RUTHFULLY YOURS

As the present writer disclosed in an earlier article, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed a strange duplicity during a CBS News interview on January 29^th. When asked about the situation with Iran, Secretary Panetta responded with a surprising number of “ifs,” as though to give the impression that there may in fact be some doubt about the threat from Iran, that Iran may not be pursuing military nuclear capacity, and that there may as yet be no actionable intelligence to indicate that Iran intends to pursue a nuclear option.  These “ifs” are very strange since Secretary Panetta must be aware of the public information about the Iranian pursuit of WMD capacity, the Iranian proxies and allies in South America that support Iran’s objectives, and Iran’s commitment to use its nuclear weaponry to destroy Israel and intimidate the West.¹

Amazingly, President Obama demonstrated an even more overt duplicity at an interview during the Super Bowl with Matt Lauer.  As ABC news reported, when Lauer questioned him over suggestions that Iran could retaliate to an American or Israeli attack by striking inside the United States, the president replied:   “We don’t see any evidence that they have those intentions or capabilities right now.”  No evidence that Iran has bellicose intentions or capabilities toward the United States?  That response is contrary to very well-known facts, facts of which the president must be aware.

Iran is sending long-range missiles for deployment in Venezuela; Hezbollah is in Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil where it works with narcotraficants and gun runners; there is strong evidence that the Iranian secret service (the Pasdaran) is working with Hezbollah in South America;  there is strong evidence for active Hezbollah sleeper cells in the USA; Iran’s work on missiles that could reach the USA from Lebanon was progressing until clandestine sabotage (believed by some to have been perpetrated by Israel) destroyed the entire manufacturing plant; in the fall of 2011, American security forces prevented the assassination of a Saudi diplomat on American soil, a plot which James R. Clapper, America’s top intelligence official, identified as an Iranian attack that would have killed about 150 innocent bystanders and that may harbinger more of such attacks in the future; FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director David Petraeus testified at a Senate Intelligence hearing on “World Wide Threats” on January 31, informing the committee that Iran has the capabilities to build nuclear weapons whenever it wants to; the L.A. Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies briefed that same Senate panel about Iranian leaders’ willingness to launch attacks against American targets and support bombings on American soil; and a recent Wall Street Journal article validates the threat of nuclear war posed by the current Iranian regime.  Can the commander-in-chief of the world’s strongest army not know about this threat?

From its inception, the Islamic Republic has terrorized its citizens, killed American soldiers, supported terrorist groups, and repeatedly undermined the stability of our Arab allies.

During the Carter administration Iran declared war on the USA. To be exact, it was on November 4, 1972, when a group of Iranian students forcibly overran the US Embassy in Tehran and took hostage 52 Americans for 444 days.  These students acted in the name of the newly declared “Islamic Republic of Iran;” and the Ayatollah Khomeini, who only a few months earlier ousted the Shah and announced the renewal of the “Islamic Revolution,” did nothing to stop them.  An attack on a country’s embassy is, in international law, an act of war against that embassy’s country.  The Ayatollah, who led the Iranian Islamic Revolution, perceived himself an avenger of the humiliations that the West had inflicted on Islam.

And in case there was any doubt as to Iran’s intentions, Iran oversaw Hezbollah’s attack on October 23, 1983 on the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, where a suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of explosives into the barracks, killing 241 American soldiers, the single most lethal death toll on US Marines since Iwo Jima, and the single deadliest attack against Americans prior to 9/11.

During the decades after the “Islamic Revolution” Iran became a source of terrorism world-wide, with America and Israel its main targets.²  In 1984 the US Government designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Facts newly revealed in a federal district court in Manhattan late last year indicate that Iran, Hezbollah and el-Qaeda formed a global terror alliance in the early 1990s, by means of which Iran became a major supporter of global terror, and materially supported el-Qaeda in its 9/11/2001 attacks.

Iran is, and has been for more than 30 years, one of America’s most dangerous enemies. But Obama acts as though his job is to protect Iranian interests. Several Congresspersons have revealed that Obama had been secretly lobbying them in December to reduce the severity of the sanctions proposed by Congress against Iran; and the Iranian press has published the content of a secret letter from Obama to the Iranian government in which he apologizes to them for the severity of the sanctions and recognizes their right to nuclear capabilities.  And he does all of this secretly, while bloviating about how tough he is going to be on Iran, as he did in his State of the Union message.

Why is our president apologizing to the Iranian government that openly declares its hostility toward us and other Western countries, and has waged terror war against us for 30 years?  Why is he trying to make it easier for Iran to achieve the capacity to deploy a nuclear weapon, a weapon that may be deployed against us and our allies?

As Charles Robb and Charles Wald argued recently, an Iran with nuclear weapons capability, overconfident behind its own new nuclear deterrent, would act even more aggressively, threatening our allies and vital interests.  “To prevent a nuclear Iran, the U.S. needs to demonstrate its resolve to do whatever is necessary, including military action.”

Does our president think that pandering and apologizing advances our national interests or improves our ability to diffuse the single most immediate threat to our national security?

Apparently so, because Obama is trying to help Iran avoid payment to the families of American service men killed by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in its 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. Obama sides with Iran against the families of those 241 dead marines.³

In 2007, a U.S.federal district court judge found Iran liable for the Beirut bombing and ordered Tehran to pay $2.65 billion in damages. A survivor’s group says that Obama is pressuring congressional Democrats to not support a bill that would allow massive judgments against Tehran. According to this group, the White House is urging congresspersons to not vote for amendments that would hold Tehran responsible for the 1983 attack and would transfer the $2.65 billion awarded in 2007 from Iranian funds held in the USA to the plaintiffs. Obama has urged the court to block payments from Iranian assets that the families’ lawyers want seized, contending that it would jeopardize sensitive negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and establish a potentially damaging precedent.  In a little-noticed filing in federal court, the Justice Department is arguing that giving the money to the victims “can have significant, detrimental impact on our foreign relations, as well as the reciprocal treatment of the United States and its extensive overseas property holdings.’’  Over the last decade, the families of Iranian-sponsored attacks have won billions of dollars in suits against the Tehran regime. But the federal government, particularly the State Department, has blocked access to Iranian assets or funds in the United States.

So Obama, the Justice Department and the State Department are saying that we should allow Iran and Hezbollah to get away with the mass murder of Americans because if we take action to hold them responsible and pay the consequences, American property holdings overseas might be in danger, and the so-called negotiations that merely buy Iran more time to advance its WMD program might be compromised.

For fear of retaliation, our president panders to and appeases our mortal enemy, an extremist Islamic state whose radical leadership is sworn to our destruction. With that kind of leadership in the USA, Iran will soon have its bomb. Then what sort of danger will American property holders be in?

End Notes

1. Summarized at http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/07/the-tide-of-war-is-not-receding/ ; and see also http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/24/the-venezuelan-missile-crisis/ ; and http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/01/pandering-to-the-persians/; and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577206943198066220.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop .

2. See http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/04/opinion/oe-halevi4; and  http://www.antiwar.com/ips/luban.php?articleid=14035; and http://www.mideasttruth.com/lat4.html; and see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html for a chronological list of terror attacks against US targets, most of which were perpetrated by Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy terror organization.

3. It is strange that except for a brief article in the Boston Globe, at http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/14/beirut_attack_victims_families_face_new_hurdle/, this incredible drama has been ignored by mainstream media.  A detailed exposition can be found at http://www.iran911case.com/, and several alternative media sources summarize the case and Obama’s intervention: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/02/obama-sides-with-islamic-iran-on-their-1983-bombing-that-killed-241-us-marines.html; and  http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2007/09/iran-guilty-att.html; and http://www.mideasttruth.com/iran.html; and http://www.independentsentinel.com/2012/02/obama-sides-with-iran-against-families-of-dead-marines/; and http://www.worldnewstribune.com/2012/01/31/obama-taking-irans-side-on-damages-from-83-bombing-that-killed-241-marines/, inter alia.

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