300 Rabbis for Obama?

I am very worried about the physical survival of Israel.

For more than 35 years, as an Adjunct and Clinical Professor at two major universities and as a military officer, I taught and advised more than 900 graduate students from throughout the Islamic world. This has resulted in many enduring relationships. For more than 25 years (beginning well before the fall of the Shah of Iran), I also served as a senior analyst for the Rand Corporation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Department of Defense, etc. My assignments included maintaining an overview of Iran’s weapons development programs, including, more recently, Iran’s nuclear weapons development efforts. To illustrate this point, several months ago, at a Rand intelligence review on the status of Iran’s nuclear programs, my “special guest” was introduced to the attendees by Rand’s director of Middle East studies as: “the person in the western world who knows the most about Iran’s nuclear programs, both open and clandestine.”

Recently, the more radical elements of Iran’s political establishment have seized firm control of Iran’s nuclear program. Many of our prior key contacts within the Iranian government and within Iran’s nuclear program were removed from their positions. Some of them were jailed. Other were “exiled” to relatively minor activities, such as teaching at the undergraduate level, supervising the construction of bridges and buildings, etc. Thus, the United States’ visibility into Iran’s nuclear program has been materially reduced.

From all that we currently know (and from other nations’ intelligence sources), it appears that Iran has already mastered all the technical processes that they need to be able to actually produce nuclear weapons and that Iran is racing at full speed to obtain operational nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that the IAEA has clear evidence that Iran’s military is also making rapid headway in developing the skills and equipment that they need to manufacture nuclear warheads and that Iran is actively working to develop the processes that will allow them to retrofit these warheads into long range missiles capable of reaching all of Israel and much of Europe.

On September 19, 2008, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared in his sermon delivered to thousands of worshipers gathered in downtown Tehran for Friday prayers that Iran is not only an enemy of Israel, but Iran is also an enemy of the Israeli people: “They [the Israeli people] are combatants, stooges at the service of the arch foes of the Muslim world...We are on a collision course with the occupiers of Palestine.”

Khamenei’s statements finally dashed the hopes held by certain Israeli and American Jewish leaders that previous remarks made by Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei might have been signaling a softer approach towards Israel by Iran.

Although, currently, there is a struggle for power between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Revolutionary Guards faction and Khamenei’s clerical faction, both sides still firmly insist they are determined to destroy Israel.

Ten years ago, Dr. Iftikhar Khan Chaudry defected to the United States from Pakistan’s nuclear program. He described to US intelligence how Dr. A. Q. Khan had transferred Pakistan’s nuclear expertise and materials to Libya, Iraq and North Korea. He told us exactly how Khan had established Pakistan’s nuclear channel with Iran. At that time, Chaudry also informed US intelligence that: “Iran intends to utilize a nuclear weapon in the future - when a nuclear weapon would be operational - against the State of Israel.”

Iran is dispersing and hardening their nuclear development and production facilities. All of these facilities will be protected from air attack by advanced antiaircraft missile batteries (to be largely supplied by Russia). Already, Nantanz is protected by more than 26 antiaircraft missile batteries.

Western political weakness and lack of resolve have embolded Iran. In Fall 2007, a leaked US National Intelligence Estimate, which incorrectly claimed that Iran had discontinued their nuclear weapons development efforts in 2003, undercut all the efforts that were then being made by the United States and by Israel to organize an effective world response to Iran’s nuclear program.

Recently, I received a letter from a group called “Rabbis for Obama” which stated that “with his tough but pragmatic approach to Iran, Senator Obama is in the best position to restore faith in America as a leader in the fight against serious threats to Israel, our allies, and the United States.”

The organizing co-chairs of “Rabbis for Obama”, in their letter, go on to state that it is dangerous (to Israel) to politicize the pro-Israel position.

I fully agree that it is dangerous to Israel for anyone in the United States to politicize the pro-Israel position. As I reported in the International Jerusalem Post (8/8/08), although we can never be certain of the exact words that Senator Obama’s proxy utilized in his communications with Hamas, we do know what Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran believe to be the message that was transmitted to them by Senator Obama: that his “appropriate action” in response to any major attack on Israel would be for him (President Obama) to publicly advocate that the world join to undertake a “strong and determined international response” and then for him to turn the problem of the attack on Israel over to the United Nations Security Council “for action”. (Unfortunately, all parties recognize that if the “problem” of an attack on Israel is given to the UN, not much action will happen. Senator Obama’s public recommendations that he made shortly after Russia’s attack on Georgia only served to reinforce this perception.)

A bipartisan working group consisting of four of Senator Obama’s and Senator McCain’s foreign policy advisers stressed the urgency of implementing a more robust and a more comprehensive approach in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program (Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2008).

I urge that the “Rabbis for Obama” cease their divisive accusations (of spreading “lashon hara,” of waging “smear campaigns,” of making “vicious attacks,” etc.) against others in the Jewish community. In the spirit of this h oliday season, I pray that these rabbis will disband their organization and that they will again devote their energies towards countering Israel’s real enemies, those that have sworn to destroy the people of Israel.