|
Trending Topics
|
The Iranian Regime Really Means Those Slogans: Death to America and Death to Israel
(Fathom-BICOM-UK) Interview with Elliott Abrams - I share what I would call the Israeli and Emirati view that actually it would be helpful to do another round, another week of attacks on Iran to soften up their position. The argument that now there is a more radical regime in Tehran seems to me unpersuasive. Recall that in January, the old regime under the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed 30,000 unarmed citizens in the streets of their major cities in cold blood. So that's a pretty radical regime. They were bloodthirsty extremists. I don't think the president has definitively stopped Iran from trying to build a nuclear arsenal, from trying to rebuild its missile program. They're going to keep on trying to do that. The nature of the regime is that it is aggressive, that it really means those slogans: death to America and death to Israel. They care about the great cause, which is essentially a religious one and has Israel very much in its sights. Bad things can be pushed off a year or five years, but there is no solution except the end of the regime. If the U.S. and Israel are willing to act to prevent a quick rebuilding of Iran's nuclear and missile programs, and if the Iranians are not rewarded with the lifting of the U.S. sanctions and an unfreezing of tens of billions of dollars, then they will come out of this war with a less legitimate government, a much tougher economic situation, and a much weaker military establishment. And those are real achievements. Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, served as White House deputy national security advisor, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East.