Netanyahu and Congress Are Right, and Recent Arab Initiatives Support Them

On the day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has addressed a joint session of Congress to warn America and the world that the Obama-led P5+1 Iranian nuclear deal will provide the Ayatollah with nuclear bombs to turn on Israel, the sunni Arab Middle East, Europe and the United States, other Middle East voices are speaking out by their actions, if not words, to tell President Obama that Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu are right and he is wrong. ~~~~~ Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is calling on his neighbors to form an "Arab Joint Force" that would provide unified defense against ISIS, al Qaida, and Iran and its satellite terrorist organizations - Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi. A more visible vote of no confidence in Obama and the West he 'leads' is not possible. An Egyptian political analyst said : "The [Obama-called] Conference on Countering Violent Extremism in Washington did not give birth to a global strategy on terror, and served instead to underline differences between various points of view, especially those of Cairo and Washington." But, President el-Sisi is offering a new approach that will give a real chance to Arabs to engage independently in the fight against extremists and terrorists. According to Gamal Abdel Gawad, Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo : "The US still sees political Islam as a present and legitimate player, not a synonym for extremism. The US Administration also differentiates between extremist Islamists and moderate Islamists and believes that the moderates can be effectively integrated in politics as part of an acceptable political system." ~~~~~ The Arab world distrusts President Obama because he failed to support the Egyptian military and General el-Sisi in their battle to oust the jihadist terrorist regime of Mohamed Morsi and the Moslem Brotherhood. The Arab reading is that Obama sees the Moslem Brotherhood as a moderate force to be engaged, instead of seeing the Brotherhood as they do -- the founder and financial support of Hamas working to establish Iran-led jihadist extremist regimes in Egypt, the Gulf States and the Arabian peninsula. Egyptian President el-Sisi visited Riyadh on Sunday for urgent talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, to gain critical Saudi support for the launch of his innovative Joint Arab Force, meant to counter the rising threat of radical Islam. El-Sisi was particularly moved to act by the recent atrocity perpetrated by an ISIS terrorist group in beheading Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. But the general feeling in Cairo and other Arab capitals these days is that the US and the Western world are not seriously considering confronting the threat of Iran, ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East, a feeling especially prevalent in the Gulf. Arab leaders sense that there is an indifference in Washington and EU capitals toward the Iranian threat to stability in the Middle East. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram pointed this week how widespread Iran's terrorist activities are : ""Not only has Iran occupied three islands of the United Arab Emirates, but it is now besieging the Gulf countries and trying to create a new reality on the ground by pushing its Houthi supporters in Yemen to seize control of the country, and backing its supporters in Bahrain to destabilize the country, in addition to what it is already doing in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Add to this the terrorism of radical groups that are igniting fires in several areas in the region." ~~~~~ In addition, while Egypt's el-Sisi is forming the Arab Joint Force for defensive purposes, King Abdullah of Jordan is rallying Arab support for airstrikes on ISIS bases aomed at destabilizing its operatives on an almost daily basis. King Abdullah was in the United States last weekend and told CNN that he has said to leaders both in the Islamic and Arab world and to the world in general : "this is a third World War by other means. This brings Moslems, Christians, other religions together in this generational fight, that all of us have to be in this together. So it’s not a Western fight. This is a fight inside of Islam where everybody comes together against these outlaws, so to speak. And there’s a short term part of this, which is the military part of the issue, there is the medium part, which is the security element of it, and then there’s a long term element of this, which is obviously the ideological one." ~~~~~ Dear readers, the cries of 'foul' heard today coming from the White House after Prime Minister Netanyahu's adddress to Congress simply serve to point out how far out of the mainstream the Obama team and those Democrats who follow him really are. Inside the House chamber where Netanyahu spoke, he was repeatedly stopped by standing ovations from both Republicans and Democrats. He was surrounded by well-wishers as he tried to leave the chamber. Tickets to attend Netanyahu's address were all snapped up long before today - unlike tickets to President Obama's January State of the Union address, for which not all available tickets were taken. Obama has used up all his "I am the President" chips with everyone except Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and their congressional Democratic minions. Consider this. Obama's proposed Iran nuclear agreement contains a "sunset" clause -- that is, after 10 years, Iran would put aside its obligations to keep controls on its uranium enrichment program and move full speed to the manufacture of a nuclear bomb. The use of a sunset clause is unheard of in arms control agreements. Add to this the fact that everyone - including Obama - agrees that right now -- today -- Iran could make a nuclear bomb in 2 to 3 months, and Obama is trying to push that back to one year. Also add to this the refusal of Iran to allow IAEA inspections related to its military and/or other past nuclear programs and has so far refused to put them into the Obama agreement. The Netanyahu position is so clearly reasonable that a bipartisan majority in Congress embraces it. President Obama may make his deal with Iran. But getting Congress to agree to it -- even with Nancy Pelosi's theatrics and crocodile tears today to help him -- seems like the proverbial "camel through the eye of a needle" task. And based on the message to Obama inherent in Egypt's el-Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah initiatives, Obama will have no help from Arabian desert camel herders in pushing the camel through the needle. He is on his own.