and a member of the Arab League no less! I'm not talking about the policies of Saddam Hussein, or the disagreements we had with him. We all had poitlical disagreements with him and we have such disagreements among ourselves here. We share nothing, beyond this hall. Why won't there be an investigation into the killing of Saddam Hussein? An entire Arab leadership was executed by hanging, yet we sit on the sidelines. Why? Any one of you might be next. Yes. America fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Khomeini. He was their friend. Cheney was a friend of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary at the time Iraq was destroyed, was a close friend of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, they sold him out and hanged him. You are friends of America - let's say that ''we'' are, not ''you'' - but one of these days, America may hang us. Brother 'Amr Musa has an idea which he is enthusiastic. He mentioned it in his report. He says that the Arabs have the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and that there should be an Arab nuclear program. The Arabs have this right. They even have the right to have the right to have a nuclear program for other... But Allah prevails... But who are those Arabs whom you say should have united nuclear program? We are the enemies of one another, I'm sad to say. We all hate one another, we deceive one another, we gloat at the misfortune of one another, and we conspire against one another. Our intelligence agencies conspire against one another, instead of defending us against the enemy. We are the enemies of one another, and an Arab's enemy is another Arab's friend.

Most people today are not aware that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain helped restore Great Britain’s financial stability during the Great Depression and also passed legislation to extend unemployment benefits, pay pensions to retired workers, and otherwise help those hit hard by the slumping economy. But history does remember his failure to confront Hitler. That is Chamberlain’s enduring legacy. So too will Iran’s construction of nuclear weapons, if it manages to do so in the next few years, become President Barack Obama’s enduring legacy. Regardless of his passage of health care reform and regardless of whether he restores jobs and helps the economy recover, Mr. Obama will be remembered for allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

At the same time that he was devising a response to the Afghanistan incursion, Carter had to confront a much more acute crisis in Iran, where he had brought the greatest disaster of his presidency down upon himself. In November 1977, he welcomed the shah of Iran to the White House, and on New Year’s Eve in Tehran, raising his glass, he toasted the ruler. Though the shah was sustained in power by a vicious secret police force, Carter praised him as a champion of “the cause of human rights” who had earned “the admiration and love” of the Iranian people. Little more than a year later, his subjects, no longer willing to be governed by a monarch imposed on them by the CIA, drove the shah into exile. Critically ill, he sought medical treatment in the United States. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance warned that admitting him could have repercussions in Iran, and Carter hesitated. But under pressure from David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the head of the National Security Council, Zbigniew Brzezinski, he caved in. Shortly after the deposed shah entered the Mayo Clinic, three thousand Islamic militants stormed the US embassy compound in Tehran and seized more than fifty diplomats and soldiers. They paraded blindfolded US Marine guards, hands tied behind their backs, through the streets of Tehran while mobs chanted, “Death to Carter, Death to the Shah,” as they spat upon the American flag and burned effigies of the president—scenes recorded on camera that Americans found painful to witness.

The first port of call was the Americans. In 1974, an initial agreement was reached by which the US agreed to sell two reactors, as well as enriched uranium, to Iran. The scope of the arrangement was expanded further in 1975, when a $15 billion trade deal was agreed between the two countries, which included provision for Iran to purchase eight reactors from the United States at a fixed price of $6.4 billion.55 The following year, President Ford approved a deal that allowed Iran to buy and operate a US-built system that included a reprocessing facility that could extract plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel, and therefore enable Teheran to operate a ‘nuclear fuel cycle’. President Ford’s Chief of Staff had no hesitation in approving this sale: in the 1970s, Dick Cheney did not find it difficult to ‘figure out’ what Iran’s motivations were.

He laughed. “Neither do I,” he said. “But I’m going to need you for Iran.” We were entering the homestretch of negotiations with the Iranians, and the ferocity of opposition to the agreement—which didn’t even exist—was building. In late January, Speaker Boehner put out a press release announcing that Netanyahu would be traveling to the United States at his invitation to address a joint session of Congress. We received no advance notice of this visit from either Boehner or the Israeli government. This type of interference in American foreign policy—a foreign leader invited to lobby the U.S. Congress against the policy of a sitting president—would have been unthinkable in 2009. But by 2015, Netanyahu had become almost a de facto member of the Republican caucus, and Republicans had abandoned any norms about working with a foreign government to undermine the policies of a sitting president.

When I hear such arguments, I find my sympathies moving toward Obama; we should at least credit him with being smarter than this. I think his critics sometimes forget how much of his domestic and foreign agenda he has realized in a single term. The anti-colonial theory gives Obama the benefit of presuming him to be at least modestly intelligent. Of course Obama understands the consequences of his actions—that’s why he is doing them. He’s doing what he does because he has objectives quite different than fostering economic growth; he intends to use the rod of government control to tame exploitative capitalists and severely regulate the private sector; he wants to strengthen Iran and Syria’s roles in the Middle East while diminishing that of the United States; and he cares more about reducing America’s nuclear arsenal than about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. I admit it is scary that a president might actually be seeking these objectives. But if my contentions are right, then we should be scared.

Israel’s constant drone surveillance over Gaza also impressed President Vladimir Putin. Moscow needed reliable surveillance drones after it lost many planes during its war in 2008 against Georgia in South Ossetia. Tbilisi had used Israeli drones, and years later Moscow decided to follow suit. Having seen Israeli operations over Gaza, Russia licensed the Israeli Aerospace Industries Searcher II, renamed “Forpost” by its new owners, and it became a key asset in Russian support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.33 Israel trained Russian pilots to operate the drones. Russia and Israel maintained a close relationship during the Syrian civil war despite the former supporting Assad and the latter worrying about the growing presence of Russian allies Iran and Hizbollah in the country. This led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (and Naftali Bennett) to routinely attack Iranian and Syrian military positions in Syria to stop the transfer of weapons to Hizbollah. However, Moscow usually turned a blind eye to these attacks, assisted by a de-escalation hotline between the two governments.

Ultimately, the United States is prepared to intervene with its own forces to defend the regime against internal attack. This was made abundantly clear in 1981, when President Reagan declared that the United States would not allow an insurgent movement to overthrow the Saudi monarch, as had occurred in Iran two years earlier. “I will not permit [Saudi Arabia] to be an Iran,” he told reporters at the White House.67 Direct American involvement in a civil war is, no doubt, the last thing that Washington would like to see happen. To prevent this, great emphasis is being placed on intelligence activities and the disruption of antigovernment organizations. But President Reagan’s 1981 statement provides an unambiguous indication of America’s determination to protect the Saudi monarchy at all costs. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that this commitment has in any way been diluted since Reagan’s time; if anything, the United States is even more closely wedded to the Saudi regime now than it was in 1981. And while it is impossible to predict the exact nature of the U.S. response to any particular threat to the regime, it is likely to be swift, muscular, and lethal.

The most important thing that is happening in the world right now is the emerging of the new man. Since the monkeys, man has remained the same, but a great revolution is on it's way. When monkeys became man, it created the mind. With the new man, a great revolution will bring the soul in. Man will not just be a mind, a psychological being, he will be a spiritual being. This new consciousness, this new being, is the most important thing, which is happening in the world today. But the old man will be against the emerging of the new man, the old man will be against this new consciousness. The new man is a matter of life and death, it is a question of the survival of the whole earth. It is matter of survival of consciousness, of survival of life itself. The old man has become utterly destructive. The old man is preparing for a global suicide right now. Rather than allowing the new man, the old man would rather destroy the whole earth, destroying life itself. The old destructive man is preparing right now for a third world war. The global economical and political elite and the war industrial complex in the U.S, which runs the foreign policy of the U.S, is right now promoting for a third world war. The U.S. has over thrown the democratically elected government in Ukraine in an secret operation by the CIA, the world's largest terrorist organization, and replaced it with a fascistic regime, a marionette for the U.S. The war industrial complex is now desperately trying to promote the third war by demonizing, lying and blaming Russia. We see the same aggression and lies from the U.S. that we have seen before against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and Iran. President Eisenhower warned against the war industrial complex, which he considered the largest threat to democracy. President John F. Kennedy also warned against a "secret conspiracy" against democracy. The war industrial complex consists of the international banks, oil companies, war industry, democratically elected politicians, conservative think tanks, international mainstream media and global companies, who make profits from human suffering and wars. The European governments and the mainstream media also cooperate with the war industrial complex to bring the world into disaster. But this time it will not work as the time for wars is over, and peace loving people and people who represent the new man are working against this kind of aggression.

Most presidents would instantly draw a sharp, clean line between campaign operations and the use of military force. This is the proverbial “wag the dog” scenario where a president in trouble seeks to bomb his way out of it by hitting a target overseas. With no adult supervision in the Pentagon—just who is the acting, provisional, temporary, staffing-agency, drop-in SECDEF this week?—no one should put it past Trump to escalate conflicts with China, Iran, or elsewhere when some part of his lizard brain tells him that some boom-boom will goose his polling numbers. Some of my former GOP colleagues will whisper, “How dare you accuse the American president of ever using the military for…” and then drop the subject, because no matter how deep they are in the Trump hole, they know who this man is and what he’ll do. Trump proves time and again that morals, laws, norms, traditions, rules, guidelines, recommendations, and tearful pleading from his staff mean nothing when he gets a power boner and decides he’s going to do something stupid. President Hold My Beer comes from the Modern Unitary Executive Power theory, where there are no limits, no laws, and no right and wrong. I’m not saying it’s a matter of if Trump will wag the dog in 2020. I’m saying that anyone who thinks he wouldn’t is a damn fool.

America’s approach to Iran’s nuclear challenge over the past decade has reprised too much of what led up to our two recent ill-fated wars. Exaggerated descriptions of the threat, false assumptions, and overly narrow reasoning have been resounding through the foreign policy punditry’s echo chamber. It is taken for granted that Iran’s nuclear program is a national and global security concern—especially in light of that country’s fairly advanced missile-delivery system—and an existential threat to Israel, an unacceptable strategic game changer that will destabilize the Middle East by eventually placing nuclear material in the hands of terrorists or leading to a regional nuclear arms race and more broadly endangering world peace by fueling nuclear proliferation. In short, Iranian nukes are a red line that must not be crossed. America will “not countenance” Iran getting nuclear weapons, said President Obama as he insisted that an American policy of pressure and coercion would ensure that that would not be the case.4 Bending Iran’s will thus became a key test of U.S. power and effectiveness, in American minds as well as those of friends and foes alike. This approach came with a large downside risk, however, for it committed America to a path of increasing pressure, backed by military threats, to realize what was from the outset an improbable goal.

I quickly learned that the congressional delegation from Alaska was deeply committed to the oil industry and other commercial interests, and senatorial courtesy prevented other members from disputing with Senators Ted Stevens (Republican) and Mike Gravel (Democrat) over a matter involving their home state. Former Idaho governor Cecil Andrus, my secretary of interior, and I began to study the history of the controversy and maps of the disputed areas, and I flew over some of them a few times. Environmental groups and most indigenous natives were my allies, but professional hunters, loggers, fishers, and the Chambers of Commerce were aligned with the oil companies. All the odds were against us until Cecil discovered an ancient law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, which permitted a president to set aside an area for “the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest,” such as Indian burial grounds, artifacts, or perhaps an ancient church building or the site of a famous battle. We decided to use this authority to set aside for preservation large areas of Alaska as national monuments, and eventually we had included more than 56 million acres (larger than the state of Minnesota). This gave me the bargaining chip I needed, and I was able to prevail in the subsequent debates. My efforts were extremely unpopular in Alaska, and I had to have extra security on my visits. I remember that there was a state fair where people threw baseballs at two targets to plunge a clown into a tank of water. My face was on one target and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini’s on the other, and few people threw at the Ayatollah’s.

In a 2013 speech, President Barack Obama laid out three rules for deciding whether to launch a drone strike against a specific target. The starting point was the national security, geopolitical, and civilian-safety objectives the president hoped to achieve. Three simple rules translated these broad goals into more concrete guidelines: Does the target pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people? Are there no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat? Is there near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured? Only if the answer to all three of these questions was yes would a drone strike be authorized. The American drone program is shrouded in secrecy, and it is unclear exactly how these simple rules have been used within the chain of decision making. By virtue of their simplicity and directness, however, they could provide a useful framework to structure discussions about these very tough decisions. And there is some evidence that they are working. In 2013, the year Obama articulated these simple rules, there was a sharp decline in confirmed civilian casualties by drone strikes. The concreteness of these rules also makes communicating them, both to U.S. citizens and the international community, straightforward. The United States has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on military drones, but that will not last forever. The U.K., China, Israel, and Iran had operational military drones in 2014, while other countries, including India, Pakistan, and Turkey, have advanced development programs. By articulating and adhering to a set of principles governing the use of drones, the United States has an opportunity to shape the international standards that other countries will use to guide their decisions in the future.

advance US global interests. This memo, from policy aide Brian Hook to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, explicitly reminds Tillerson to make sure to treat allies and adversaries differently when it comes to expressing human rights concerns.1 As Hook explains to Tillerson: In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights. It is not as though human rights practices will be improved if anti-American radicals take power in those countries. Moreover, this would be a severe blow to our vital interests. We saw what a disaster Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood turned out to be in power. After eight years of Obama, the US is right to bolster US allies rather than badger or abandon them. One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently—and better—than adversaries. Otherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies. The classic dilemma of balancing ideals and interests is with regard to America’s allies. In relation to our competitors, there is far less of a dilemma. We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically. Meanwhile, Hook criticizes the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter which he sees as an outlier amongst US presidents in the postwar era: President Carter upended Cold War policies by criticizing and even undermining governments, especially in cases such as Nicaragua and Iran. The results were unfortunate for American interests, as for the citizens of those countries. Carter’s badgering of American allies unintentionally strengthened anti-American radicals in both Iran and Nicaragua. As Jeanne Kirkpatrick wrote in 1979 criticizing Carter’s foreign policy, “Hurried efforts to force complex and unfamiliar political practices on societies lacking the requisite political culture, tradition, and social structures not only fail to produce the desired outcomes; if they are undertaken at a time when the traditional regime is under attack, they actually facilitate the job of the insurgents.

So effective has their propaganda been that an American official was moved to describe the Brotherhood as “a loose network of secular groups.”27 This kind of ignorance in the West about Egypt presents the Brotherhood with a tremendous opportunity for media manipulation. Scratch the surface, however, and you find a detailed political platform published in 2006. The president cannot be a woman because the post’s religious and military duties “conflict with her nature, social and other humanitarian roles.” A board of Muslim clerics would oversee the government. The freedom of association guaranteed civil organizations in the West would, in an Islamist Egypt, also be conditional, once again on their adherence to the strictures of Islamic law. Egypt would have a shura (consultative assembly) system, whereby a body of compliant old men nod through whatever the leader, who is assured “veneration,” sees fit, while a Supreme Guide presides benevolently over the personal morality of the masses.28 In Saudi Arabia and Iran, that system exists now.

And who but Allah could have used a fool like President Bush to remove Saddam, the man who had been the greatest obstacle to the rightful domination of the Persian Gulf by the Persian people? Indeed, who but Allah could have drawn Iran’s greatest enemy into the perfect trap?

The president and his subordinates have engaged in diplomatic negotiations that facilitate Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons despite his oft-repeated public pledge that the United States, under his leadership, would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he and his administration have concealed from the American people an agreement with the Iranian government—a longtime, avowed enemy of the American people—about how a “Plan of Action” enabling Iran to enrich uranium will be implemented.

Despite numerous prior public assurances that the United States, under his leadership, would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,54 the president and his subordinates have entered an “interim” agreement with the Iranian regime that enables Iran to continue enriching uranium.

shifts signal a slowing in momentum for the bill among Democrats, who have faced a full-court press from a number of top administration officials, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Obama vowed to veto the bill if it landed on his desk and urged Congress to let international talks play out. It’s already clear that Congress is reluctant to proceed on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has signaled an unwillingness to bring the sanctions bill to a vote, and in the House, party leaders have been meeting privately for weeks to figure out how to proceed. Talk in that chamber has centered on the possibility of voting on a non-binding resolution that would allow lawmakers to lay out their preferred endgame in Iran negotiations. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) already said earlier this month that a vote on the bill was not needed during the interim agreement. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) punted the matter to Reid. "Senator Cardin wants to see negotiations with Iran succeed. As for timing of the bill, it is and has always been up to the Majority Leader," Cardin spokeswoman Sue Walitsky said. Both of the bill’s main sponsors, Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), held their ground when asked for their reactions to Obama’s veto threat. “While the president promises to veto any new Iran sanctions legislation, the Iranians have already vetoed any dismantlement of their nuclear infrastructure,” Kirk said in a statement. On Tuesday night, just after the State of the Union had ended, Menendez said, "I’m not frustrated." He walked quickly into an elevator as he spoke, pushing the buttons and looking ready to be done with the conversation. "The president has every right to do what he wants." A spokesman for Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said Wednesday that merely introducing the bill -- but not voting on it -- was helpful to negotiations. "Senator Bennet supports the President’s diplomatic efforts and would like them to succeed. The pertinent question isn't about when we vote on the bill, but whether its introduction is helpful to the negotiations. He believes it is," spokesman Adam Bozzi said. Not all senators agreed that a vote should be delayed. Offices for Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) confirmed that the senators wanted to hold

Iraqi leaders say that Tehran has often been faster than Washington to offer help in a crisis. When the Islamic State stormed Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June and moved south toward Baghdad, President Obama took a measured approach, pushing for political changes before committing to military action. But Iran jumped right in. It was the first country to send weapons to the Kurds in the north, and moved quickly to protect Baghdad, working with militias it supported already. “When Baghdad was threatened, the Iranians did not hesitate to help us, and did not hesitate to help the Kurds when Erbil was threatened,” Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said in a recent television interview here, referring to the Kurdish capital in the north. He contrasted that approach to that of the United States, saying the Iranians were “unlike the Americans, who hesitated to help us when Baghdad was in danger, and hesitated to help our security forces.” “And the reason Iran did not hesitate to help us,” Mr. Abadi added, “was because they consider ISIS as a threat to them, not only to us.” Ali Khedery, a former American official in Iraq, said, “For the Iranians, really, the gloves are off.

David Petraeus, when he became the top US general in Iraq, got to know Suleimani quite well, referring to the master spy as “evil” and mulling whether or not to tell President Bush that “Iran is, in fact, waging war on the United States in Iraq, with all of the US public and governmental responses that could come from that revelation.” For Petraeus, Iran had “gone beyond merely striving for influence in Iraq and could be creating proxies to actively fight us, thinking that they [could] keep us distracted while they [tried] to build WMD and set up [the Mahdi Army] to act like Lebanese Hezbollah in Iraq.

The failure of the West fully to take advantage of the opportunity offered by a reformist president in Iran already looks like a bad mistake. One such opportunity came after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States when members of the Iranian leadership (not just Khatami, but also Khamenei) condemned the terrorist action in forthright terms, and ordinary Iranians showed their sympathies with candlelit vigils in the streets of Tehran—more evidence of the marked difference of attitude between Iranians and other Middle Eastern peoples. Another opportunity came after Iran gave significant help to the coalition forces against the Taliban later in 2001, helping to persuade the Northern Alliance to accept democratic arrangements for post-Taliban Afghanistan.2 In 2002 Iranians were rewarded with President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech, which lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea. Finally, the Bush administration ignored an Iranian offer in the spring of 2003 (shortly after the fall of Baghdad), via the Swiss, for bilateral talks toward a Grand Bargain that appeared to promise a possible resolution of the nuclear issue and de facto Iranian recognition of Israel. The purpose of all this is not to reinforce the cringing sense of guilt that bedevils many Western observers who look at the Middle East. It is not All Our Fault, and no doubt if the Iranians had been in the position of strength that Britain was between 1815 and 1950, or that the United States has been in since then, they would have behaved as badly, and quite possibly worse. The Iranians also missed opportunities for rapprochement in the Khatami years. But too often we have gotten things wrong, and that has had a cost. It is important to see events from an Iranian perspective, to see how we got things wrong, and to see what needs to be done in order to get them right. The most important thing is this: if we make commitments and assert certain principles, we must be more careful to mean what we say and to uphold those principles.

Imagine that Israel’s Labor Party invited President Obama to address its Parliament about why Israel should give negotiations on Iran more time, and it was all worked out with the U.S. ambassador in Tel Aviv behind the back of the Likud Party prime minister. A lot of Israelis would see it as an insult to their democratically elected leader. I’ve polled many of my non-Jewish friends, who follow world politics and are sympathetic to Israel, and they really don’t like this. It doesn’t only disrespect our president, it disrespects our system and certain diplomatic boundaries that every foreign leader should respect and usually has. 

the Reagan–Bush strategy in 1980 culminated in the Iran-Contra Affair, as advisors answerable to the President decided to ignore Congress and do what they could to aid the Contras in Nicaragua while at the same time providing weapons to Iran in exchange for the hostages. Once again, a sitting President’s policy—being effected at the highest levels of international diplomacy, with many lives at stake not to mention the nation’s foreign policy direction—was subverted by a political challenger to gain advantage in an election. In other countries, going behind the president’s back and cutting a secret, separate deal with a foreign power would be called treason; in the America of the 1960s and ’70s, it was business as usual.

Achasm of historic proportions has opened between the United States and Israel, thanks to President Obama’s determination to forge a fatefully dangerous nuclear deal with Iran.

In his first two years in the White House, Obama accomplished more than any president since LBJ. Not only did he staunch the bleeding of an economy on the brink of disaster and pass health care reform, but he also saved the American auto industry, passed landmark Wall Street reform, raised fuel efficiency standards in cars and trucks, struck down the ban on gays in the military, expanded college aid and reformed student loans, paved the way for new clean energy sources, and passed the Lilly Ledbetter Law to combat pay discrimination against women. He also began to make good on ending America’s longest-running wars, negotiated a new arms control treaty, and rallied the world behind withering sanctions that would bring Iran to

Equally scandalized by this election are the colorful band of lipstick jihadi Hirsi Ali wannabes who are writing one erotic fantasy after another about Iranian “women,” oversexualizing Iranian politics as they opt for “love and danger” during their “honeymoon in Tehran.” The representation of Iranian women in the flea market of the US publishing industry began under President Bush with Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and has now reached a new depth of depravity in Pardis Mahdavi’s Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution. Between a harem full of Lolitas and a bathhouse of nymphomaniacs is where Nafisi and Mahdavi have Iranian women, marching in despair, awaiting liberation by US marines and Israeli bombers. What a contrast to the real work of women, as testified to in this election, and now on the street in defense of the collective will of the nation.

Why do I look to the example of Reagan so often? Many reasons. One is simply admiration and respect; his leadership transformed the world. But two, the times are very similar. The situation today is very much like the late 1970s. Indeed, the parallels between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are uncanny. Same failed economic policies, same stagnation and malaise. Same feckless and naïve foreign policy; indeed, the very same countries—Russia and Iran—openly laughing at and mocking the president of the United States.

Instead of a president who boycotts Prime Minister Netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with the nation of Israel, instead of a president who seeks to go to the United Nations to end-run Congress and the American people. Imagine a president who says “I will honor the Constitution, and under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.” Imagine a president who says “We will stand up and defeat radical Islamic terrorism, and we will call it by its name. We will defend the United States of America.

Somewhat more blatant was President Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, a wealthy financier and oil trader who faced life in prison for illegally trading with the government of Iran and for evading $48 million in taxes. These crimes got him on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, had been pressing Clinton for a pardon, but Clinton reportedly said he was having difficulties, even though he was “doing all possible to turn around” the White House counsel on the subject. Rich got his pardon, finally, after Denise Rich gave $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2000 New York Senate campaign, $400,000 to the Clinton Library, and another $1 million to the Democratic Party. The

In January 2017, we will have a new President. He or she will likely encounter an Iran on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. If President Obama has implemented his bad deal—if he has unraveled the international consensus in favor of strict sanctions on Iran—then sanctions will in all likelihood be impossible to re-impose. Doing so would take months or years (if at all), probably too far out to prevent a nuclear Iran. Thus,

Thus, the next president would be left with two choices: acquiesce to Iranhaving nuclear weapons (which it could then use to murder Americans and our allies), or launch a targeted military attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity. The

Just days from the second anniversary of Pastor Saeed’s incarceration, President Obama gave a major speech to the United Nations General Assembly. He focused on issues such as Ebola, ISIL militants in Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—all crises worthy of the attention of the American president and the United Nations. But entirely absent from his remarks was the grim threat posed to the United States and our allies by a nuclear-armed Iran. In the very few words he devoted to the subject of Iran, President Obama offered the Iranians the “opportunity” to resolve the nuclear issue by "assuring the world" that their program is "peaceful.” There was no mention of the many outright lies the Iranians have told about their program over the years. There

President Obama’s proposed deal makes military conflict with Irana virtual certainty. Under the terms that have been publicly announced, Iran will keep its nuclear centrifuges, will keep its enriched uranium, and will keep developing its ICBM program (which exists for the sole purpose of carrying a nuclear weapon to America). Under the terms of the deal, Iran will receive billions of dollars — which it will surely use to keep developing nuclear weapons. And, becauseIran will remain the leading state sponsor of terrorism (the deal does nothing to change that), those billions of dollars will also be funneled directly to Hezbollah and Hamas and radical Islamic terrorists across the world. Along

President Obama is fond of posing a false dichotomy: either you support his current Iran deal, or you want war. But, as Israel‘s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rightly observed, “a bad deal is worse than no deal.” As it stands, Corker-Cardin is a bad deal that paves the way for the President’s worse deal with Iran. In

The Obama administration’s efforts to forge “a new beginning” with Iran might well mean that one of the most determined enemies of America will possess a nuclear weapon by the end of Obama’s term. Here’s the grim assessment of Ali Younesi, senior advisor to President Rouhani and formerly Iran’s intelligence minister: Obama is the weakest of U.S. presidents; he had humiliating defeats in the region. Under him the Islamic awakening happened. . . . Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era: Terrorism expanded, the U.S. had huge defeats under Obama and that is why they want to compromise with Iran.

The “foreign hand” was Avaaz.org, an organisation that promotes pro-democracy movements through the Internet, social media, phones and sometimes with the help of citizen journalists. Avaaz was co-founded in 2007 by Res Publica, a global civic advocacy group, and Moveon.org, an online community for Internet advocacy in the US. The founding team had social entrepreneurs from six countries, including president and executive director Ricken Patel, Tom Perriello, Tom Pravda, Eli Pariser, Andrea Woodhouse, Jeremy Heimans, and David Madden. By 2011, Avaaz had run a total of 750 pro-democracy campaigns worldwide. Widely regarded as the largest global political web movement in history, Avaaz’s website is blocked in China and Iran.

While I fully supported the prime minister’s position on Iran, I disagreed with his decision to present it in Congress. This would insinuate himself—and Israel—between Republicans and Democrats and exacerbate our differences with the White House. I felt the confusion and hurt of those American Jews torn between their devotion to Israel and their allegiance to the president. The same speech could have been given at that week’s AIPAC conference, I suggested, or postponed until after the Israeli elections, removing the impression of grandstanding.

Since September 11, 2001, we have constructed and identified a new satanic enemy, radical Islam. Rather than concentrate on those who perpetuated the horrors of 9/11, a broad brush was employed to demonize all who stood in the way of Empire. Not surprisingly, former president George W. Bush gave us, during his 2002 State of the Union address, the term "axis of evil," which included the countries of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. It would take only a few months before the list was expanded. Warning that the U.S. stood ready to take action, then Under Secretary of State and future U.S. representative to the United Nations, John Bolton, added three more countries to the "axis of evil" list in his May 2002 speech, "Beyond the Axis of Evil." The countries added were Cuba, Libya, and Syria. Yet enemies of Empire and God need not be the only ones defined as evil. Anyone who questions U.S. exceptionalism or supremacy finds themselves labeled as Satan's mouthpiece. Academics, liberals, and politicians (including presidents) have all been portrayed in demonic terms for going against the prevailing mindset that equates America with that "shining city upon the hill." Unfortunately, such characterizations only stifle constructive discourse. [...] [W]e are left wondering whether humanity would have been better served if there had been no such figure as Satan, the personification of absolute Evil. How many so-called witches might not have been burned? How many holy crusades to rid the world of evil would have been averted? What if, instead, Satan was to be understood differently? What if Satan, or absolute Evil, played a different role in determining moral agency?

On January 25, 1995, Russian president Boris Yeltsin came within minutes of initiating a full nuclear strike on the United States because of an unidentified Norwegian scientific rocket. Concern has been raised over a U.S. project to replace the nuclear warheads on two of the twenty-four D5 ICBMs carried by Trident submarines with conventional warheads, for possible use against Iran or North Korea: Russian early-warning systems would be unable to distinguish them from nuclear missiles, expanding the possibilities for unfortunate misunderstandings. Other worrisome scenarios include deliberate malfeasance by military commanders triggered by mental instability and/or fringe political/religious agendas. But why worry? Surely, if push came to shove, reasonable people would step in and do the right thing, just as they have in the past? Nuclear nations do indeed have elaborate countermeasures in place, just as our body does against cancer. Our body can normally deal with isolated deleterious mutations, and it appears that fluke coincidences of as many as four mutations may be required to trigger certain cancers. Yet if we roll the dice enough times, shit happens-Stanley Kubrick's dark nuclear war comedy Dr. Strangelove illustrates this with a triple coincidence.

president, Kerry, Moniz, Sherman, and many others, we obtained more than the necessary support. The congressional review period expired without a vote of disapproval. The deal was done! The Iran agreement is proof of the value of tough sanctions, when combined with skillful, relentless diplomacy, to accomplish the seemingly unachievable in international affairs. The JCPOA was a finely detailed agreement that effectively closed all pathways to Iran developing a nuclear weapon and ensured Iran would face the most rigorous, intrusive international inspections regime ever established. It was never able, nor was it intended, to halt all of Iran’s nefarious behavior—its support for terrorism, its destabilization of neighboring states, its hostility toward Israel, or its ballistic missile program. Still, it effectively addressed our biggest concern and that of the international community—preventing Iran from posing a far more dangerous threat to the region and the world through its acquisition of nuclear weapons. Understandably, Israel always said it viewed Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat. So, surely, the removal of that threat would be welcome news to Israel, our Gulf partners, and their backers. In reality, we discovered that removing the nuclear threat was not in fact their principal motivation. Rather, Israel and the Gulf Arab countries aimed to put permanent and crippling economic and military pressure on Iran such that either the regime collapsed, or it was too weak to wield meaningful influence in the region. The nuclear deal, which allowed Iran to access much of its own frozen assets held abroad under sanctions, in exchange for full and verifiable compliance with the terms of the agreement, was deemed worse than no deal at all by those who prioritized keeping the international community’s boot on Iran’s neck above halting its

You should write something that makes Trump kick the Saudis’ ass,’ Rasul said. ‘The Arabs are all with Daesh. We think Trump is going to be better than Obama. Obama supports Daesh.’ Almost every Iraqi soldier I’d met claimed to be eagerly awaiting the tenure of the newly elected Donald Trump. Some hoped he would attack the Islamic State with more obvious brutality than Barack Obama had, others that he would go after Iran, others Saudi Arabia. (Trump had pledged to do all three.) Most of all, though, they seemed to look forward to an American president who fit the mold of what they thought an American president ought to be. As far as I could tell, this meant a belligerent and nostalgic white man. ‘Obama doesn’t help us,’ Ali said. ‘He doesn’t like us. We were waiting for Obama to do something, but he did nothing.

Senator Ted Cruz put a “blanket hold” on Obama’s nominations to the State Department—every single one—to protest the Iran nuclear deal. “Of all the cloture motions ever filed or reconsidered on district court nominations,” writes former Senate staffer Bill Dauster, “97 percent were on President Obama’s nominees.

When Yemen’s Imam Ahmad bin Yahiya (1881–1962) died in his sleep, Republican military officers quickly sought to overthrow the ancient, religiously-based Hamid al-Din dynasty. The Republicans claimed that Saudi Arabia had unjustly seized the Jizan and Najran provinces from Yemen in 1934 and demanded their return. King Saud’s government rejected that claim and supported the Yemeni royalists with arms, money, and subsidies to cooperative tribes. Egypt’s President Nasser—who supported the socialist, Arab Nationalist Republicans—hoped to add Yemen to the United Arab Republic that he had created with Syria, and to use the country to overthrow the House of Saud.28 Today, King Salman fears that Iran has similar intentions in Yemen.

Obama and his cabal of communists picked and the laws they wanted to follow.” It was a free for all for his comrades. Billions of dollars’ worth of intelligence went to China, Russia and Iran. Our ports went to enemy combatants - even those on the Pentagons “blacklist” who were wanted for “capture or kill.” America’s adversaries were awarded and embraced under the Obama

(The Iran-Contra Affair was a secret US arms deal in 1985 that traded missiles and other arms to Iran. Officially, the deal was struck to free Americans hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon. Secretly, however, the American government had sold the weapons and used the proceeds to support armed conflict in Nicaragua. The controversial scheme—and the ensuing political scandal—threatened to bring down the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The hub of much of the Contra activity was in Arkansas, while Bill Clinton was governor.)

Danny Casolaro believed the Octopus responsible for criminal conspiracies which, linked, formed a virtual history of intelligence double dealing from 1950 to the present. These events, in Casolaro’s view, included the ousters of US President Richard Nixon, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the Shah of Iran, and the murders of Chilean President Allende, and, of course, of President John F. Kennedy. Casolaro saw the Octopus’ tentacles entwined throughout the creation of the Golden Triangle and Latin America drug trade, the Cuban Bay of Pigs debacle, the October Surprise, the BCCI banking scandal, and, almost as an afterthought, the theft of PROMIS software.

President Obama negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a complex set of standards on Iranian nuclear proliferation reached after years of negotiations among the United States, other P5+1 members,3 the European Union, and Iran. Most Americans have a deeply entrenched opinion on “the Iran deal” that became a talking point in the 2016 presidential campaign, but few of us can begin to describe the deal and its impacts. More dishearteningly, it seems we don’t care to. We’re just interested in who negotiated it and whether they are on our team or not.

The results of President Trump’s actions are now associated with the deaths of 176 innocent people aboard a Boeing 737.

The President of Oz Presidents Trump, Clinton, and Obama are flying together on Air Force On when they are caught in a tornado, and off they spin to OZ. After great difficulty, they finally make it down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and come before the Great Wizard. "WHAT BRINGS YOU BEFORE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL WIZARD OF OZ? WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Barack Obama steps forward timidly, "My foreign policy was pretty bad. I had a terrible time getting bullied by Iran and Syria and Russia and Libya, so I've come for some courage." "NO PROBLEM!" says the Wizard, "WHO IS NEXT?" Donald Trump steps forward, "Well, this job is harder than I thought. I... I think I need a brain. A yuge brain!” "DONE" says the Wizard. "WHO COMES NEXT BEFORE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ?" Then there is a great silence in the hall. Bill Clinton is just standing there, looking around, but doesn't say a word. Irritated, the Wizard finally asks, "WHAT BRINGS YOU TO THE EMERALD CITY?" Bill replies, "Is Dorothy around?

The President of Oz Presidents Trump, Clinton, and Obama are flying together on Air Force On when they are caught in a tornado, and off they spin to OZ. After great difficulty, they finally make it down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and come before the Great Wizard. "WHAT BRINGS YOU BEFORE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL WIZARD OF OZ? WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Barack Obama steps forward timidly, "My foreign policy was pretty bad. I had a terrible time getting bullied by Iran and Syria and Russia and Libya, so I've come for some courage." "NO PROBLEM!" says the Wizard, "WHO IS NEXT?" Donald Trump steps forward, "Well, this job is harder than I thought. I... I think I need a brain. A yuge brain!” "DONE" says the Wizard. "WHO COMES NEXT BEFORE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ?" Then there is a great silence in the hall. Bill Clinton is just standing there, looking around, but doesn't say a word. Irritated, the Wizard finally asks, "WHAT BRINGS YOU TO THE EMERALD CITY?" Bill replies, "Is Dorothy around?" Politics A little boy goes to his father and asks, "Dad, what is politics?" The dad says, "Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I'm the breadwinner of the family, so let's call me capitalism. Your mother, she's the administrator of the money, so we'll call her the government. We're here to take care of your needs, so we'll call you the people.” The boy nodded. His father continued, “The nanny, we'll consider her the working class. And your baby brother, we'll call him the future. Now, think about that and see if that makes sense." The little boy nodded again, and went off to bed thinking about what dad had said. Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has soiled his diaper. The little boy goes to his parents' room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed. The next morning, the little boy says to his father, "Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now." The father says, "Good son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about." The little boy replies, "Well, while capitalism is screwing the working class, the government is sound asleep, the people are being ignored, and the future is in deep shit.

Today, Americans, if they remember the Shah at all, are likely to associate him with massive human rights violations and state-sanctioned repression. … The Shah became a hate figure for many people. When President Jimmy Carter grudgingly allowed the deposed monarch to enter the United States in 1979 for cancer surgery, his own ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, complained that it was like ‘protecting Adolf Eichmann.’ By comparison, Young described Khomeini as ‘a saint'.

Months later, Falwell was distributing $25 audio tapes of North’s commencement address, his “Freedom Message.” In a fundraising letter sent to supporters, Falwell framed what was at issue: “In my judgment, petty partisan politics have made Ollie North, his family and the very lives of the Nicaraguan freedom fighters pawns in a liberal campaign to humiliate President Reagan.” Critics accused leaders like Falwell of exploiting North in order to reap a “financial bonanza” in their direct-mail campaigns. Falwell’s spokesperson refused to say how much his campaign had brought in, but he wasn’t the only one cashing in on North. Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America offered a “beautiful full-color picture” of North being sworn in at the Iran-Contra hearings for a mere $20 contribution. Other conservative evangelical organizations also participated in the “Olliemania.” For American evangelicals, Ollie North was the perfect hero at the perfect time.4

In 2007 ASSOPH, in consultation with Sophie’s family and solicitors, Alain Spilliaert and Eric Dupond-Moretti, came to the realisation that, if Ireland wouldn’t sanction a prosecution for its own legal reasons, a French-led investigation could potentially lead to criminal proceedings against Mr Bailey in Paris. The association’s campaign was boosted by the calibre of the people involved. Sophie’s uncle, Jean-Pierre Gazeau, was the president of ASSOPH and a driving force in both its foundation and subsequent work. Mr Gazeau was a mathematician and physicist who specialised in quantum physics and came to rank as one of France’s top academics. Quiet, polite and fluent in English and Spanish, he brought the logic, planning and determination of an academic to the work of ASSOPH. It also helped that Mr Gazeau was well versed in international negotiations. As one of the top physicists in France, he was a visiting consultant and researcher with science foundations and universities in the United States, Japan, Canada, China, and even Iran.

Every day. Every single day. We turn on the news, check our phones, or start our computers, and we see the horrific headlines. Tragically, they’ve become commonplace now. We expect them. Terrorists burn entire villages to the ground, with the children’s wailing heard miles away. Christian men are forced to kneel above explosives that are detonated by jihadists. Crucifixions. Beheadings. Christians are buried alive. Missionaries’ sons and daughters are slaughtered. Women are sold into sex slavery—the younger the girl, the higher the price. Radical Islamic terrorists even distribute pamphlets explaining how Islamic law does not forbid the rape of young girls. It breaks our hearts. It makes our stomachs churn. We crave justice. But the slaughter of Christians and other religious minorities and desecration of these religions’ heritages aren’t restricted to villages in the middle of nowhere. Nor has radical Islam stopped at cities in Iraq and Syria. The entire world is at war with radical Islam, whether President Barack Obama and progressives in the ivory towers of academia and the powerful halls of our federal government are willing to admit it or not. One thing is certain: radical Islam is at war with us.

Recent U.S. foreign policy has done more than simply allow these dangerous forces to multiply and to gain control of an increasingly unstable Middle East. It has also actively compounded the problem through the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.53 The JCPOA, announced in 2015, came about after years of negotiations between Iran and the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany, the so-called P5+1.54 President Obama entered office wanting to negotiate with Iran, making clear he was willing to do whatever it took. As soon as the Obama administration sent senior advisor Valerie Jarrett to negotiate through back channels, Iran knew how desperate the Obama administration was. The Iranians sensed this desperation, which allowed them to get everything they wanted while giving up virtually nothing in return. The deal completely capitulates to Iran, providing very broad relief from existing sanctions in coming years as well as the ability to recover billions of dollars’ worth of hard currency presently frozen abroad in foreign banks.55 Frozen Iranian assets based in the United States, including oil, petrochemical, and investment companies, will also be lifted.56 Estimates suggest that loosening sanctions will provide Iran up to $150 billion in assets currently tied up.57 That’s billions to terrorists around the world who hate America. That’s billions to President Assad in Syria to kill his own citizens and use chemical weapons on children. That’s billions to Hamas to launch rockets toward innocent Israeli civilians. That’s billions to Hezbollah. That’s billions in payments to Russia for weapons that violate international sanctions, money that Russia can, in violation of international law, use to attack its neighbors. What has Iran promised the United States and the world in return? Iran has agreed to relax its uranium enrichment efforts and repurpose some of its nuclear facilities for peaceful operations.58 Yet there is considerable fear that Iran will leverage the removal of trade restrictions and the $150 billion it is receiving to build nuclear weapons and to support terrorism worldwide.

Syria's continued alliance with Iran became one of the main justifications of Western attempts to overthrow Assad. Tom Donilon, President Obama's national-security adviser, said in 2011 that the “end of the Assad regime would constitute Iran's greatest setback in the region yet—a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.”14

In Syria, the Obama administration has constantly wrestled with a fiendishly difficult question: Should America and its allies work to take out the murderous Syrian president Bashar al-Assad first—in which case they would lose the support of Iran and Russia and likely introduce even more near-term disorder into Syria? Or should it take out ISIS first—with the tacit support of Iran and Russia—and allow Assad to stay in power, containing total disorder but also crushing the more secular, democratic Syrian opposition? As of the writing of this book, America has not resolved that dilemma.

One way to avoid shame is by asserting superiority over those viewed as weaker.66 This is demonstrated within the Muslim culture in its treatment of women,67 but it is also externally displayed through Islamic supremacy—the belief that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims.68 Islam teaches that the blood of infidels is not equal to the blood of Muslims69 and commands them to treat non-Muslims harshly and fellow Muslims mercifully.70 This basic ideology of superiority is at the core of the historic and modern Islamic quest to conquer, subjugate, and establish dominance over the non-Muslim world.71 Furthermore, Western guilt cultures are natural targets of subjugation because they are viewed as weak.72 Unlike shame culture, guilt culture encourages individuals to harbor internal feelings of guilt for their own wrongdoing and to seek restoration by apologizing for error.73 From the viewpoint of a shame culture, however, admitting error is a sign of weakness because it brings shame upon oneself.74 This is vitally important to recognize, especially when one considers the apologies President Obama made to the Muslim world for past policies and the effect such statements have on the radical Middle Eastern mind.75

By the beginning of 1946, there were plenty of indications that Stalin was not going to cooperate with the Anglo-Americans, however, and not just with regard to Germany. Russia was refusing, for instance, to carry out its part of the post-war agreement when it came to Iran. The country had been occupied by British, American and Russian troops during the war years, with an agreement that all would withdraw as soon as peace came. The British and American forces duly complied within the time agreed, but the Soviets did not, and, moreover, showed signs of trying to expand their area of occupation. Two ethnically based ‘soviet republics’ were set up by Soviet agents on Iranian territory during early 1946. These were liquidated by the Iranian army, with American encouragement, and their leaders either executed or put to flight, but the crisis atmosphere lingered on for months before Stalin quietly withdrew. The Iran crisis was a key factor in the deteriorating relationship between the Anglo-American axis and its former Soviet allies. While it was still simmering, President Truman reinforced his case by sending the US battleship Missouri to the Mediterranean. The Missouri came to form the core of the Sixth Fleet, which is still there.2 At

refused any aid until the oil issue was settled. Matters came to a head in August when Mossadeq for three days, backed by the Communist Party, seemed the irresistible dictator of Iran. . . . But fortunately the loyalty of the Army and fear of communism saved the day. —President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a speech entitled “Peace with Justice

I refused any aid until the oil issue was settled. Matters came to a head in August when Mossadeq for three days, backed by the Communist Party, seemed the irresistible dictator of Iran. . . . But fortunately the loyalty of the Army and fear of communism saved the day. —President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a speech entitled “Peace with Justice

Now I wish I had pushed back hard on his question. I should have said, “You know, Matt, I was the one in the Situation Room advising the President to go after Osama bin Laden. I was with Leon Panetta and David Petraeus urging stronger action sooner in Syria. I worked to rebuild Lower Manhattan after 9/11 and provide health care to our first responders. I’m the one worried about Putin subverting our democracy. I started the negotiations with Iran to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. I’m the one national security experts trust with our country’s future.” And so much more. Here’s another example where I remained polite, albeit exasperated, and played the political game as it used to be, not as it had become. That was a mistake. Later, I watched Lauer soft-pedal Trump’s interview.

Things changed radically between the early 1990s and 2019. The spread of fracking turned the United States into the world’s biggest oil producer by 2013. The American economy wasn’t dependent on Saudi oil anymore. Now it could pump its own. Then Barack Obama made the nuclear deal with Iran, alienating Saudi leaders. Mohammed had high hopes that Donald Trump, with his visit to the kingdom early in his presidency, would renew the kind of relationship Saudi Arabia had under previous presidents. But as Trump showed Mohammed in that embarrassing White House visit, when the president displayed a poster board showing arms sales to the kingdom, this new White House was purely transactional. The decades-long US-Saudi alliance didn’t mean much to Trump and his deputies, and many of the old officials who kept that alliance going for both sides, men like Mohammed bin Nayef and former CIA director John Brennan, had been sent off to retirement, or worse.

Yes, yes, our countries are going to be friends, at last!’ I didn’t bother pointing out the minor detail that Obama wasn’t my president. It didn’t seem important. American, British, whatever. Great Satan, Little Satan, we had all been merged into one by the Islamic Republic’s propaganda machine. No different from how Persians and Arabs are all one and the same in many western minds, I supposed.

But if arming Iran to support Israel was insane, the flip side of the policy, in the long run at least, was truly demented: Weinberger and Shultz favored defending Saudi Arabia and the enormous U.S. oil interests there by secretly bolstering the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. As a result of their efforts, billions of dollars in aid and weapons were funneled to Saddam's regime.

she decided. “You know it.” Jeffords said, “I thought my destiny was to be shish kebab.” Now that his ordeal and the escape therefrom were over, and he'd cleaned himself up as best he could with no change of clothing, he no longer looked so much terrified as worn down by a long-term but not quite terminal disease. His eyes were wide, and shadowed all around with light gray, like dustings from a tombstone. His lips were pale, mouth wider than before in an unconscious rictus, and twitching from time to time. The tops of his ears seemed to lean closer to his head. His hands moved constantly, and Meehan didn't look forward to watching him try to eat an omelet. To calm him, if possible, Meehan said, “Well, it's over.” “I don't know about that,” Jeffords said. “I had to make contact with Bruce, of course, tell Bruce to get the word to the president and to stomp on Arthur hard, because everybody in DC”—lowering his voice, looking guiltily around like a conspirator in a silent movie—“is very worried about this situation. This could blow up in everybody's faces, this could be worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-Contra, worse than the little blue dress.” Meehan said, “You people kinda specialize in farce down there in DC, don't you?” “Not on purpose,” Jeffords said. “No, I didn't say you did anything on purpose, down there in DC,” Meehan agreed. “But when you say everybody in DC is worried about this operation, just how many people is everybody? How many people are looking over my shoulder here? The Joint Chiefs of Staff ? The attorney general? The surgeon general?

That same month, Arab honor died too, or so it felt for millions across the region, who watched, incredulously, as Nasser’s successor, president Anwar Sadat, crossed enemy lines and traveled to Jerusalem to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Tears streamed down the faces of children as rage burned inside the hearts of men. How could Egypt break rank and betray the Arab and Palestinian cause?

According to the FBI, Semtex has an indefinite half-life and is far stronger than traditional explosives such as TNT. It is also easily available on the black market. Semtex became infamous when just 12 ounces of the substance, molded inside a Toshiba cassette recorder, blasted Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky above Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people. A year later, after the Czech Communist regime was toppled, the new president, Vaclav Havel, revealed that the Czechs had exported 900 tons of Semtex to Col. Moammar Qaddafi's Libya and another 1,000 tons to other unstable states such as Syria, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Some experts now put worldwide stockpiles of Semtex at 40,000 tons. Brebera says that with so much Semtex already in the hands of terrorists, and similar explosives being produced in other countries, the Czech Republic can no longer control it. "Semtex is no worse an explosive than any other," he says, defensive at the sight of accusatory headlines in Western newspapers. "The American explosive C4 is just as invisible to airport X-rays, but they don't like to mention that." After the Lockerbie tragedy, Brebera added metal components and a distinct odor to make Semtex easier to detect. But that did not stop terrorists from using it to bomb the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, or prevent the IRA, which received about 10 tons of Semtex from Libya, from continuing its attacks.

Betsy, listening to this, was reminded of the famous line about President Reagan during the Iran-Contra hearings. What didn’t he know, and when did he know he didn’t know it?

In popular lore, the Iranian arms dealings have been portrayed as rogue policy pursued by the national security staff due to an inattentive president. In truth, the arms-to-Iran initiative continued a five-year-long strategy, one deeply rooted in Cold War fears of revolutionary Iran falling under the Soviet sphere.

The supreme goal of the CIA during the cold war was to steal Soviet secrets by recruiting spies, but the CIA never possessed a single one who had deep insight into the workings of the Kremlin. The number of Soviet spies with important information to reveal—all of them volunteers, not recruits—could be counted on the fingers of two hands. And all of them died, captured and executed by Moscow. Almost all had been betrayed by officers of the CIA’s Soviet division who were spying for the other side, under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Under Reagan, the CIA set off on misconceived third-world missions, selling arms to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to finance a war in Central America, breaking the law and squandering what trust remained reposed in it. More grievously, it missed the fatal weakness of its main enemy.

Truly white supremacist states, such as the former apartheid government of South Africa, do not elect black presidents or vice presidents as does the United States, any more than Islamic supremacist societies like Iran or Saudi Arabia would ever allow a Christian or Jew to become their head of state.47

If we fail to act soon we will face an economic, social, and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.” The looming oil crisis, said Carter in one of the more memorable lines of his presidency, “is the moral equivalent of war.

Obama expelled thirty-five people described as Russian “intelligence operatives.” He slapped sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies—the military and civilian spy services, respectively, the GRU and FSB, as well as four “cyber officials” and three companies said to support Russian cyber operations. Further, he shuttered Russian-owned buildings on Long Island and Maryland’s eastern shoreline, which were suddenly branded as intelligence operations. Mind you, these facilities and operatives had been up and running throughout Obama’s presidency. No meaningful action was taken against them throughout the 2016 campaign, while Obama was being extensively briefed about Russia’s hacking and propaganda operations. Nor when Russia annexed Crimea, consolidated its de facto seizure of eastern Ukraine, propped up Assad, armed Iran, buzzed U.S. naval vessels, and saber-rattled in the Baltics. Only now, to prop up a postelection emphasis on the Trump–Russia narrative.

The answer is… nothing, except the force of deterrence. Peace with a dictatorship, or at least nonbelligerence with it, is achieved not by debilitating concessions but by powerful deterrence—not by weakness but by strength. The dictatorship that I was most concerned with was actually not Syria but Iran. On February 19, 1993, I published an article titled “The Great Danger.” “The greatest danger to Israel’s existence is not found in the Arab countries, but in Iran,”3 I wrote. I consistently argued that we must take action to prevent Iran from realizing its nuclear ambitions. All these arguments, based on history and common sense, were dismissed by the foreign policy elites in both Israel and Washington. The election of Rabin was seen as an opportunity to break the logjam and make a historic peace, beginning with Syria. But first one obstacle had to be removed. The Ford administration had given Israel a commitment that the Golan Heights would effectively remain in Israel’s hands. President Clinton’s secretary of state, Warren Christopher, was dispatched to Israel to change that. Christopher devised a new secret agreement by which the US would receive from Israel “a deposit”—an advanced promise to cede the Golan Heights in exchange for a future peace deal. This was required because Hafez Assad, the Syrian dictator, insisted on first receiving such an Israeli commitment before he would even consider moving forward with any political negotiations with Israel. As would later become evident, Assad actually had no intention of making a formal peace, but the Rabin government nonetheless agreed to a full withdrawal from the Heights in exchange for a peace agreement.

FACING A TOUGH election, I also saw that the P5+1 and Iran were racing to a dangerous nuclear agreement that would pave Iran’s path to the bomb. Under the impending agreement, Iran would be able to freely enrich uranium within a few years. Becoming a threshold nuclear power with a nuclear arsenal, Iran would jeopardize the very existence of Israel. I had to fight this. But how could I possibly do it? The polls showed I could soon be out of office. On Friday, January 8, 2015, I received a fateful call from Ron Dermer from our embassy in Washington. He told me that Speaker of the House John Boehner had called him asking whether I would be willing to address a joint meeting of Congress on the dangers of the impending nuclear deal. It was a monumental decision. This would not just be another speech. I would be going into the lion’s den in Washington to challenge a sitting American president. Stirring up such a hornets’ nest on the eve of an Israeli election could have devastating political consequences. The nuclear deal was Obama’s top priority. Blocking it was my top priority. Placing this conflict on such a global stage would put me on a head-on collision course with the president of the United States. Yet I was given the opportunity to speak before Congress and the American people on a matter vital to Israel’s very survival. I felt the pull of history. Such an invitation could not be declined. “The answer is yes, in principle,” I said to Ron. That still left me time to think everything through. Dermer began working on the details with Boehner. We settled on March 3 as the date of the speech, to coincide with AIPAC’s annual conference. I would have six weeks to prepare the most important speech of my life. Word spread that I would be giving the speech just a few days after we picked the date, and a chorus of condemnation erupted like a volcano. Statements like “Netanyahu is destroying our alliance with the United States” and “an act of enormous irresponsibility” flooded the press, the media, and the Knesset. In the US, Dermer personally met with dozens of Democratic

Yet to its credit, the Islamic Republic for nearly four decades since its inception, and despite all its domestic and international challenges, was able to provide Iran with security at its borders and a remarkable degree of internal stability. This at the time when the whole region stretching from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria and Palestine experienced domestic conflict, civil war, military invasions by superpowers, and prolonged and oppressive occupation. Despite all the hostile rhetoric that accused Iran of being the 'threat to the security of the region' and 'greatest sponsor of terrorism,' it is important to note that four decades after President Carter declared Iran an 'island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world,' his words still bear some validity. Such stability, however, came at the price of domestic repression, social chasms, and boiling discontent that periodically has erupted and is likely to erupt again. But as the celebrated Iranian thinker Mohammad Ghazzali (1058-1111) put it nine centuries ago, 'a hundred years of oppression is better than a day of chaos.

I argued again for an American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. America could still stop Iran from developing atomic bombs that would endanger America, Israel and the peace of the entire world. An American action now would give an enormous boost to the standing of the US and its president. Obama’s response floored me and Itzik Molcho, who sat beside me. “Bibi,” he said, “Nobody likes Goliath. I don’t want to be an eight-hundred-pound gorilla strutting on the world stage. For too long we acted that way. We need to lead in a different way.” I was stunned. In the Middle East as I knew it, with Iran racing to nuclear weapons, and with the shifting geopolitical balance toward Asia, I would want to be a 1,200-pound gorilla, not an 800-pound one. Often when I met officials of the Obama administration they waxed lyrical about the marvels of soft power. Culture, values, even Hollywood can do wonders to change the world, they said. “Soft power is good,” I acknowledged, “but hard power is even better.” By hard power I meant the judicious use of formidable military or economic power, or both. The values of individual liberty and national freedom give meaning and strength to free societies. But they are not enough. Power has the unfortunate quality of not being limited to the morally superior and the well intentioned. If malign forces amass enough of it and have the will to use it, they will overcome the less well-armed forces of good, especially if the good lack the tenacity to fight. Being a moral people won’t save you from conquest and carnage, which was the history of the Jewish people for two thousand years. Being perfect victims who harmed no one, we were perfectly moral. Being utterly powerless, we were led to the slaughter again and again. The rise of Zionism was meant to correct this flaw by giving the Jewish people the power to defend themselves. Enhancing this capacity was the central mission of my years in office.

It’s one thing to confront militant Islamists on pickup trucks, armed with Kalashnikov rifles,” I said, referring to the ISIS terrorist threat that still captured the world’s attention. “It’s another thing to confront militant Islamists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic state of ISIS would be if it possessed chemical weapons. Now imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic state of Iran would be if it possessed nuclear weapons.”3 But there was a silver lining. “I believe we have an historic opportunity,” I said. “After decades of seeing Israel as their enemy, leading states in the Arab world increasingly recognize that together we face the same dangers, a nuclear-armed Iran and militant Islamist movements.” Foreshadowing the Abraham Accords, I said, “Many have long assumed that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can help facilitate a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world. I think it may work the other way around: a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world may help facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace. To achieve that peace, we must look not only to Jerusalem and Ramallah, but also to Cairo, Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and elsewhere.”4 Two days later I repeated these themes in my meeting with Obama in the White House. As usual, my main emphasis was on Iran. “As you know, Mr. President,” I said, “Iran seeks a deal that would lift the tough sanctions that you worked so hard to put in place and leave it as a threshold nuclear power, and I fervently hope that under your leadership that will not happen.”5 While my warnings on Iran didn’t move Obama, they registered loud and clear in American public opinion and in Congress. This was soon to have momentous consequences.

Trump’s unpredictability caused much discomfort among his frequently changing staff and among America’s allies, who were used to automatic, reflexive support from American presidents. But it had its uses internationally by putting America’s adversaries off balance and instilling fear in its enemies. As Israel’s prime minister, I saw it as my job to carefully navigate through the new reality Trump brought to Washington in order to advance Israel’s security and vital national interests and to forge four historic peace agreements. I could do so because Trump adopted an entirely new approach to peacemaking. He did not heed bureaucratic orthodoxy and was willing to go outside the box. For the first time in Israel’s history, peace was achieved without ceding territory or uprooting Jews from their homes. It was based on mutual economic, diplomatic and security interests in which all sides benefited. In addition to recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan, President Trump recognized the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. In confronting Iran he was equally bold. Recognizing the absurdity of the Iran deal, he withdrew from it and did not hesitate to apply forceful economic and military pressures on Tehran. In all this he was a true trailblazer. Despite bumps in the road, our years together were the best ever for the Israeli-American alliance, strengthening security and bringing four historic peace accords to Israel and the Middle East. They showed the world that great things happen when an American president and an Israeli prime minister work in tandem, with no daylight between them. We proved conclusively that if you pursue peace through strength, you get both.