Portraying Iran a threat for United States is Israel’s biggest scam

It is evident that since Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, United States has kept the country under sanctions that is: 1) small, 2) half the world away, 3) has never attacked United States, 4) does not have nuclear weapons and 5) whose contribution to regional instability doesn’t look any worse than that of Israel or Saudi Arabia.

It is in Israel’s interest to portray Iran a threat to United States and the world. Keeping the US engaged in Israel’s proxy war with Iran keeps the attention on a supposedly dire threat, instead Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. On top of all it serves Benjamin Netanyahu in his effort to stay in power and out of jail by coining one enemy after another and keeping the US presidents under his influence.

Israel’s supporters in the US Congress keep on playing the mantra. Lately, Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham have sent Joe Biden a letter containing the astounding claim, “Outside of its nuclear program, Iran continues to pose a threat to the US and international security.” The Israel lobby group AIPAC tweeted on Wednesday, Iran’s determination to further destabilize the Middle East, develop nuclear weapons and build ballistic missiles brings the world closer to war.

Wendy Sherman, Biden’s choice for Deputy Secretary of State helped negotiated the Iran deal, or JCPOA, but Menendez said, “Returning to the JCPOA without concrete steps to address Iran’s other dangerous and destabilizing activities will be insufficient.”

The Iran deal was a signal accomplishment of the Obama administration in setting the United States on the path toward amicable relationship with Iran. It took years for Obama to build the deal; it has been destroyed not only by Donald Trump and his late patron Sheldon Adelson, but by a bunch of Democrats.

Even if Biden gets back into the deal, as all hope, it is going to take many months or years and a lot of political capital to make it a reality. It is also evident that liberal bunch of Israel lobby is working hard on Biden’s behalf, but they can’t get unanimity inside the Democratic Party. The AIPAC implants are campaigning against the Iran deal.

The only thing to be said about all the efforts to destroy the deal is that they originate from the Israel lobby. Because it was such a “strong deal,” there was only one nation on earth that opposed it, Israel, Obama had said that in a famous speech when he was trying to seal the deal in summer 2015. But the President also said it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty as American president to take Israel’s side.

The pity is that the US media and political system fall again and again fall of Israel’s scam. Recently, “60 Minutes” aired a segment highlighting Iranian-backed attacks on American troops in Iraq as a grave insult to the US honor. They did this without ever questioning the US presence in Iran’s neighbor, let alone NATO-led criminal attack on Iraq.

It is amazing that Netanyahu was able to address a joint session of Congress in opposition to the Iran deal back in 2015, while many Democrats were in the attendance. As Obama said, foreign policy touching on Israel was taken as a domestic issue, when the Israeli government is opposed to something; people in the US take notice.

Netanyahu is able to make such demands because as Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former foreign policy aide, explained recently, Israeli lobbyists are deeply involved in policymaking. Ten to twenty American Jews who invariably took the Israeli government’s position came in and out of the White House all the time, Rhodes said.

While Congress people parroted an Israeli script on the latest radioactive isotopes found in the Parchin military facility, and when the deal actually got close, they warned Rhodes that AIPAC was going to cancel their fundraisers. Political money was at the heart of the influence.

When Benjamin Netanyahu said in Hebrew 20 years ago that he didn’t worry about the peace process because “America is a thing you can move very easily,” he was talking about the power of the Israel lobby.

The United States was easily played, at the highest level. When Obama clashed with Netanyahu not over Iran but the creation of a Palestinian state, Democrats in Congress bailed on Obama, and Rhodes wrote in his memoir, “I was given a list of leading Jewish donors to call to reassure them of Obama’s pro-Israel bona fides.”

Now Rhodes tells us that he feels “shame” that the Obama administration “pretended” that Netanyahu supported the creation of a Palestinian state, which he never did, because it was politically dangerous to alienate the rightwing Israeli Prime Minister.

The good news is that the Israel lobby is split and liberal Zionist organizations such as J Street and Americans for Peace Now have vigorously supported the Iran deal and are trying to give Joe Biden some of the Jewish political capital he needs to take on Menendez.

But Israel is setting the terms for the US foreign policy… Just as it did when it needed Israel as battleship in the Middle East against the Soviet Union… Just as it did when the cold war ended and United Staes needed the only democracy in the Middle East in its war against “radical Islam”… There’s always some geopolitical agenda that Israel is advancing. Israel gets to determine the narrative.

Palestinians are the biggest victims of the Iran shell game. For nearly 75 years the world has been promising them self-determination in their own land, and the US has made sure that that would not happen, while Israel takes more and more of the country for expansion.