Benjamin Netanyahu has been wrong about Iran in the past
March 11, 2015 12:00 AM
I read with interest and dismay Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to our Congress. He says it was never his intent to inject politics into his speech. Really? For anyone who believes that conspiring with the speaker of the House behind our president’s back to deliver a speech to our Congress two weeks before his elections in Israel is not political, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
Although a brilliant speaker, Mr. Netanyahu has been less than prescient in the past. For more than 20 years he and his cohorts in and out of Israel have been crying wolf regarding Iran’s nuclear capability. In 1992 he predicted Iran was “three to five years” from having a nuclear weapon.
In 1995 The New York Times quoted U.S. and Israeli officials saying that Iran would have the bomb by 2000. In 1998 Donald Rumsfeld told Congress that Iran could have an intercontinental missile by 2003.
This is not to say that Iran is not a threat to the United States; it is a great threat and would do us harm if it could. But clearly Mr. Netanyahu and his cohorts are not the people to take advice from in dealing with Iran. His speech, although full of bombast, gave no alternative to our present course of action.
Mr. Netanyahu said Israel and America will always stand together. I believe he means this as long as we will stand at the spot where he would lead us by the nose. And that spot would be in a war with Iran that would be in neither Israel’s nor our interest and could dwarf even the disastrous Iraq War.
MARVIN FIELDS
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2015/03/11/Prime-Minister-Benjamin-Netanyahu-has-been-wrong-about-Iran-in-the-past/stories/201503110112
| 