Dem candidates need to acknowledge Iran as threat
The near absence of any discussion of foreign policy from the first two sets of Democratic presidential debates reinforced the image of a Democratic Party disengaged from the world, disinterested in America’s global role and antagonistic to the very idea that that role is a crucial one. The Democratic contenders seem to know that their best political bet as far as Democratic primary voters are concerned is to scrupulously check the “See no evil, hear no evil” box when it comes to international affairs, lest they be classified as “neo-cons.” That phrase, of course, is kryptonite-like derisive shorthand for those who happen to think that, for reasons grounded in humanitarianism or protecting our national security or both, the United States should be prepared to oppose state and nonstate actors that menace world peace.
Iran’s recent seizures of oil tankers in international waters, coming as they have around the 25th anniversary of Hezbollah’s bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, has served as an unpleasant but valuable reminder that the menace Iran poses in the Middle East and beyond is real, and not somehow the figment of hawks’ imagination. No one should require reminders on this score: The Syrian regime’s barbaric decimation and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, for instance, has been openly, decisively aided and abetted by Iran.
The Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies estimates that Tehran has for several years provided Damascus with $15 billion in annual support in the form of oil, weapons, the deployment of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to keep Assad’s war criminals propped up and financial credit. This is over and above the $800 million Iran provides to Hezbollah, its proxy, which has successfully not only occupied Lebanon but subsumed it, and which will before very long trigger yet another war that takes civilian lives on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran’s role in the destruction of Syria and its forcible occupation of Lebanon has taken place in plain view. Yet it elicits not so much as a yawn within the left-most sectors of the Democratic Party. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions crowd, for example, so reliably sophomoric and so silent about any country other than You-Know-Who, has given no discernible hoot about either Syria or Iran. One may safely predict that there will be no boycott, no divestment and no sanctions suggested against either regime anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Iran has acquired what Dr. Farhad Rezaei calls “the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the region.” Warns Rezaei: “They are all capable of carrying nuclear weapons,” which Iran will be able to obtain within a few short years, if not sooner, depending on how cocky the mullahs choose to be. This is the missile program to which the Obama administration provided a free pass under an agreement which also released tens of billions of dollars to Tehran to use as it sees fit. One of those uses is its ballistic missile program. The Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace program proclaimed recently that Iran will “continue missile tests … and plan(s) to carry out more than 50 missile tests each year.”
The recent conviction of Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani in New York disclosed that — wonder of wonders — Hezbollah is developing its terrorist capacity in North America just as it has in South America, Europe and the Middle East. Testimony during Kourani’s trial established that while living in the United States, “Kourani served as an operative of Hezbollah in order to help the foreign terrorist organization prepare for potential future attacks against the United States,” as the Department of Justice put it.
The only responsible course is to treat Iran like the significant threat that it is. Democrats should not be ostriches about it. Whatever else may seem to make bipartisanship complicated these days, Iran is one issue that warrants bipartisanship, and sooner rather than later.