On Jan. 5, an emergency session of the United Nations was held to castigate Israel for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to the Temple Mount. The session was requested by China and the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, the latter of which has always regarded itself as the "special custodian" of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

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The session was preceded by hostile rhetoric from the international community. PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Israel of "turning the Al-Aqsa Mosque into a Jewish Temple" and called upon Palestinians to "confront the raids on the Harim al-Sharif" – the Muslim name for the Mount.

Jordan's King Abdullah immediately traveled to the UAE to consult with President Mohamad Bin Zayed al-Nyan and warned Israel "not to cross red lines."

In the Jordanian parliament, MP Khalil Attiyah stated, "Let us remind you, you coward, you pig, that Jordan's border with Palestine is more than 300 kilometers long. It is a time bomb that will explode in your face and in the faces of people like you, you cowards."

MP Muhammad al-Shatnawi declared, "This is a red line. We will sacrifice our souls for Jerusalem and the holy places. We will give it all we have. We are prepared to be martyrs, and the first ones to use sticks, bombs, and guns against this plundering entity."

What does international law actually say?

According to Article 9 of the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, which addresses "Places of Historical and Religious Significance and Interfaith Relations," there should be equal access to all holy places:

1. Each Party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance. 2. In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines. 3. The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.

So, why all the hysteria? One reason is Israel's long history of treating both Jordan and the Palestinians with "kid gloves." For example, when the Six-Day War broke out in June of 1967, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent a message to King Hussein of Jordan: "Cease firing and we won't attack."

The Jordanian monarch, however, was convinced that the false radio reports he had been hearing from Cairo, which claimed Egypt was decimating the Israelis, were true. So, he ignored Israel's messages. When Israel found the Temple Mount in its hands, the Israeli flag flew over the site for a few minutes. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan saw it through his binoculars and exclaimed, "Do you want to set the Middle East on fire?" The flag was quickly lowered and the keys to the holy sites given to the Jordanian Waqf.

This has remained the status quo ever since. Israelis have long debated whether or not Israel should have allowed Jordan to maintain control over the Mount. But the fact remains that only in the Jewish state, where freedom of worship is granted to all religious minorities, have Jews been barred from their holiest site.

Yet time has a way of cementing a status quo. The claim that Jews are taking over or wish to take over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild the Temple in its place dates back to pre-state Palestine. In 1928, during a Yom Kippur service, a small group of Jews placed chairs and a small barrier to separate men from women near the Western Wall. The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini promptly concocted the lie of a Jewish conquest of Al-Aqsa. The result was riots that took the lives of 133 Jews.

This deadly libel has been circulated sporadically for almost a century now, and is taken out and dusted off whenever both the Palestinians and the Jordanians feel it is important to stir up their people against Israel.

Such was the case on Sept. 23, 1996, when a tunnel was chiseled out of ancient rock on the periphery of the Temple Mount-Western Wall complex. The tunnel opened in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City next to a Franciscan Monastery.

Despite being told the exact location of the tunnel, the then-Mufti of Jerusalem Ekrima Said Sabir immediately telephoned Yasser Arafat and said, "The Jews are digging under the Temple," causing an immediate riot. Palestinians set a car and an ambulance on fire and hurled stones from the Temple Mount on to Jews praying at the Western Wall.

King Abdullah of Jordan has played a rather specious and duplicitous role in this constant exploitation of the Mount for political purposes.

Jordan is one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid. During fiscal year 2023, the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act (2023) will provide Jordan "not less than" $1.65 billion in US taxpayer dollars.

Yet the Jordanians have refused repeated American requests from several members of Congress – which my organization, EMET, has supported for years – to extradite Ahlam Tamimi. Tamimi is a notorious terrorist who masterminded the horrific Sbarro pizzeria bombing in 2001. Fifteen innocent civilians, including two Americans – Malki Roth, 15, and Judith Greenblum, 31 and pregnant at the time – were murdered. While Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the United States on March 28, 1995, they now claim they never did and consistently reject the idea of permitting Tamimi to face justice.

Although there is no official census data on the subject, it is usually estimated that up to 75% of Jordan's population is Palestinian. Abdullah understands just how fragile his hold on power is and he appeals to hostile Palestinian sentiments towards Israel in order to ensure his own survival. He does so instead of educating his population towards peace and tolerance, as should have been the case since the signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty in 1994. Abdullah may simply want to save his own skin, but fanning the flames of anti-Israel hate is no way to ensure long-term peace and stability in the region.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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Growing up in the heady days after World War II, after the military defeat of the Nazis and the Japanese, Pax Americana reigned supreme throughout the globe. It looked to many of us that there was an inevitable march of history away from totalitarianism and toward what was moral and what was right; that the liberal world order, with America at both the military and economic helm, would forever reign supreme.

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Our spirits were further buoyed in 1991, at the fall of the Berlin wall. This seemed to confirm that it was simply a historic inevitability and rational for nations to embrace Western democracy. Our Western liberal cannon of philosophers, such as Emmanuel Kant in his Metaphysics of Morals, had argued that every individual man has an innate right to freedom and that there ought to be a social contract to ensure the universal rights of man.

All of this seemed to be playing out in realtime, and we felt fortunate to be living through this epoch.

However, humankind is not always as rational as we would like it to be. Baser instincts have recently emerged on the world's stage, such as the need to grab and hold onto power, hegemonic dreams of a nation's pride, once glorious, resurrected. Let alone the restoration of the fragile egos of certain leaders, such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and Ali Khamenei.

Their resentment over the dominant role of the US has been boiling over, and a number of factors have led them to the dangerous conclusion that America no longer has the will to fight to defend our own interests, or those of beleaguered people around the globe. We might have the capability. However, we have been sending pernicious signals that we are no longer willing to use that capability.

And our enemies have taken note. The first was the clear and direct warning by President Barck Obama on August 20, 2012, to Syrian President Bashar Assad that if we detect "chemical weapons being moved around or utilized" against the Syrian opposition, "that would present a red line." One year and one day later, on August 21, 2013, the world witnessed the horrific chemical attack that Assad inflicted on the people of Ghouta, with images flashed upon our screens of children writhing and trembling in pain. President Obama at first made an impassioned speech for action, took the pulse of the country and then punted the responsibility for Syria's handling of chemical weapons to Russia.

This came as a welcome gift to former KGB agent and current Russian leader Putin, who has been itching to resurrect the Cold War and to play a dominant role on the world's stage.

Beginning in 2015, the Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthis began waging numerous attacks against Saudi Arabia. Included among these multiple attacks was the attack on March 25, 2022, against Saudi Aramco in Jeddah, as well as numerous civilian cities. Considerable financial investment and American interest in Saudi Aramco extends as far back as 1945, when the US had its first love affair with automobiles and realized we needed a ready support of cheap oil to fuel them.

The response was a strong statement and much finger-waving by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. And not much else. Emboldened by the lack of a clear, resolute response, on January 24, 2022, the Houthis launched an attack on the Al Dhafra Air Base, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Approximately 2,000 US airmen and military personnel are stationed there. The attack was successfully thwarted by the Patriot Missile System, yet the intention of the Iranian-backed rebels remains clear.

In the meantime, Russia successfully invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. The lack of a resolute response simply whetted Putin's appetite for the brutal war he has launched upon Ukraine on February 24, 2022, wrecking boundless devastation and loss of life, what has been estimated as 40,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties by General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the meantime, according to Tuesday's New York Times, North Korea launched more than 90 missiles in 2022 and is celebrating the New Year by launching two more ballistic missile tests.

But nowhere is American resolve being tested greater than in Iran, where thousands of courageous dissidents have risked everything, including their very lives to overthrow their tyrannical regime. We have now passed the 100-day mark, with approximately 18,000 valiant protestors incarcerated, 500 people killed on the streets, including 58 children (that we know of), two people executed by hanging, and approximately a hundred more sentenced to death in Iranian show-trials that typically last no more than two minutes.

This is not simply about whether or not women must wear the hijab. These people are hungering to overthrow their suffocating tyrannical regime – for the basic freedoms that every American cherishes.

US military and intelligence experts recently confirmed that Iran has been providing Russia with drones to execute its brutal war against Ukraine, and that there is an increasing strengthening of the alliance between Iran and Russia.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in January of 1939, before Hitler invaded Poland, "There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which…their very civilizations are founded."

We have reached such a time. We must ask where America is, and in the current mindset of the Biden administration, whether we have been so morally damaged by our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that there is anything at all worth defending and worth fighting for. Is the once incandescent star of American morality in the throes of its final descent?

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Less than five minutes. That is the amount of broadcast time that NBC News with Lester Holt has devoted to the protests rocking the streets of Iran since the Sept. 16 murder of Mahsa Amini by the "morality police" because a few strands of hair were showing beneath her hijab.

This lack of coverage is nothing short of outrageous.

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87 million Americans watch NBC News in order to remain informed citizens. The network's silence is doing a tremendous disservice to those who have been tortured, raped, shot and hung by the deeply evil Iranian regime.

They are also doing a tremendous disservice to Israel and our Gulf allies, which with each passing day face ever-increasing peril as the Iranian regime moves closer and closer to nuclear breakout.

The mostly young Iranian protesters do not want to moderate the regime or the hijab laws. They have had enough and want the regime overthrown. They want a revolution, a revolution that could save us from the horror of a nuclear-armed theocratic tyranny.

These courageous protesters have galvanized the entire nation of Iran. The protests have spread to every province, rocking 100 cities. According to human rights groups, over 500 protestors have lost their lives, including approximately 58 children aged 16 and below. 18,000 people have been arrested.

The protesters know they put themselves in mortal peril. They may be shot in the street or thrown from a building. They may also be taken to the notorious Evin prison, where they will be horrifically abused and perhaps even sentenced to hang.

Just this past Monday, 23-year-old Majid Reza Rahnavard was the second protester to be hanged from a crane. His crime? According to the holy, sacrosanct Iranian judiciary, it was waging war against God. Just four days prior, 22-year-old Mohsen Shekari was hanged near Tehran for the same supposed crime. As I write this, the Iranian soccer player Amir Nasr-Azadani, 26, has been sentenced to death.

If the Iranian regime thinks such violence will silence the voices of the revolutionaries, they have another thing coming. It has only further galvanized the protest movement.

Indeed, this might be the beginning of the end of one of the most immoral regimes on the face of the earth. One which, according to The Wall Street Journal, knowingly provided approximately 300 drones to Russia in order to further Russia's brutal assault on Ukraine's military and civilian infrastructure.

Even though the American public is mostly oblivious to all this, Iranian regime leaders are profoundly worried about their futures. They are now seriously considering fleeing to Venezuela when their regime falls.

Beyond the deeply compelling human rights issues raised by the protests, there is also an extremely important geostrategic aspect to them, because a new alliance has emerged between Iran, Russia, China and North Korea – a new "Axis of Evil."

A Wall Street Journal report published on Dec. 9 explained the deepening ties between Russia and Iran. Spokesman for the National Security Council John Kirby stated, "Russia is offering Iran an unprecedented level of military and technical support that is transforming their relationship to a full-fledged defense partnership." Just last year, Iran signed a 25-year $300-400 billion agreement with China. Iran has also maintained a strong partnership with North Korea, from which Iran obtained much of the scientific knowledge used to produce its arsenal of ballistic missiles.

It is perplexing that a news story with this sort of compelling humanitarian interest, combined with a profound impact on America's national security interests, is simply being buried by a major news network like NBC.

The American people are basically good. If they knew the situation, they would likely support helping the Iranian people overthrow their horrific regime. As Socrates said, "If you know the good, you will follow it."

Of course, the mass judicial murder of idealistic young people fighting a tyrannical regime cannot be more important than the major stories recently aired by NBC: The snowstorms in the American West, the latest self-promotional documentary produced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and holiday shopping tips.

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Last Tuesday, Israel's interim government agreed to a deal with the government of Lebanon involving the offshore Karish gas field. Lebanon claimed that part of Karish was in its territorial waters and staked out a maximalist position on its right to the proceeds from exploiting the field. In the talks leading up to the agreement, the Lebanese government – controlled by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah – used a complex strategy that combined Hezbollah threats with diplomatic obstinacy.

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Israel has now conceded to the Lebanese demands. It is impossible not to conclude that the threats from Hezbollah, which has 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel, did not factor into this equation.

Hezbollah threatened to attack a ship and oil rig operated by French company Energean if the company began extracting gas from the Karish field before Lebanon's maximalist demands were met. The Biden administration, whose record has been littered with abject failures since its feckless withdrawal from Afghanistan, seized upon the negotiations in hopes of a much-needed foreign policy success.

President Joe Biden called the Israel-Lebanon agreement "a historic breakthrough" that "will provide for the development of energy fields for the benefit of both countries, setting the stage for a more stable and prosperous region, and harnessing vital new energy resources for the world. It is now critical that all parties uphold their commitments and work towards implementation."

A White House spokesperson added, "This agreement is not a win-lose agreement. The parties are not getting more than the other, because they get different things. The win for Israel is around security, stability and economic gain. The win for Lebanon is economic prosperity, economic development, foreign direct investment and hope for an economic recovery."

Of course, one must empathize with the immensity of Lebanon's current economic crisis. The Lebanese pound has lost 95% of its value and, according to the United Nations, 80% of the population is living below the poverty line. The World Bank has stated that "because of a combination of corruption, poor economic policies and unsustainable financial policies [the Lebanese economic crisis] is one of the worst globally since the mid-19th century."

Yet one has to wonder how much of the profits from the agreement will end up in the hands of the impoverished Lebanese people, and how much will go to lining the pockets of Hezbollah.

In terms of Israel's "security, stability and economic gain," it is an open question how long Israel's security and stability will remain. With Israeli elections coming in a few short weeks, the current caretaker government needed a foreign policy "win" as much as the Biden administration. No doubt, then, the agreement will be popular among members of the government and their parties. But to find ominous signs of what the repercussions of the agreement may be, one need look no further than Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's boast, "Now is not the time for threats. Now is the time for celebration and applause."

I hope and pray that I am wrong, but based on Nasrallah's jubilant statement, this deal seems to be yet another example of the triumph of short-term wishful thinking over long-term, realistic strategy.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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In memory of Mahsa Amini, a young woman murdered by the monstrous regime, we must take the side of those fighting for their freedom.

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On Sept. 13, a beautiful 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested in Tehran and brutally beaten by "morality police" for wearing her hijab "too loosely," perhaps allowing a few strands of hair to show through. She was overwhelmed by both male and female brutes and thugs, beaten mercilessly, thrown into a van and driven to some unknown place – most probably the notorious Evin prison, where she was undoubtedly raped and tortured.

Next thing we knew, she was in a coma. As I write this three days later, we know she is dead. Her family was told by the Iranian regime that she died of "epilepsy or a heart attack," medical conditions that apparently emerged out of nowhere. Even if the regime's claim is true, it is difficult to believe this "epilepsy or a heart attack" was not caused by the brutal blows to the head and body Mahsa received from her attackers.

None of us know how many anonymous Mahsa Aminis there have been since the 1979 Islamic revolution, but we can be sure that there have been thousands of them, if not more. Witness what Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi did when he presided over the infamous 1988 "Death Commissions," which sentenced 5,000 men, women and children to death. The "trials" lasted no more than a few minutes, and then the innocent victims were taken out to the courtyard to be hanged. Raisi was so gleeful about his verdicts that he insisted on being there to witness the executions. There were so many victims of his hangings that they had to loaded onto forklifts six at a time.

What made Mahsa's story go viral is that someone filmed it and posted it on Twitter, causing protests to flare up throughout Iran and prompting some international sympathy. Incredibly courageous Persian women, in the name of Mahsa, are removing their hijabs in public, some openly burning them or filming themselves cutting off their hair.

Mahsa was from the Kurdish region of Saqez, where some of the most violent protests are now taking place. This region, composed largely of Sunni Muslims, has long been the target of discrimination by Iran's Shiite Muslim majority. Teachers there have been imprisoned by the regime simply for teaching the Kurdish language, which is outlawed in Iran. There are a disproportionate number of Kurds languishing in Iranian prisons. As far as we know, at the moment of this writing, five Kurdish protesters have been killed so far.

Rage against the regime has now engulfed much of Iran, extending through most provinces and becoming increasingly violent. In Tehran, thousands of people have taken to the streets, with hundreds shouting "Death to the Dictator!" The regime-appointed governor of Tehran ominously warned, "We have identified 1,800 agitators." In the northern city of Sari, one male protestor scaled a wall to tear down a poster of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. More protests have erupted like wildfire.

As the late, great Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the US Congress, often said, "The veneer of civilization is paper-thin."

There is no body that embodies that paper-thin veneer better than the United Nations. As I write these words, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is addressing the UN General Assembly. He just stated, "The foundational need for a better world is justice, all of the hopes and aspirations of humankind are built on justice … which means the elimination of injustice. We are defenders in the fight against injustice in all of its forms against humanity, against spirituality, no matter where it may occur."

Even as I listen to Raisi's words, the death toll among those who want to free themselves from the suffocating chokehold of his Islamic theocracy has risen to seven.

Most of the civilized nations of the world are currently engaged in perhaps the worst foreign policy blunder since Neville Chamberlain felt he could trust the word of Adolf Hitler – trying to cut a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Over the last 18 months, the United States and other members of the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Great Britain and France plus Germany) have been bending over backwards in a humiliating process of capitulation to this evil regime. They do not see or do not want to see the long-term consequences of further enriching the Iranian theocrats, when we know that none of this windfall will reach the Iranian people. It will flow into the very nuclear project the deal is intended to stop and, of course, into the coffers of Iran's terrorist proxies around the world.

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The money earmarked for Iran as a "signing bonus" to a nuclear deal should instead go directly to Iran's dissidents, who are so courageously putting their lives on the line to overthrow their savage rulers. We should have the CIA transfer those billions of dollars to the people in the streets, so they can be armed and equipped to fight the regime they so rightly despise.

Iran's courageous protesters are enjoying a brief moment in which they can experience the ecstasy of freedom. We know, however, that the regime possesses the brute force required to beat down its growing dissident population and is willing to use it. The United States should not let them. It should stand on the side of freedom-loving people, not oppressive regimes that have formed an alliance of evil with all of our enemies.

As the great nuclear physicist and former Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov once said, "If you want to know a regime's foreign policy, look at the way it treats its own internal dissident population."

It's about time we did.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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I have always been shocked by the way some of the foreign-policy community treats the Iranian nuclear threat – as though it were an academic problem from some distant, remote corner of the universe. Not only do they feel that Iran can be contained, as Russia, China and North Korea have by the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), but they believe that we in the United States are immune.

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The Islamic Republic of Iran, through its terror proxies – in particular, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their offshoot, Hezbollah – has a very active presence just under our noses, particularly in the tri-border area of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, and a growing and active presence within the continental United States.

Take, for example, the opening arguments against Alexei Saab of Morristown, N.J., who is charged with being a Hezbollah spy and planning attacks in Washington, New York and Boston.

Many in our foreign-policy establishment and academic community simply fail to grasp that Iran is a brutal, revolutionary theocracy with messianic zeal that does not want to limit this zeal to the Middle East; its leaders have hegemonic aspirations.

Iran has managed to surround Israel with a wall of fire – with Hezbollah in Lebanon and as many as 150,000 missiles in the north, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the south.

Last week, another revealing story broke on the Islamic Republic of Iran's national television, in which Ali Motahhari, a "reformist" member of the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, said: "From the very beginning of our nuclear activities, our aim was to build a nuclear bomb. There is no need to beat around the bush."

In some quarters of the American government today, including among many members of the current administration, this news should be quite disturbing. For example, regarding the nuclear deal of 2015, the International Crisis Group states on its website that it "enshrined a core compromise the Crisis Group had advocated since 2003: acceptance of a limited, tightly monitored uranium enrichment program in Iran in return for that country's integration into the global economy."

This is extremely important because Robert Malley, who is leading the US negotiations in Vienna, is the former president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. The entire premise that has predicated the negotiations is that if America sweetened the deal enough with the lifting of sanctions, Iran would not develop a nuclear bomb.

In fact, Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani understands America's negotiating position very clearly, saying in November: "The very term nuclear negotiations is rife with error. … The goal is to lift the sanctions."

Most people who follow this issue are aware that Iran has far exceeded the cap of acceptable uranium enrichment that was proscribed in the deal: 3.65%. Iran has already surpassed 40 to 42 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at the 60% level.

According to an April 11 report from the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), it is "a common fallacy" that Iran requires 90% highly enriched uranium to build nuclear explosives.

"With this quantity, an enrichment level of 60% suffices to create a relatively compact nuclear explosive; further enrichment to 80% or 90% is not needed," it said.

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Iran has also been hard at work at intercontinental ballistic missiles. It doesn't merely want them to go from Tehran to Tel Aviv, but from Tehran to Washington, DC, and New York City.

These vexing facts serve to illustrate just how clearly wrongheaded these negotiations have been.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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If we have learned anything from the events of the past week in Ukraine, it is that diplomacy without the credible threat of military force becomes a weapon in the hands of the most ruthless. President Vladimir Putin has proven, as well, that diplomacy even with the threat of strong sanctions is meaningless to the deranged psyche of megalomaniac despots and dictators. The soft power of sanctions and diplomacy is not a weapon against tanks and missiles in the hands of a madman.

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This has been a jarring wake up call for many in the American foreign policy establishment, who have been deep in slumber since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991. Unfortunately, we in the West have enjoyed many halcyon days of the post-Cold War order. Simultaneously, we have proven time and time again that we have an amazing capacity to delude ourselves into the belief that this is a Kantian world in which human reason leads us to a just, moral world. Unfortunately, Putin has proven that for some actors on the world's stage this is a Hobbesian world where, in his deranged, power-hungry quest he is determined to make life for his fellow man "nasty, brutish and short."

The Ukrainian people have proven to be remarkably valiant in the face of this horrific ongoing Russian onslaught and are putting up a significant fight. The scenes of bombed out buildings, of men who have never before held a weapon, lining up for arms, of civilians schooling themselves in the art of making Molotov cocktails in their kitchens, or people rushing into the subway holding children in their arms, are reminiscent of World War II and are bone-chilling.

The list of countries that have supported this Russian onslaught is as predictable as it is short. China (which is uncomfortable because it claims to regards "sovereignty" as a regnant value, but who deeply despise America); North Korea (which has ravenous eyes toward Seoul); Belarus (which is shivering in its shoes, wondering if it is next, and allows Russian troops on its soil); Venezuela (whose immense hatred of the US predetermines its knee-jerk reactions); Syria (whose leader Bashar Assad's very life was saved by Putin); and the Islamic Republic of Iran (which looks at the globe with the same hegemonic eyes, coupled with a toxic mix of religious zealotry).

All of which leads me to remind us that while all of this is taking place in Eastern Europe, not too very far away in Vienna, there are negotiators who carry this same naïve Western mindset into the room, and who have assured us that they are about to sign a deal with Iran. These are people that former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned us about when she said, "We in the West make a grave mistake when we transpose our values onto the rest of the world."

Coupling one set of foreign policy failures with what might be another equally pernicious one, word has leaked out that the Americans are willing to give the Iranians a multi-billion-dollar signing bonus. The Iranians are also looking for agreements that the US will never back out of the deal, something that cannot be assured unless this deal becomes a treaty, that requires two-thirds of the Senate to ratify. With the breakdown of the Senate as it stands today, that is not likely to happen. However, the P5+1, (the US, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany) are working assiduously to get to a deal within the next few days.

This mentality, so desperate for a foreign policy victory, and for the opportunity to wave a piece of paper, Neville Chamberlain-like in the air and declare, "Peace in our time." These are people who have decided to willfully blind themselves to the tremendous violations of the JCPOA, the 2015 nuclear deal, ignoring the fact that there are approximately two tons of highly enriched uranium at the 60% level, which is a far cry from the 3.65% level specified in the deal, and an easy glide to the 90% level necessary for a nuclear bomb.

They have ignored the countless times the International Atomic Energy Inspectors have been turned away from suspicious sites. They have ignored the fact that the regime has built nuclear sites, such as Fordow, well-hidden into the mountainside, near the holy city of Qom. Why hide their nuclear facilities if there is nothing to hide? And they have ignored the fact that last December, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired 16 missiles in a military exercise, as a "threat to the Zionist regime."

And to our great peril, they have ignored the fact that Iran has developed a global network of Hezbollah cells throughout the Middle East, Africa and especially in Latin America, in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, right under our noses, and that Iran has been giving attack drone technology to the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

Most significantly, however, they have ignored the countless voices of the Iranian dissident population who have pleaded with us not to lift the sanctions. Fully three-quarters if the Iranian population have been born after the 1979 Khomeini revolution and despise the regime. The cases of human rights abuses are as endless as they are sobering to read. Just last month, human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, was sentenced to 74 lashes and an additional 6 years in prison, after having already served 11. Women are arrested and flogged for rape, but never men. Religious minorities, such as Bahais, have been arbitrarily arrested and tortured. LGBTQ individuals are hung from the public square. Sentences are completely arbitrary, including extrajudicial killings, and there is no serious habeas corpus.

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We need to work with these brave dissident groups and give them the tools they need to overthrow the regime they so desperately detest. We need to restore our moral credibility to the world by showing that we protect the most vulnerable, who are crying out for democracy and freedom, such as those valiant fighters in Ukraine and those desperate dissidents in Iran. And that only happens through a display of force.

As the great Soviet dissident Andre Sakharov once said, "If you want to know a nation's foreign policy, look at the way they treat their dissident population."

After all these years of slumber, we are watching the erosion of the liberal world order, with the US at its helm. The way to restore it can only be through a display of moral courage and strength. We owe it to the courageous dissidents of Iran and to the valiant fighters of Ukraine.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Francis Fukuyama wrote a widely popular book, The End of History and the Last Man, proclaiming that history is linear and evolutionary, and that humanity has reached "not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

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We would love to have believed that man has evolved to his highest state, and that history is evolutionary and linear, leading people to truly understand and appreciate the magnificent gift of the liberal world order and embrace it with the United States standing at its helm.

However, with 150,000 troops along the border of Ukraine, it is unfortunately and conspicuously clear that history is not linear.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent that he is, would like to resurrect the Cold War. He sees the world as a zero-sum game: He wins; America and the West lose. Putin recently described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the "biggest geopolitical catastrophe in history."

How does this play out for Israel? For years, Jerusalem has had to calibrate that delicate balancing act of maintaining a good relationship with Washington and maintaining a diplomatic channel to the Kremlin, with troops just north of Israel's border in Syria. Ironically, Russia has kept Iranian troops at bay, and Israel has been working with the Russians to get approval to attack Hezbollah strongholds in Syria or convoys carrying Hezbollah men and equipment to Lebanon.

Israel, whose modern rebirth came about after the Holocaust, cares deeply about antisemitism, and there are sizeable Jewish populations in both Ukraine and Russia.

For Israelis, who live in the Middle East where they have to confront radical Islamism, tribalism and conflicting ethnic disputes, there never was the illusion of the "end of history," when one can nurture the illusion that history is going along a steady rational, linear course. That is the neighborhood that seems to produce religious fanatics with a totalitarian view of how to create a utopian society. Inevitably, this leader becomes a totalitarian, and the utopian society inevitably erodes into a dystopian one.

Yet we have always had in the West a troop of "useful idiots" (as Vladimir Lenin called them), who believe the assurances of fanatical despots and dictators.

Certainly, that is true of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A June 2016 BBC report revealed that the Carter administration had actually helped depose Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, afraid that there would be a civil war between the military and the followers of Imam Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which would cause instability and hurt US national security and oil interests.

Khomeini went on a charm offensive towards the White House, saying, "You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans," promising that his new Islamic Republic would be a humanitarian one, which would benefit "the cause of peace and tranquility for all mankind."

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In November 1978, US Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan sent a cable to the Carter White House, warning that the "Shah was doomed." By January 1979, the Carter administration helped the Shah depart for a "vacation," abandoning the Iranian military that depended on the US and paving the way for the Islamic Revolution.

The next thing we knew on Nov. 4, 1979, our embassy was seized in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage and holding them for 444 days. And for the last 43 years, women who are raped have been subjected to public lashings, gays have been hung in the public square and religious minorities, and other dissidents have been taken to the notorious Evin prison, where they are tortured and frequently executed.

Since 2015, we have had almost seven years to see how the government in Iran has cheated on the nuclear deal, enriching two tons of uranium to the highly purified state of 60% – way beyond the maximum level of purity of 3.65% specified in the deal. We have seen them block International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from entering suspicious sites, and, of course, build nuclear sites deep underground at the Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities. If their program was so legitimate, why are they hiding these sites?

And now, we have members of our own American administration who had promised us a "longer and a stronger deal," but who are, nonetheless, sprinting headlong into a "shorter and a weaker deal." History does not march along a linear path, and unfortunately, it is not marching in the path of the liberal world order with the US at the helm.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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I recently met with Nasser Boladai, a representative of the Balochi community of Iran, who now lives in Geneva. Unbeknownst to many Iran watchers, there are many ethnic minorities that would love nothing more than their own independent, sovereign state, and who have been brutally suppressed by the regime.

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Iran has not taken a census since 1976. However, judging by a statement former Iranian Education Minister Hamid Reza Haji Babai had made in 2009, that "70 percent of children starting school in Iran do not have Farsi as their mother language," one can deduce that there are many ethnic minorities that would love to free themselves of the oppressive regime. This is not to mention the unknown number of ethnic Persians who secretly despise the theocracy. They know that the regime often uses execution as a form of eliminating any political dissent. Those who have publicly stated this position, have been banished to the notorious Evin prison where they are been systematically raped, tortured and often "disappeared".

I asked Nasser if he is in touch with any of his friends that he had grown up within Iran. His response brought shivers down my spine. "No. I can't be," he said. "They are all dead".

In Lebanon, Kinda al-Khatib, a beautiful young woman in her 20s, was sentenced to prison for blogging and reaching out to Israeli journalists. God only knows how the Hezbollah thugs are now treating her.

In China, there are approximately 1.5 million Uyghurs who are systematically being rounded up and "re-educated" in determent camps. And any journalist who dares to question the regime is summarily executed.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has wasted no time since its rapid takeover last summer, incarcerating journalists who did not parrot total fidelity to their 7th Century mindset, closing down schools for women as well as professions run by women, and publicly flogging or arresting women who refuse to comply with the mandate to cover themselves with the burka.

Yet, what does the United Nations focus its attention on? An institution founded upon such lofty principles as "reaffirming faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small?"

The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a resolution launching a $5 million Commission of Inquiry into the May 2021 war between Gaza and Israel. As Anne Bayefsky of The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs recently wrote, "The Human Rights Council resolution failed to refer to Hamas at all. It did not mention-let alone condemn-the launch of thousands of rockets by Hamas into Israel. Indeed, the civilian population was omitted from the resolution. The only civilians mentioned are the 'Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.' Nor did the resolution condemn the use by Palestinian groups as human shields, a war crime."

I was one of those 9.5 million residents of Israel who Hamas aimed its more than 4,360 missiles against in May. I was fortunate enough to have been allowed entry into Israel, and experience this firsthand, because my daughter, an Israeli citizen, was about to give birth. My husband and I landed in the midst of the war on May 13. As soon as we landed in Ben Gurion Airport, we were greeted by the shrill sound of the alarm, telling us we had 60 seconds to find shelter. Later that night, we again had 60 seconds in which to wake up our grandchildren and immediately run into a sealed room.

And we were among the lucky ones. In Sderot or any of the neighboring areas to Gaza, they have no more than 15 seconds. And they live with this constant uncertainty of when Hamas will attack. They do not suffer from "post-traumatic stress syndrome," but rather "ongoing-traumatic stress syndrome," where the children suffer from constant nightmares, bedwetting and agoraphobia.

The events that led up to this war are not mentioned at all in this resolution. It never mentions its own UN agency, UNRWA, and how its schools and camps systemically teach their children to despise Israelis, how to engage in military conflict, and that they will someday return to Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem and Beer Sheva, feeding them on unrealistic fantasies that keep the 1948 conflict alive.

What is barely known is that Hamas is engaged in a bitter internecine conflict with Fatah over control of all of the Palestinian territories. There is absolutely no mention about the election-the first in 16 years – that was supposed to have taken place between Hamas and Fatah over leadership, last April. When Fatah realized that they were going to lose quite badly to Hamas, they cancelled the election. And Hamas understands that the one way to score quick popularity points with their population is to launch a barrage of missiles against Israel.

That is why the brilliant book by Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Gaza Conflict 2021, should be required reading by all. And especially by the respected members of the UN Human Rights Council. It goes into minute detail of every event leading up to, and during the war, that much of the international reporting of the conflict seems to, for some bizarre reason, willfully blind themselves of. Having had lived through this war – and having had kept my ears diligently plugged into what was being reported, and what was being systemically overlooked and ignored by the international media – this book is like a breath of fresh air.

In the meantime, back in Turtle Bay, according to Gil Kapen of the American Jewish International Relations Institute, in 2021 alone, there were 14 separate resolutions condemning the state of Israel. That is far more than any of the other 192 UN member countries, including China, Iran or Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, combined. Let alone, against any of the "virtuous" members of the Human Rights Council, such as Sudan, Mauritania and Afghanistan.

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The UN has always had a particular obsession with the state of Israel. It is routinely held to a standard that no other country could be expected to be live up to, under the same circumstances. There has been a constant and unabated effort to defame it and erode its moral standing among the community of nations, and delegitimize its very existence. Those "three Ds" test is what former refusenik Natan Sharansky defined as constituting antisemitism. This goes back to the "Zionism is racism resolution" of 1974.

It is high time for the UN to re-examine some of the lofty principles within its founding charter, and to finally abandon its peculiar obsession with Israel. The international body should, instead, investigate some of the world's worst abusers of human rights in recent history, including some of the venerated members of its very own Human Rights Council.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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At a summit on Oct. 13 with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayid, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed frustration with Iran about its unlikelihood of returning to diplomacy, and that "we will look at every option to deal with the challenge posed by Iran."

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That very same day at the Carnegie Institute for International Peace, US Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley said "the United States and its allies should get used to an Iran with nuclear weapons."

Will the real US policy under President Joe Biden please stand up? Is it Malley's unconditional surrender to an Iran with nuclear capability? Or is it Blinken's "exploring other options"? Are they just playing a game of "good cop/bad cop"? Or, even worse, are they just running out the clock? What is America's "Plan B" in regards to Iran? Does the administration know?

It is has been made abundantly clear by our feckless withdrawal from Afghanistan that the Biden administration has no appetite for any further military engagement, certainly not in the Middle East. If there were any sort of military engagement anywhere, it would be in the Asian Pacific Theater.

In an excellent article in Foreign Policy, John Hannah, former National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote: "There's a reason for Blinken's vagueness. The chances that President Joe Biden will order the US military to attack Iran to stop it from becoming a nuclear weapons state borders on zero. It would mean going to war against a lethal adversary – a country of 85 million whose Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps wields an arsenal of advanced missiles and drones, naval forces and terrorist proxies capable of inflicting widespread damage on US interests. Indeed, a full-on confrontation with Iran would make the recent US experience fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan seem like child's play in comparison."

He concluded, "Should force be required to stop an Iranian bomb, the job will certainly fall to Israel, the only country that combines the will and military capacity needed."

So, this colossal job seems to rest on the shoulders of the tiny country of Israel. A job like this takes both capability and will. America lacks the will. Israel has the will, but does it have the capability?

Iran is a huge country of 636,400 square miles. Its topography is complex, dotted with rugged mountain ranges, replete with settings to conceal nuclear devices. Israel is a country of approximately 8,550 square miles with most of its population and commercial centers clustered around the coast.

The stakes for Israel are extremely high, not the least of which are the 150,000 missiles on Israel's northern border in Lebanon at the hands of Hezbollah, some of which have been converted into precision-guided munitions. They can easily pinpoint and topple specific sites that are vital to Israel's infrastructure and continual existence.

The sheer number of missiles, if launched simultaneously, could be enough to overwhelm Israel's Iron Dome missile-defense system.

What is America's "Plan B"? Returning to economic sanctions?

We know that a theocratic regime that believes in the coming of the 12th imam will not care a hoot about economic sanctions. They also have very little regard for the survival of their own people. As Iranian President Akbar Rafsanjani once pointed out, "Iran is willing to sacrifice a million of our people for our nuclear program."

Here in the United States, we are in complete denial if we believe that the Iranian nuclear threat is just about the Jewish state. Iran has been in the business of deeply expanding its hegemonic empire into the Western hemisphere and replicating the pincer grasp it has established around Israel, right here under our noses.

If the United States feels that we are immune from an Iranian nuclear threat, they should look no further than the 20-year cooperation accord that Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro is planning on signing with the Islamic Republic of Iran – not to mention the tri-border hub in South America of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which are heavily immersed in Hezbollah-backed "businesses" of narcoterrorism and money-laundering under the sponsorship of Iran. For many years, Iran has been in the rapidly expanding business of creating "cultural centers" there, taking recruits on free trips to Iran and converting people in droves to Shi'ite Islam.

What sort of planet are we bequeathing to our children and grandchildren if we are willfully blinding ourselves to the profound evil that Iran represents and leaving it to Israel to go it alone against Iran?

Iran is a morally bankrupt state with one of the worst human-rights records in the world. This includes the arbitrary arrest and torture of anyone with whom the regime disagrees, including children.

As the late Noble prize-winning physicist and Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov famously stated, "If you would like to know a country's foreign policy, look at the way they treat their own dissident population."

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We do this at our very own peril. What is it about "Death to America?" that Iranians routinely chant in the mosques every Friday that we fail to understand?

Have we in America totally lost our moral compass, delegating our responsibility to the world to the tiny nation of Israel? Is that, when we are being totally honest, what America's "Plan B" amounts to?

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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