|
Trending Topics
|
Europe Must Join the Fight Against the Iranian Regime
(Newsweek) Daniel Schwammenthal - Ayatollah Khamenei is the "supreme leader" of a clerical regime whose repeated genocidal threats against Israel are backed up with an advanced nuclear program and a four-decade-long military and terrorist campaign against the Jewish state. Europe has a historical and strategic duty to back U.S. diplomatic efforts at the UN to prevent Tehran from buying advanced weapons from Russia and China. The Islamic Republic and its proxies have already caused untold deaths and destruction throughout Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Israel. Imagine the threat Iran would pose if it could add state-of-the-art conventional weapons to its considerable ballistic missile arsenal, unconventional warfare capabilities and nuclear program. A militarily upgraded Iran would be a strategic game-changer smack in Europe's southern neighborhood. European leaders ought to be clearly on the U.S. side on this issue. They should play hardball with Moscow and Beijing and announce diplomatic, if not economic, consequences if the two countries block a new Security Council resolution to extend the arms embargo. Would Europe really stand with Moscow, Beijing and Tehran against Washington and use its diplomatic power not to stop, but to ensure, that a radical, anti-Western regime can rearm? The writer is director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute in Brussels.