Last September, Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi Sunni MP, arrived in Israel to attend an annual counter-terrorism conference. He forcefully cried, “In Israel, there is no occupation; there is liberalism,” to the sound of roaring applause from Israelis and foreign diplomats. Upon his return to Iraq, the National Assembly of Iraq voted to remove his parliamentary immunities and banned him from travelling. He was arrested and threatened with the death penalty. This was not his first visit; in 2004 he made a public visit to Israel. Consequently, five months later, both his sons were murdered. He was sacked from his job at the De-Baathification Commission and was expelled from the Iraqi National Congress.

Al-Alusi recognises that Iraq and Israel share similar challenges, namely the murderous Iranian-funded terrorism that has taken so many lives in both countries. Al-Alusi has lauded Israel as a beacon of hope and liberalism. The Israeli elections on Tuesday were crucially important because it is vital that the future Israeli government seeks to uphold the equality and the civil liberties for all its citizens – Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Druze – that she has attempted to keep implemented since her foundation sixty years ago. She must continue to be the model of a liberal democracy in the despotism-riddled Middle East, despite the very opposite image peddled by the Western Left, the media and the Islamists. It is easy for much of the West to forget that Israel has many Arab politicians, several serving in the cabinet.

The Israeli exit polls show that Kadima, the current ruling party, has won the most seats. But Israel suffers the proportional representation system that is used so widely across Europe; this means that a Kadima politician may not necessarily take the position of Prime Minister. What will happen? And what are the implications for Israel, the region and the world?
Last Tuesday’s election was a year earlier than necessary because the current Prime Minister Olmert resigned after continuous public pressure and police investigations into tales of corruption, and the new leader of Kadima, Tzipi Livni, was unable to form a new coalition.

The Knesset is a unicameral parliament. Its 120 members, known as MKs, are elected to four-year terms in a secret ballot whereat the public will vote for a party and not an individual MK. Seats are allocated in proportion to the number of votes each party receives beyond a threshold of two percent. The 120 seats are apportioned through party-list proportional representation using the d’Hondt method – a widely used system that employs a highest averages method. Once the official results are published, the President of Israel gives the task of forming a majority coalition to an MK whom he believes to have the best chance of succeeding. That MK is then given up to 42 days to negotiate a working coalition with other parties and present his government to the Knesset for a vote of confidence. If the government is approved, the MK then becomes Prime Minister.

The numbers and distribution of Knesset seats in the February elections are as follows: Kadima 28; Likud 27; Yisrael Beitenu 15; Labor 13; Shas 11; United Torah Judaism 5; Hadash 4; United Arab List-Ta’al 4; National Union 4; Meretz 3; Habayit Hayehudi 3; Balad 3.

The politics of Israel is an extraordinary maelstrom of differing ideals, religions and methods. Muslim voters have supported right-wing Zionist parties and religious Jews have voted for Arab parties. In the disorder of the system there is hope and wonderment at the extraordinary examples of different cultures and religions campaigning peacefully and democratically together to sustain hope and achieve peace; a possibility that cannot be found elsewhere in the Middle East.

There are a huge number of different parties that represent all walks of life, but this election showed huge gains for the Right. The Centrist Kadima was a party that sprang out of a squabbling Likud because of disagreement over the disengagement plan from Gaza. Kadima’s win was a surprise to many – especially the pollsters, who had projected Likud to top the results. Kadima’s decision to withdraw from Gaza was highly criticized at the time and now there is little success to show for it – Gaza has become a terrorist state with regular pogroms against its own people and regular attacks against the civilians of Israel. Kadima’s leadership has been weak in times of war, and its dithering in Lebanon is arguably accountable for the deaths of Israeli soldiers. The decision to release Samir Kuntar – a Lebanese terrorist who beat a little blonde four-year-old Jewish girl to death by smashing apart her head with a rock – provoked huge condemnation and dismay from the media and the public. Kadima has been regarded as an ineffectual, weak government – a feeble image that the Israelis have known hostile Arab states to prey upon. Thus Kadima’s decision finally to respond to the constant barrage of rocket fire from Gaza caused some surprise among the government’s detractors. The attempt to destroy Hamas’ weapon caches in December – Operation Cast Lead – may have changed the minds of many Israelis. The operation certainly sapped Likud’s criticism and its accusations of Kadima’s apparent apathy to the vicious attacks by Hamas.

Despite Kadima winning the largest number of seats, it does not have the support from the other large parties and given the current stances of Likud, Yisrael Beitenu and Shas, it is highly unlikely that Tzipi Livni will be able to secure a working coalition. In this case, President Shimon Peres may ask Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud to form a coalition from the Right-wing parties that dominate the election results.
The large gains by the right can be explained by the realisation among Israelis that their doves have been met with rockets and that their concessions have been met with violence. In 2001, the then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians all of Gaza and 97% of the West Bank with border compensations to make up for the other 3%. Furthermore, Jerusalem would be a shared capital for both countries. When the Palestinians shot down this offer, so fell the appeal of the Left. Further failures to respond properly to terrorist attacks resulted in more support manifesting for the Right. The South of Israel, especially around towns such as Sderot, which has endured thousands of rockets and mortar attacks, almost entirely voted for the Right. The residents want military action to end the indiscriminate attacks on their town – rockets are fired when school is starting or finishing and the children are out on the streets. Suliman Qadia – a Palestinian from Gaza from where the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet, helped him escape, said of Hamas: “Nothing else will work, we just need to go into Gaza, full force, and pound them, erase them completely, until it’s over. That’s the only language they understand and believe me – I know what I’m talking about. After all, I lived with them.”

The Northern Arab town Haifa and Tel-Aviv voted for the Left and Centrists; in the South the persistent attacks and a demand for their end necessitated an almost entirely Right-wing stronghold. In other words, the rockets voted.

Obama’s Presidency is also a cause for concern among Israelis. There is a real fear that he would not act to stop a nuclear-armed Iran. In response to an American President perceived as Left-wing, a more hawkish Prime Minister feels like a necessary choice to many Israeli voters.

The reason Likud could not strongly capitalise on the Left’s decline was the belief that Netanyahu’s previous term as Prime Minister in the late nineties was considered by-and-large a failure – he had made similar profitless concessions to the Palestinians that Kadima has made. Netanyahu has also failed to provide a direction for Israel that differs from Kadima’s. Thus, many Israelis that wished to respond to the Palestinian attacks – not to turn the other cheek but to clench their fists – voted for the further-Right parties, such as Shas or Beitenu.

Among the political parties there is a great deal of squabbling. The main issue that divides them so, is of course the path to peace with the Palestinians. There are those that would appease and there are those that would defend themselves at all cost. What is clear however is that Proportional Representation (PR) is disastrous for Israel. This tiny country is at war, and has been so for the last sixty years. It cannot afford to have chaos in the government at a time when order has never been so important. It can be argued that PR does help to unify the country – every party represents all Israelis regardless and so there is no chance of segregation through politics and race. But what of the small Bedouin tribe who needs representation in Knesset and has no MK to do so? Israel needs strength, equality and democracy, and PR does not sustain these values effectively.

One prospect is certain – whoever becomes Prime Minister will have to use a coalition of Right-wing parties. This would suggest – unless the Iranian elections in June provide a reformist candidate that would halt their nuclear programme – that a future Israeli government will take military action against Iran. Hezbollah’s steadily growing supply of rockets in the South of Lebanon and the large-scale Syrian troop movements to the border with Israel, suggests it is possible that a large conflict may break out across the region, a danger exacerbated by Iran’s increased missile capability and promises of retaliation. When Israel’s security is directly threatened, there is little argument among her political parties. Even the far-left parties supported Israel’s recent defensive campaign against Hamas, and in the face of Iran, there is strong unity. Military action is seen as a last resort but recognized as a very possible outcome.

Furthermore, the build-up on the Right would mean that the destruction of the Jewish West Bank settlements would seem unlikely as a means of concession. The idea of displacing almost half a million Jewish settlers is unthinkable to the Right, especially after the ruinous withdrawal from the Gaza Strip that just brought more attacks and death to Southern Israel.

The truth is that Israel’s future has never been so uncertain. There is much speculation as to from whom and from which parties a coalition will be formed. Some American commentators have suggested Lieberman of Yisrael Beitenu will be given the foreign office portfolio, and there are even rumours that Livni and Netanyahu might share the position of Prime Minister. It is impossible to know or understand what bargaining and comprising is going on by the political parties behind the scenes. And in some ways, the choice of government may not matter. In foreign affairs, the actions of Israel can only be dictated by the hostile states surrounding it. Every government must protect its people, and Israel’s actions – while perhaps varying in strength – will be unchanged no matter what current party is in power. In times of war, Israel does not want an attempt at government, but definite ordered rule – an effective government is needed.

The results of the elections have reacted little to domestic affairs but largely to the changing world. Reasons such as Obama’s Presidency, a Turkish government that is arguably no longer secular, the Iranian elections in June, the undeniable attempts by Hamas to destroy Israel and her people, are all reasons for many Israeli voters to have demanded a stronger, more hawkish government. But uncertain times have bred uncertain results – now Israel must bring order out of the chaos if she wishes to succeed and survive.

Iran has shown, with the launch of a satellite, that it now has ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe.

It has responded to Obama’s pathetic plea for its friendship with scorn and derision.

But still the ‘Great Powers’ (a complimentary lie as a description of all of them except the US) will do nothing to stop Iran from arming its proxies or developing nuclear weapons. 

Caroline Glick writes:

On Wednesday emissaries of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany convened in Wiesbaden, Germany, to discuss their joint policies toward Iran in the aftermath of the satellite launch. Some Israelis argued that Iran’s provocation forced these leaders’ hands. Their reputations for toughness were on the line. They would have to do something.

Unfortunately for Israel, the emissaries of Russia, Britain, China, France, Germany and the US are more interested in convincing the mullahs that they are nice than in convincing them that they are tough.

 

Far from deciding to take concerted action against Iran, the great powers did nothing more than wish the Obama administration good luck as it moves to directly engage the mullahs. As their post-conference press release put it, the six governments’ answer to Teheran’s show of force was to "agree to consult on the next steps as the US administration undertakes its [Iranian] policy review."

As President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have explained, the US is reviewing its policy toward Iran in the hopes of finding a way to directly engage the Iranian government. While they claim that the aim of these sought after direct negotiations will be to convince the mullahs to give up their nuclear weapons program, since taking office the new administration has sent out strong signals that preventing Iran from going nuclear has taken a backseat to simply holding negotiations with Teheran.

According to a report in Aviation News, last week the US Navy prevented Israel from seizing an Iranian weapons ship in the Red Sea suspected of carrying illicit munitions bound for either Gaza or Lebanon. A week and a half ago, the US Navy boarded the ship in the Gulf of Aden and carried out a cursory inspection. It demurred from seizing the ship, however, because, as Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained on January 27, the US believed it had no international legal right to seize the vessel.

In inspecting the ship the US was operating under UN Security Council Resolution 1747, which bars Iran from exporting arms. The US argued that it lacked authority to seize the ship because 1747 has no enforcement mechanism. Yet the fact of the matter is that if the US were truly interested in intercepting the ship and preventing the arms from arriving at their destination, the language of 1747 is vague enough to support such a seizure.

And that’s the point. The US was uninterested in seizing the ship because it was uninterested in provoking a confrontation with Teheran, which it seeks to engage. It was not due to lack of legal authority that the US reportedly prevented the Israel Navy from seizing the ship in the Red Sea, but due to the administration’s fervent wish to appease the mullahs.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the excellent trading relations European firms have with genocidal Iran. 

The worst offender among European states is Germany, and the worst offender among German companies is Siemens:

Yet because of the sheer volume of its trade with Iran, Germany, the economic engine of Europe, is uniquely positioned to pressure Tehran. Still, the obvious danger of a nuclear-armed Iran has not stopped Germany from rewarding the country with a roughly €4 billion trade relationship in 2008, thereby remaining Iran’s most important European trade partner. In the period of January to November 2008, German exports to Iran grew by 10.5% over the same period in 2007. That booming trade last year included 39 "dual-use" contracts with Iran, according to Germany’s export-control office. Dual-use equipment and technology can be used for both military and civilian purposes.

One example of Germany’s dysfunctional Iran policy is the energy and engineering giant Siemens. The company acknowledged last week at its annual stockholder meeting in Munich, which I attended, that it conducted €438 million in trade with Iran in 2008, and that its 290 Iran-based employees will remain active in the gas, oil, infrastructure and communications sectors.

Concerned stockholders and representatives from the political organization Stop the Bomb, a broad-based coalition in Germany and Austria seeking to prevent Iran from building a nuclear-weapons program, peppered Siemens CEO Peter Löscher with questions about the corporation’s dealings with the Iranian regime. A Stop the Bomb spokesman questioned Siemens’s willingness to conduct business with a country known for its human- and labor-rights violations, ranging from the violent oppression of women to the murder of gays to the repression of religious and ethnic minority groups. The spokesman referred to Siemens’s Nazi-era history as an employer of forced labor from the Auschwitz extermination camp and asked how, in light of the corporation’s Nazi history, the company could support an "anti-Semitic and terrorist regime" that threatens to wipe Israel off the map.

Mr. Löscher replied to the 9,500 stockholders in Olympic Hall that, "For Siemens, compliance and ethics have the highest priority, including where human-rights issues are involved." Yet, after further questions from the Stop the Bomb spokesman, he acknowledged that Siemens and its joint partner, Nokia, had delivered state-of-the-art communications surveillance technology to Iran last spring. 

 In her column in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick discusses the new US President’s prompt outreach to the Islamic world, as described in our post below, and finds that it portends an ominous change in US policy. Unlike other commentators who indulgently regard Obama’s interview with al-Arabiya as merely naive, she reads it as a distinct signal of that change. ‘We are ready to initiate a new partnership,’ with the Muslim world, he said, and she believes he means it. She points out:

Obama implied that the US may be willing to overlook Teheran’s support for terrorism when he referred to Iran’s "past" support for terrorist organizations. Obama placed a past tense modifier on Iranian sponsorship of terrorism even through just last week a US Navy ship intercepted an Iranian vessel smuggling arms to Hamas in Gaza in the Red Sea. Due to an absence of political authorization to seize the Iranian ship, the US Navy was compelled to permit it to sail on to Syria.

Ahmadinejad has made his preconditions for negotiations with the US explicit. They are: one, that the US must abandon its alliance with Israel; and two, that the US must accept a nuclear armed Iran.

 She writes: 

It is apparent that Obama remains convinced that the US is indeed to blame for the supposed crisis of confidence that the Islamic world suffers from in its dealings with America. By this reasoning, it is for the US, not for Teheran, to show its sincerity, because the US, rather than Teheran, is to blame for the dismal state of relations prevailing between the two countries.  

If in fact Obama truly intends to move ahead with his plan to engage the mullahs, then he will effectively legitimize – if not adopt – Teheran’s preconditions that the US end its alliance with Israel, which Iran seeks to destroy, and accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

In other words, Obama may well be willing to pay the price Iran, the Arabs, and the whole of the Islamic world demand for peace with America. If America pays that price, no more ‘war on terror’;  no more need to protect America from Islamic terrorist attacks, so no more Gitmos, no more wire-taps. No more burning of the American flag by protestors in Muslim lands (including Europe). America – and its President – will be universally loved. And what is that price? Only the abandonment of Israel. A small price to pay for such gains. 

All that America has done for Muslims, listed by Charles Krauthammer (see the post below), weigh nothing against the US’s biggest insult to Islam: its alliance with Israel. That is what Ahmadinejad was referring to when he said in the letter he wrote to Obama on November 6: ‘The expectation is that the unjust actions of the past 60 years will give way to a policy encouraging the full rights of all nations.’ 

What now can Israel rely on to save it from annihilation? Only what it has always had since it’s founding 60 years ago: the strength of its own right arm. If it fails to use it, there is nothing else. 

More news of that intercepted Iranian arms-smuggling ship:

The Iranian ship boarded by a US Navy Coast Guard team on the Red Sea last week before it could smuggle arms to Hamas is now disclosed by DEBKAfile’s military sources to have tried to trick the search team by enclosing its rocket cargo in secret compartments behind layers of steel. Furthermore, our sources reveal, the US has not yet found a harbor in the region for carrying out a thorough search.

The Cypriot-flagged Iranian freighter Nochegorsk was intercepted last week by the new US Combined Task Force 151 in the Bab al-Mandeb Straits. Its presence in the Red Sea was first revealed by DEBKAfile on Jan. 20. For this article click HERE.

The Americans decided not to give the Israeli Navy a chance to seize the vessel and tow it to Eilat for fear of a Tehran ultimatum to Jerusalem, followed by Iranian attacks on Israeli naval craft patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea.

Iran maintains two warships in those waters to guard its shipping against Somali pirates as well as a military presence in the Eritrean port of Assab. The arms smuggling ship was first reported escorted out of the Suez Canal Saturday night, Jan. 23, after which Washington imposed a blackout on the incident. It is now moored at an Egyptian Red Sea port at the entrance to the Gulf of Suez.

But the US and Egyptian governments are in a fix. To break the Iranian ship’s holds open and expose the rockets destined for Hamas, the facilities of a sizeable port are needed. It would have to be Egyptian because the other coastal nations – Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia – are hostile or controlled by pirates. Both the US and Egypt are hesitant about precipitating a full-blown armed confrontation with Iran. The timing is wrong for the new Barack Obama administration, which is set on smoothing relations with Tehran through diplomatic engagement. Cairo has just launched a campaign to limit Tehran’s aggressive drive in the Middle East but does not want a premature clash. [What can this mean? Is a clash intended? If so, when? – JB]

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources disclose that the ship’s captain had orders not to resist an American boarding team but impede a close look at its freight. The Navy Coast Guard searchers first found a large amount of ordnance and explosives in the ship’s hold, which the Iranian captain claimed were necessary for securing Iranian freighters heading from the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. But then, the US searchers using metal detectors perceived welded steel compartments packed with more hardware concealed at the bottom of the hull.

The option of towing it to a Persian Gulf port for an intensive search was rejected because the Gulf emirates hosting US bases were almost certain to shy away from involvement in the affair. Moreover, Tehran would be close enough to mount a naval commando operation to scuttle the ship before it was searched.

Our military sources estimate that eventually the US government may decide to let the Iranian arms ship sail through the Suez Canal out to the Mediterranean for lack of other options.

Is Commander-in-Chief Obama aware that the US navy is intercepting arms shipments from Iran to Hamas? If he is, does it mean that he recognizes Hamas as Iran’s proxy,  wants to thwart the Iranians, and prevent the re-arming of Gaza? If not, will he stop the navy doing this useful task when it comes to his attention? 

US Coast Guard boarding team

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a US Navy Coast Guard team this week boarded an Iranian arms ship flying a Cypriot flag in the Red Sea and found weapons in its hold.

This was the first time an America warship had ever intercepted an Iranian vessel in international water. The incident activated the Memo of Understanding the former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice signed with Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni a week ago on actions to halt the flow of Iranian arms to Hamas as part of the Gaza ceasefire.

The Iranian ship’s captain showed the US boarding team documents recording the Syrian port of Latakia as its cargo’s destination. DEBKAfile reports that both US and Israeli intelligence are certain the arms were bound for Hamas. But according to international law, the US Navy’s Combined Task Force (CTF) 151, set up last week to combat piracy, was not authorized to confiscate the cargo or stop the ship because no enforcement mechanism was yet in place.

After a few hours, therefore, the US force released the Iranian vessel and two warships escorted it out of Red Sea waters. The ship and its escort are due to enter the Suez Canal heading north Saturday night, Jan. 23, after being prevented from unloading its arms freight on the coast of Sinai or Gaza.

Tehran has so far not reacted to the incident.

DEBKAfile revealed last week that the new US task force policing the waters of the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Red Sea, under the command of Rear Adm. Terry McKnight, had been additionally assigned with intercepting Iranian ships smuggling arms for Hamas, often in conjunction with Somali pirates and Sinai Bedouin militias.

Massed on the lead ship San Antonio is a helicopter detachment, a "surgical team" for dealing with small speedboats trying to hem the ship in and 14 Navy VBSS members, including two Navy boarding officers. The Coast Guard detachment is made up of eight members, all of them qualified as boarding officers.

The chair of the United Nations Development Program, UNDP, has been taken over by – – Iran.

Claudia Rosett, who writes often and incisively to expose the evils of the self-disgraced UN, asks in a Forbes article: 

In what universe does Iran’s oil-based tyranny qualify to chair this board?

In the rest of her article, she gives reasons why Iran is not qualified to occupy this powerful position.  But in fact these are the very reasons why Iran ‘qualifies’ for it, in the world as it is today. 

Iran’s ascent to the chairmanship of the UNDP’s 36-member executive board took place last Friday, over the protests of the U.S., which broke with the U.N. custom of consensus decision-making to call for a vote. Iran won, 22 to four, with five abstentions and several board members apparently absent.

In response to my queries about this, a U.S. delegate to the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council, Ambassador T. Vance McMahan, said in an e-mailed statement: "The U.S. called for a vote on the chairmanship of UNDP because we believe that Iran is not a responsible member of the international community, and should not be given a leadership role at a major UN program, even if the position is a largely ceremonial one."

But this is no purely cosmetic post. The UNDP’s own Web site includes an "Information Note," detailing the substantial responsibilities of its executive board, which oversees not only the UNDP, but also the U.N. Population Fund, or UNFPA.

The board is tasked to receive information and give guidance to the heads of these agencies, monitor performance, approve programs, decide on administrative and financial plans and budgets, recommend new initiatives and submit yearly reports to the General Assembly’s Economic and Social Council…

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran’s main entrepreneurial growth industry has been terrorism–witness Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and a bloody trail of bombings, mayhem, infiltration and subversion, from Beirut to Argentina to today’s Iraq.

At home, along with forcibly veiling its women and jailing and torturing its opposition, Iran–according to New York-based Freedom House–"is a world leader in juvenile executions."

Iran’s "development" goals include the avowed desire of its president to wipe Israel off the map and Tehran’s evident plan to develop the nuclear weapons to do it–even if that means violating five U.N. Security Council resolutions to date and seeking ways around U.N. and U.S. sanctions.

Iran takes up the UNDP gavel at a sensitive time, both for a tumultuous world and for the UNDP itself. At its first regular board session next week–while most eyes are on Obama’s inauguration in Washington–the UNDP plans to forge ahead with re-opening its office in North Korea.

That office was shut down in March 2007, as a result of the so-called Cash-for-Kim scandal, which flared up after the U.S. Mission to the U.N. raised persistent questions about UNDP misconduct in Kim Jong Il’s North Korea.

It turned out the UNDP’s Pyongyang office, in violation of its own rules, had been funneling hard cash to Kim Jong Il’s regime, storing counterfeit $100 banknotes in its office safe and, with North Korea then on the UNDP board, was using development funds to buy business class tickets for North Korean officials to attend board meetings in New York.

A report last June from a panel authorized by the UNDP itself finally confirmed–well after the fact–that the UNDP had provided North Korea with scores of dual-use technologies, meaning that equipment shipped in under the U.N. label of "development" could also be turned to military use.

A Senate subcommittee investigation, led by Sens. Norm Coleman and Carl Levin, further discovered, as disclosed in aJanuary 2008 report, that the UNDP in North Korea had transferred funds to North Korean front entities involved in arms and nuclear proliferation networks…

 

The New York Times claims that President Bush turned down an Israeli request for bunker-busting bombs and permission to overfly Iraq so that the Israeli Air Force could disable or destroy Iran’s nuclear-bomb production.

The NYT cannot be trusted to report the truth, but in this instance it’s not easy to see how lying would be in the interests of that traitorous newspaper.

If the report is true, then Bush has imperiled the world. By letting Iran become a nuclear power, he becomes a co-author of the terror and destruction Iran will inflict on Israel and all of us.  

We praise President Bush for eliminating the tyrant Saddam Hussein, for leading America to victory in Iraq, and for keeping Americans safe from more terrorist attacks after 9/11.

But if he is now tolerating Iran’s arming itself with nuclear bombs, he is undoing the good he has done. A nuclear armed Iran is a far greater threat to America than Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden ever were.

President Clinton had a number of opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden and each time made the bad judgment not to do so. If President Bush has really stopped Israel from destroying Iran’s bomb-producing sites,  he has made a worse misjudgment. America will pay dearly for it.

All hope that the US itself will act effectively to stop Iran ends, we believe, with the Bush presidency. It seems to us most unlikely that Obama will do anything but make futile attempts to appease that evil regime.

 From ICJS (Issues of Concern for Justice & Society), Australia, an article by Farid Ghadry, President of the Reform Party of Syria: 

During this Israeli campaign to silence the terror of Hamas, one can discern two voices coming out of the Middle East against or in support of the Gaza operations.

The boisterous voices are those of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah leader, who a few days ago, verbally attacked Egypt’s leadership for not standing by Gazans by opening the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. The attack was unprecedented in scope and intensity because it just fell short of asking Egyptians to overthrow the rule of Mubarak. It did, however, heighten anger amongst the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt enough to incite them to rise against their own government.

Other noises come from Damascus and Iran, where the "resistance" has its center of gravity. Both Assad and Ahmadinejad know that a Hamas defeat is their defeat. Those two have incited the Arab street in a show of force and complicity with extremism. And while many believe the fate of Hamas parallels the fate of Hizbullah, reality is that short of a total defeat of Hamas, not to exclude regime change, Palestinians and Israelis will continue to suffer the consequences of an election that brought them more misery than they imagined on that fateful day: January 23, 2006.

On the other side, the majority of voices approving of the Israeli campaign are those who have remained quiet or convoluted in their objections. Many Arab leaders, intellectuals, businesspeople, and even commoners from Iraq to Lebanon, from Egypt to Morocco, from Bahrain to Yemen, believe that Hamas represents deformity of an Arab civilization, one that is in dire need of an overhaul by existing homegrown leadership in Palestine, Syria and Iran capable of that solemn responsibility.

Many ask why fellow Arabs would support the destruction of Hamas and Hizbullah. The answer is simple. Both organizations, in addition to the rule in Damascus and Iran, represent everything that is wrong in the Middle East today: Morally weak organizations or states seeking revenge, extolling resistance, and abetting violence against those who have surpassed us in knowledge and technology.

Hamas, Hizbullah must be destroyed … and the regimes in Damascus and Tehran must be changed for all Arabs and Farsi people to survive and prosper …

We Arabs must be the ones to stop Hamas and Hizbullah, rather than support their demonic and twisted logic of resisting development, enlightenment, and progress of the region. Even when development and enlightenment stare them in the face, their instinct is to destroy them pretending to safeguard their honor, the mechanics of which supersede all else including a happy life of fulfillment and accomplishments.

So while we abhor violence of all kind, Israel’s campaign against Hamas must continue to the bitter end not only for the sake of peace but also to help Arabs realize they have a choice: Destroy like Gaza or develop like Dubai. Will this happen soon? Maybe not, but if a wake-up call and a nudge, once in a while, to pierce through the fog of deceit perpetrated by Syria and Iran is what it takes to see the light, then we stand by the West and Israel in the only hope that an Arab Renaissance in the Levant may actually have a chance of resurrection.

 Victor Davis Hanson wrote in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily:

Once upon a time, Obama and his fans asserted that Iran was a hyped-up threat, that we could go openly into Pakistan if need be to beat al-Qaida, that the surge wouldn’t work, that the Patriot Act and the Guantanamo Bay prison have torn asunder the Constitution, that we have alienated our European allies, that defeating terrorists is more a matter for criminal justice than military force, and that pushing democracy on traditional Islamic societies is culturally chauvinistic and naive.

But like his predecessors, the Obama administration will quickly learn that present U.S. foreign policy is mostly a result of reasonable decisions taken amid bad and worse choices. Therefore, don’t be surprised if a President Obama continues much of what we are now doing — albeit with a kinder, gentler rhetoric of "multilateralism" and "U.N. accords."

Obama has not assumed office yet, and already Iran has mocked the president-elect’s campaign suggestions for unconditional diplomacy. Already, old-new Defense Secretary Robert Gates has indicated a desire to stabilize Iraq before withdrawing forces.

Already, commanders have told the president-elect that a simple surge of more troops into Afghanistan offers no magical solution. Already, we are learning that whether we try more aid or ultimatums, Pakistan will remain Pakistan — a radical Islamic, nuclear failed state that is deeply anti-American rather than merely anti-George Bush.

As Inauguration Day approaches and campaign rhetoric ends and governance begins, words begin to have consequences. Truth is, there are not many alternatives to the present strategy against Islamic terrorism.

Obama doesn’t want a terrorist attack after seven years of quiet — certainly not of the sort that occurred in Mumbai last month. He may tinker with, but not end, Homeland Security measures. He may better articulate the complexities of a tribal Middle East, but he won’t stop American efforts to foster democracy there.

A President Obama may show more anguish over the necessary use of violence, but I suspect he won’t cede a military victory to terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. He will talk up the Atlantic Alliance, but likely complain in private that the U.S. inordinately does the heavy lifting in NATO. And if terrorists dared again to kill hundreds of Americans here at home, our new president would probably take military action.

Most conservatives and moderates expected that candidate Obama’s grand campaign talk of novel choices abroad would end with President Obama’s realist admission of very few new options.

His problem is instead his left-wing base, which for some reason believed Obama’s electioneering bombast that he could magically make the world anew — and so now apparently should do just that or else!

We think this is a fair prediction. But it implies that Obama himself will make decisions. We doubt that he will. We doubt that he can. A man who voted neither yes nor no most of his time as a Senator is not likely to become suddenly decisive. He will float above the hurly-burly of decision-making for as long as he can. Eventually, however much it will pain him, he’ll have to take responsibility for the decisions made for him by others – such as Rahm Emanuel (if he survives the Blackguardovich scandals), and, in foreign affairs, the Clintons.