Dear Bob….

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Steve Lieblich, the director of Public Affairs for the Jewish community Council of WA, writes a letter to former Foreign Minister Bob Carr..

Dear Bob

Steve Lieblich

Why don’t you get into your silk pyjamas, have a warm milk, and relax? We no longer need you to lie in your tailored suit, nor to embellish the opinion pages with your Persian-bazaar fantasies, as you did in the Centenary-ANZAC-Day edition of The Australian.

You deride what you claim to be the key “neo-conservative” principle: to emulate Ronald Reagan. It seems that, like Groucho Marx, you would quickly abandon your principles under pressure.

However the self-contradictory punch-line to your protracted, smug yarn, is that you would have us believe that Obama’s treatment of the evil Iranian regime is analogous to Ronald Reagan’s approach to the Soviet regime, and is therefore commendable after all…

Are we to forget that the Soviet Union faced decades of credible military and diplomatic pressure? Are you really suggesting that it succumbed to glib appeasement and agreed “frameworks”? Or was it so stretched by its weapons program and economic non-performance that it collapsed under its own weight?

Compare this to Obama’s prescription for Iran. As Natan Sharansky has pointed out (and he should know):

The Obama administration apparently believes that only after a nuclear agreement is signed can the free world expect Iran to stop its attempts at regional domination, improve its human rights record and …behave like [a] civilized state…

The differences [between the US’s treatment of Iran and the Soviet Union] are striking and revealing.

… the Soviet regime felt obliged to make its first ideological concession simply to enter into negotiations with the United States… At the end of the 1950s, Moscow abandoned its doctrine of fomenting a worldwide communist revolution …it had no other way to get what it needed from the United States.

…Yet today, Iran feels no need to tone down its rhetoric calling for the death of America and wiping Israel off the map…

Bob Carr

Just last week, the Iranian regime held another military parade with truckloads of weaponry, masses of goose-stepping zombies and repeated chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. Would you have us ignore this, Bob?

Natan Sharansky continues:

…Over the past month alone, as nuclear discussions continued apace … we saw Tehran continue to impose its rule on other countries, adding Yemen to the list of those under its control [Lebanon, Syria and Iraq].

Then there is the question of human rights. When American negotiations with the Soviets reached the issue of trade, and in particular the lifting of sanctions … the [US made] the Soviets’ treatment of dissidents a central issue in nearly every negotiation.

Iran’s dismal human rights record, by contrast, has gone entirely unmentioned in the recent negotiations…

Furthermore, as Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently pointed out:

..The unsigned, non-binding “understanding” … dismantles none of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure …does nothing to slow the Islamic republic’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles …does not authorize “go-anywhere-anytime” …doesn’t even require Iran’s rulers to stop lying …

And, of course, it doesn’t address Iran’s support for terrorists, its holding of innocent Americans hostage, its power grab in Iraq, its military support for the brutal Assad dynasty in Syria and Houthi rebels in Yemen, its continuing threats to topple Arab regimes with close ties to the United States, and to “erase Israel from the map” (that is “non-negotiable,” a commander of Iran’s Basji militia declared …) and, in due time, bring “death to America.”

But you would dismiss all this, Bob, with another of your mile-high fantasies:

“If there are violations, sanctions are snapped on again….”

Such colourful language! Just lift the sanctions, like a seat-belt clasp, and we’re free to take our pants off in exchange for smooth-as-silk deceit. Then if we’re disappointed, snap-click, and we’re securely strapped in again… Do you expect us to forget that the sanctions are an economic edifice (a UN version of the Tower of Babel) that took years to erect? …and to believe that, once destroyed, it can be re-instated with a snap of the finger?

Natan Sharansky concludes:

…in today’s postmodern world …even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.

We have yet to see the full consequences of this moral diffidence, but one thing is clear: The loss of America’s self-assured global leadership threatens not only the United States and Israel but also the people of Iran and a growing number of others living under Tehran’s increasingly emboldened rule. Although the hour is growing late, there is still time to change course — before the effects grow more catastrophic still.

* Steve Lieblich is the director of Public Affairs for the Jewish community Council of WA, a member of the Management Committee of the Friends of Israel WA and editor of Israel issues Watchdog and Jewish Issues Watchdog