Opinions do not necessarily represent CUIndependent.com or any of its sponsors.
Iran just finished up three days of diplomatic talks with the United States and several other world powers, this Wednesday. After nearly a decade of negotiations, we could be close to seeing some kind of agreement about Iran’s nuclear program and the sanctions that have plagued it for more than 30 years. Iran’s relations with the West turned hostile in 1979 when a popular revolution ousted the country’s dictator, who was friendly to Israel, and the new leader of Iran, who turned out to be anything but. Sanctions from the U.S. started after a group of students took American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Iran’s capital. The country’s nuclear energy program, previously supported by the U.S., was suddenly viewed as a threat in 1979, and has remained the biggest source of tension with Israel since. Now, U.S. officials are indicating that a change in Iran’s relations with the West could be on the way.
There’s not much to say about the talks themselves. We still don’t know if the West will ease up its sanctions against Iran, or what will be given up in exchange for this. Iran’s nuclear facilities might be left intact when all is said and done, and that’s what has led to the real media story of the week: Israel’s reaction to the talks. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, went to Washington D.C. this week to rally Congress against any concession to Iran’s nuclear program. Sixty Democrats boycotted his speech on Tuesday. The only thing they missed was an offensive rant that left its audience in the Dark Ages.
As far as Iran’s nuclear program goes, Netanyahu had lost all credibility weeks before his speech. That happened when Al Jazeera leaked a cable from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, revealing that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” The cable was from 2012 — the year that Netanyahu warned us that Iran was 70 percent finished building the bomb. You might think an embarrassment like that would put a damper on his rhetoric, but you’d be wrong.
Not a speck of sanity made it into Netanyahu’s address to Congress. He still clung to the idea that Iran was the biggest threat to world peace, and the mostly Republican audience went along with the idea. The hypocrisy was met with rounds of applause. Netanyahu skipped over Israel’s crimes while decrying Iran’s support for Hezbollah, a militant group and political party based in Lebanon. He only bothered to mention Gaza once (just in the context of the Hezbollah “goons” there, of course) and never mentioned the West Bank at all. It’s useful to fill in these gaps for ourselves.
Israel’s control of Palestine has been going on since 1967, when the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which make up most of the state of Palestine, were captured during the Six-Day War with several neighboring countries. Since then, Israel seems to have embarked on a program whose goal is to annex all of Palestine’s land — preferably without the Palestinians. Today, the occupied territories are probably some of the most miserable places on Earth. Densely crowded, hopelessly poor and almost completely cut off from the outside world, residents live in fear of periodic attacks from the Israeli military that patrols their borders. Just for good measure, Israeli settlers in the West Bank make no secret of their utter hatred toward the Palestinians. The settlers set mosques on fire, tag the Palestinians’ property with racist graffiti and do whatever else comes to mind on the spot. None of this was important enough to make it into Netanyahu’s address, but that’s not even the worst part.
Netanyahu reached his low point early on when he implied that Iran poses a threat similar to that of the Nazis during World War II. A tasteless publicity stunt followed when he spoke directly to Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who was sitting in the audience. It was part of his overarching theme that Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, is somehow at risk of annihilation. Someone needs to remind the applauding Congress members that Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons.
If you were waiting for Netanyahu to enlighten Congress on Tuesday, you were probably disappointed. He is way past diplomacy at this point. The goal is to rouse Congress into fighting any agreement that doesn’t have Israel’s complete approval. Republicans, who showered social media with their approval of the speech, seem to be up to the task. Our alliance with Israel is the Republican dream: militaristic in nature and great for the business sector. Warren Buffett called Israel “the most promising investment hub” outside the U.S., after investing $2 billion in an Israeli company. The Christian base of the Republican party sure wants the Holy Land to be firmly in a U.S. ally’s control as well. Netanyahu’s speech reminds us of the influence that these interests have over U.S. foreign policy — in the coming weeks, we’ll have to see whether we fall for Netanyahu’s tactics or continue to move forward in our diplomacy.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Jared Conner at jared.conner@colorado.edu.
