The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed agreement with veteran African-American public intellectual, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell, that President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with the Iran caps a long list of foreign policy decisions that show that he is not a defender of vital American interests. In a statement today, ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said that he agreed with Mr. Sowell that President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran could only lead to that reluctant conclusion.
“It is worth quoting Thomas Sowell,” said Klein, “who is correct when he says that:
‘The United States seems at this moment about to break the record for the worst political blunder of all time, with its Obama-administration deal that will make a nuclear Iran virtually inevitable … Israel is the only country even likely to try to destroy those facilities, since Iran has explicitly and repeatedly declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the earth … The choices left after Iran gets nuclear bombs –– and intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond Israel –– may be worse than being red or dead… The Obama administration’s leaking of Israel’s secret agreement with Azerbaijan to allow Israeli warplanes to refuel there, during attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, was a painfully clear sabotage of any Israeli attempt to destroy those Iranian facilities. But the media’s usual practice to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil of the Obama administration buried this news and allowed Obama to continue to pose as Israel’s friend, just as he continued to assure Americans that if they liked their doctor they could keep their doctor … If [President Obama] is … savvy at home, why is he so apparently incompetent abroad? Answering that question may indeed require us to “think the unthinkable,” that we have elected a man for whom America’s best interests are not his top priority.’
“Just so. The ZOA has already published a list of 33 examples of President Obama sympathizing with and empowering, rather than rolling back, radical Islamic movements. Refusing to name the extremist ideology of radical Islam, refusing to ostracize rather than embrace and empower its proponents, refusing to stand by secular Muslim leaders and traditional American allies while empowering the radical Muslim Brotherhood at home and abroad, are symptomatic of the problem posed by President Obama.
“It is noteworthy that former Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, was reported last week as suggesting that ‘President Obama is knowingly making a bad deal, while President Bill Clinton had made a deal with North Korea with the best intentions and the best information he had. The new deal will “wreak havoc” in the Middle East, which is already destabilized due to Iranian actions … [had President Clinton known otherwise] I am absolutely confident he would not have made that decision … [In the case of Iran] the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America’s allies in the region’s intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse –– with the billions of dollars that Iran will have access to.’
“Accordingly, as the New York Times reports, Prince Bandar has ‘accused Mr. Obama of knowingly making a bad agreement.’
“In short, President Obama wasn’t naive, inept or out-negotiated. Tragically and shockingly, this catastrophic Iran deal was the one President Obama wanted, to serve the interests of Islamic Republic of Iran’s over those of America and its allies.
“Also, President Obama has refused to prosecute the war against the Islamic State (IS) with the force at his command, having permitted it to spread across the Middle East while launching only 5,000 air strikes against it in the last year.
“That’s about 13.5 strikes per day –– a far cry from the average of 487 sorties per day dispatched by Bill Clinton against Serbia in 1999, or the 571 per day dispatched by George W. Bush against Iraq in 2004.”
“We add to this the fact that President Obama did not stand by traditional allies like Poland and the Czech Republic, preferring to please Russian dictator Vladimir Putin by denying both allies missile defense; he falsely stigmatized the removal by democratic Honduras of its lawless, constitution-violating (but radical left-wing) president as a ‘military coup’ and slapped sanctions on its fragile economy to force Honduras to accept at least the temporary reinstatement of its ousted president; and he restored relations with communist Cuba without pressuring it into reform and observance of basis human rights – the question posed by Thomas Sowell is a disturbing but relevant one.
“We have here an American president who does not believe in decisively defeating U.S. enemies, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere; who doesn’t stand by our traditional allies, whether or not in the Middle East; and who will not even name the ideology around which those who are attacking the U.S. coalesce, while appointing jihadi apologists to office in the U.S. government.”