Israel Hayom..
04 May '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/05/04/the-sleeping-iranian-beast/
1.
On May 28, 1987, a Cessna 172 plane landed in the heart of Moscow, in Red Square. The aircraft was piloted by West German amateur aviator Mathias Rust, who managed to breach the air defenses around the Soviet capital and embarrass the Soviet leadership. His smooth landing in the middle of such a sensitive area exposed the Soviet empire's impotence, making it look ridiculous in the eyes of its allies and its citizens. Above all, it lifted the curtain to reveal the lies behind the Kremlin's longtime propaganda.
The blow to the leadership's prestige was devastating. It prompted then-President Mikhail Gorbachev to replace his security team and unwittingly expedite the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It is safe to assume that Monday's unprecedented unveiling of Iranian nuclear documents, obtained by Israel's Mossad agency in a daring operation in Tehran, had the same effect on Iran. It exposed the leadership's weakness both to Iran's own citizens and to the world. Every mullah in the Iranian regime is now both a suspect and suspicious of others. The Arab world is laughing at Iran's bravado. The country's economic and social chaos is now compounded by this severe blow to the respect once commanded by the ayatollahs' regime.
The thought that now hounds them is this: If Israel managed to transport half a ton of confidential materials from the heart of the Iranian capital to Israel, what would it be able to do in a state of active war?
The unveiling was also intended to demonstrate to the Arab countries that fear Iran that Israel is strong and they should consider what that means for their own security. This knowledge will encourage them to seek closer relationships with Israel without having to pay a price in the form of abandoning parts of the homeland.
2.
Unfortunately, the revelation, which could have been a strong psychological warfare move, was dampened by Israel's own commentators and journalists. They rushed to downplay the value of the seized materials and essentially aligned themselves with Iran's propaganda. They dismissed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's contribution to the operation, even though he had ordered it and assumed sole responsibility for its success or failure.
"There is no smoking gun," the commentators declared triumphantly upon studying the seized documents. They were promptly quoted by the Iranian and Hezbollah media channels, as well as by Hamas and other scourges, to prove that "nothing happened." They can always count on the Israeli media and its pathological hatred of Netanyahu to sacrifice Israel's security on the altar of this hate. As in the fable in which the scorpion stings the frog and dooms them both, it is simply their nature. They can't help it.
3.
The "no smoking gun" comments come from those who backed the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers and criticized Netanyahu for confronting the U.S. about it. Those same people backed the 1993 Oslo Accords and criticized anyone who questioned their wisdom. They also supported the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and attacked anyone who (accurately) predicted that Palestinian terrorist organizations would take southern Israel hostage after the Israeli pullout. Those same people are now vehemently defending the judicial dictatorship wielded by the Supreme Court and resisting a bill that would allow the Knesset to legislate laws without the court's interference. These things are inexorably linked.
In any case, when do we look for a smoking gun? When we don't want to see the difficult reality. The truth is that there is no need for a smoking gun. The main thing that was revealed was the lie that Iran used to con the West. This lie is not a smoking gun, it is a roaring cannon.
Former Obama administration officials and their mouthpieces in the liberal media noted that there was "nothing new" in the materials Israel seized. They knew that the Iranians were lying.
Well, that's even worse. It means that the Obama administration knowingly deceived Congress and the American public. They claimed that the agreement was a good deal that would prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, knowing all along that this was a lie. It turns out that they wanted to serve out their terms quietly and achieve "peace for our time" as Neville Chamberlin once said.
"Peace for our time" is the same as "Peace Now" – it forces us to assume that in the current reality, there is only so much that can be done to appease the monster. Ten years of calm, that's all we can hope for. Then we'll see. In the meantime, the Iranians are free to develop their long-range missile program and work on advancing their centrifuges to higher levels than ever before, so that when the decade is up, they will be more than ready to make a bomb. Where will former President Barack Obama, who negotiated the deal, be in 10 years? He'll be lecturing at The New York Times offices with a Nobel Peace Prize medal around his neck.
4.
A sleeping beast hides in the depths of the nuclear agreement. No one wants to awaken the beast. Generally speaking, however, it poses a threat only to the Jews, so it's not a big deal.
In Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete hid the Minotaur, a ferocious half-man half-beast, in a labyrinth and forced the Athenians to send seven boys and seven girls regularly for the Minotaur to devour. "There's no choice," the commentators of that era must have said. "This is the best deal we can get. Peace for our time. So what if we have to sacrifice a few lives every so often." That is, until Theseus came along and, with the help of Ariadne's ball of thread, outsmarted the labyrinth and killed the Minotaur.
It is not just Iran and the nuclear deal that are under scrutiny. At the time that the deal was reached, we all believed that the shrewd Iranians had outfoxed the rookies in the West and got what they wanted from them.
Today, after the unveiling of the seized materials, the dynamic is revealed as much more dire. The culprits appear to be the architects of the agreement – the American administration and the European leadership at the time and the liberal elites whose worldview is represented in the deal.
The issue raises some serious questions about the security of the world as well as the existence of a tiny country in the Middle East. And here of all places, faced with the really important questions, Western leaders are floundering. They callously dismiss the facts being held up to their faces and opt instead for fantasies of world peace. Then they use these illusions to build agreements that are supposed to prevent war. The 2015 nuclear agreement is a clear example of those elites' irresponsible perception – a product of self-persuasion – that in front of them is not in fact a labyrinth housing a monster that requires human sacrifices, but rather a normal country that makes rational decisions. The shame and the imminent war have now been joined by deception.
5.
There is no need for a smoking gun. Iran would have to be very foolish to violate the nuclear agreement. What became clear this week is that the entire foundation of the agreement is compromised. It was built on illusion and deception, be it the Iranians deceiving the West or the Obama administration deceiving the American public or the European leadership deceiving the Europeans. We should not be looking for an Iranian violation of the deal, we should be looking at how Iran managed to secure a legitimate path to obtaining a nuclear weapon without having to violate any deal.
During the Cold War, philosopher Jean-Francois Revel wrote about the clash between the Soviet Union and the West as if it were a soccer game. One of the teams, the West, imposed restrictions on itself and refrained from crossing the half-court line, while the other team, the Soviet Union, allowed itself the freedom to play in the opponent's side of the field. Revel contended that the Soviet expansion strategy would not have been as successful as it was if the West had not had such a clear tendency to yield to it.
Western capitulation was the product of a sophisticated mechanism that can be described as a "guilt industry" – the West's one-sided view of bearing exclusive historical guilt toward the third world. As a result, any attempt to resist the Communist expansion and aggression triggered the guilt among Western intellectuals, paralyzing them. Today, it seems, not much has changed.
It is very possible, however, that despite the massive unveiling, not all of Iran's secrets have been exposed. Perhaps there are still more surprises to come.
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog
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