Dear Friend,
This has been a very challenging summer. On July 14, Secretary of State John Kerry called President Obama, figuratively waving his 159 page document, Neville Chamberlain-like, triumphantly boasting, "We have a deal."
The President, reflexively, vowed to "veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of the deal," and promptly rushed to the United Nations Security Council to have the deal enshrined in international law. He did this before the members of the Senate and the House had access to the treaty to review. (Of course, we have argued all along that if anything meets the definition of a treaty, this deal does. And that is precisely what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they required 2/3 of the Senate to ratify a treaty, not the hollowed out Corker-Cardin legislation that reversed the constitutional intent, and needed 2/3 of the Senate to over-ride the promised presidential veto).
EMET immediately began to study the deal, and found that it fell far short of the original goals that the White House had set out for itself before embarking on the negotiations. Rather than President Obama's repeatedly stated goal of ridding Iran entirely of nuclear weapons, it gives Iran international permission to develop a nuclear weapon in just 10 to 15 years. (What is 10 to 15 years in the lifetime of a nation? It is a mere blink of an eye.) Rather than reward Iran with money ONLY for good behavior, the deal immediately awards anywhere from 56 to 150 billion dollars in unfrozen assets, and then more money through sanctions relief. Furthermore, as companies throughout Europe immediately line up to fly into Tehran, eager to do business with the oil-saturated nation, the notion of "snap back sanctions" becomes increasingly risible. Rather than require "anywhere/anytime" inspections, the deal specifies that the IAEA has to go through a committee, on which Iran, Russia, and China all sit, and is given at least 24 days before an inspection, which, according to Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the IAEA, is ample time to scrub any site of traces of nuclear activity. Any site that the Iranians claim as a "military site" is "off limits to inspections," including the notorious Parchin site where they were working on their weaponization system. That is the site that the Iranians will be allowed to self-inspect.
And then there are the annexes, including one which delists sanctions, after 5 years, from the notorious head of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, who is responsible for the radical Shiite take-over of Iraq, orchestrated the brutal civil war to keep Bashir Assad in power in Syria, and, according to General Martin Dempsey, is personally responsible for the thousands of injuries and deaths of American servicemen in Iraq. (By the way--Soleimani has already flown to Moscow to discuss Syria and the S-300 missile defensive systems. How does this early violation of the deal, even before the House and Senate voted on it, portend for future Iranian adherence to it?)
And of course, there is Annex III, subsection 10, which binds the EU/EU plus 3 parties, (Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the United States) to "co-operation through training and workshops to strengthen Iran's ability to protect against, and respond to nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems." Translation: elegant solutions, not involving any military activity, such as cyber-sabotage, is not only something the United States will not be allowed to engage in, but is also something that the United States and the other signatories of the agreement will have to actively help protect the Iranians from. (How, by the way, might that compromise our sources and methods?)
And the deal gives Iran permission to develop conventional and nonconventional weapons systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles. Note to the President: Iran does not need intercontinental ballistic missiles to go to Tel-Aviv, but they do need them to reach New York or DC. Yet we could not negotiate for the release of our four American hostages because the deal was purported to have been limited to Iran's nuclear program.
Unlike other think tanks, EMET does not just sit and analyze things for other policy wonks to review and critique. This year, we have had 195 meetings on Capitol Hill, discussing Iran, Iraq, Yemen, anti-Semitism on college campuses, and more. Since the Iran deal was brokered on July 14th, we have had 42 meetings just on that. Since July 14th, the bulk of our meetings have been devoted to educating, primarily Democratic staffers, on Capitol Hill about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. Many of these staffers told us that they never had heard such in depth analysis, which touched upon points that they had been previously unaware of.
We have been asked to write
briefing papers for many staffers and outside experts, on
Iran,
ISIS,
Yemen etc., including a paper summarizing the current chaos in the Middle East that will be offered to all of the presidential candidates.
Just last week, we had a major
Press Conference on the Capitol Lawn in Opposition to the Iran Deal. This event featured some other groups and experts, including: Michael Pregent, Executive Director of Veterans Against the Deal; Sgt. Robert Bartlett (ret.), who was severely wounded while serving in Iraq by an Iranian-made IED, and who had been pronounced dead three times; Brian Mast, a US military bomb disposal expert who lost both of his legs while serving in Afghanistan to Iranian funded terrorism; Ken Stethem, a Navy Seal (ret.), whose brother had been tortured and killed by Hezbollah terrorists, when they hijacked an airplane in 1985; Gold Star mother Saundra Flanagan, whose son, Kevin Rux had been killed by Islamic terrorists while on the USS Cole; Manda Ervin, founder and president of the Alliance of Iranian Women, who had witnessed first-hand the brutal tactics of the Iranian theocracy; and Jeff Ballabon, Chairman of the Iron Dome Alliance, who has represented many of the America families of terror victims, many of whom were injured by organizations funded by Iran.
We have spoken at rallies in Washington DC and around the country, and on various television and radio shows, and written and published many articles that have appeared in The Hill, The Daily Caller, Israel HaYom, The World Tribune, Breitbart, Front Page Magazine, American Thinker, Wonk Report, and Real Clear Defense.
President Obama, of course, has played fast and loose with the rules, and the US Constitution, and has used partisan appeals to stack the cards against opponents of his deal with Iran, all along. However, as EMET Advisory Board member Caroline Glick has written, "Sometimes you have to fight battles you cannot win, because fighting - regardless of the outcome - advances a larger cause."
This has been one of those times. EMET- which means truth in Hebrew - has as its core mission statement the telling of the truth about the Middle East, and about how Israel, as the sole democracy in that increasingly volatile and rapidly imploding region of the world, is America's greatest national security asset in that region. And that, irrespective of how the gentleman who occupies the Oval Office right now might think, in the eyes of the radical Islamist, America and Israel are wedded at the hip. Israel has always been the canary on the coal mine, and anything that threatens what the Iranian mullahs regard as "The Minor Satan," Israel, will eventually threaten what they regard as "The Great Satan," America.
5775 has been an extremely challenging year for Israel and the Jewish people. Please invest in EMET to continue to tell the EMET- the truth - about the moral clarity of Israel and its role in the Middle East, and about how radical Islam is a threat to both Israel AND the United States.
As Sir Winston Churchill once said, "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last." President Obama does not understand this fact. But the Iranian crocodile will still eventually eat the US, regardless of how much our President appeases it.
Hopefully, with your help, 5776 will be a much safer year for the United States, for Israel and for the Jewish people.
I thank you, and your children and grandchildren will someday thank you.
Warmest Wishes for a Shana Tova,
Sarah Stern
EMET Founder and President
If you prefer to donate by check, please mail it to:
EMET
PO BOX 66366
Washington, DC
20035
