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It is now clear that the West will allow absolutely no evidence, however devastating, to prevent a deal being signed with Iran over its nuclear programme.
From the start, there has been a total dislocation of reality. The US, UK and EU fawned over Iran’s new President Rouhani for ushering in a new dawn of reform — the same Rouhani who boasted of previously hoodwinking the US over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Last November, David Cameron phoned Rouhani to welcome his moves after taking office. Yet under Rouhani, repression has become even more horrific. Executions have risen sharply, with more than 198 people hanged so far this year.
Western leaders swear they will never let Iran develop nuclear weapons. Only last week, Cameron told Israel’s Knesset: “I share your deep scepticism and great concern about Iran. A nuclear-armed Iran is a threat to the whole world; Britain will ensure that is never allowed to happen.”
Yet the interim deal signed in Geneva last November, endorsed by Cameron, ensures that this certainly will happen.
It allows Iran to enrich uranium, crossing the West’s ostensible red line. It allows the Arak heavy water reactor — necessary solely for the production of nuclear weapons— to remain on course. Its inspection provisions are a joke. Rouhani has accurately hailed the deal as a Western surrender.
Israel revealed earlier this month further evidence of Iranian reformist tendencies when it intercepted a ship bound for Gaza, the Klos C, carrying a cargo of missiles loaded in Iran. These included 40 rockets with a range of 90-160 kilometres, enough to target all of Israel.
This discovery of Iran in flagrante delicto occasioned little more than a yawn in the West. For to acknowledge that the “moderate” Rouhani is even now arming those who intend the murder of Israelis might get in the way of the deal.
Shortly after the seizure of the Klos C, the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for firing rockets into southern Israel. This was brushed aside.
Iran’s foreign minster Mohammed Zarif was the darling of the West at the Geneva talks on account of his charm. Subsequently, the charming Zarif ostentatiously laid a wreath at the grave of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hizbollah commander responsible for the murders of countless Americans and other Westerners at the behest of the Iranian regime.
This was brushed aside.
What makes this denial of deeply alarming reality even more astonishing is the mortal threat the Iranian regime poses to America and the rest of the West.
The inter-continental ballistic missiles it is building are not needed to hit Israel. They will be pointing at America.
In 2011, Israel revealed that Iran had plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US in Washington, along with a number of US senators. Yet the Obama administration barely deigned to raise an eyebrow.
Iran is pulling the levers of terrorism and chaos throughout the Middle East. It is behind much of the slaughter in Syria.
Iran is arming Islamist insurgencies in Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia and Bahrain.
Through Hizbollah, it has set up terrorist training camps in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, often funded by narcotics. Iran is already in America’s backyard. Yet the US brushes all of this aside.
We can now see that when the US and the rest said they would not tolerate a nuclear Iran, what they really meant was that they would not tolerate its prevention.
