Israel Matzav: The nuclear conference's skewed focus

The nuclear conference's skewed focus

The JPost got it right with this editorial:

The dangerous impression being created is of a nuclear-capable Israel being equated with a nuclear-capable Iran – an approach that fails to make the distinction between Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, and Iran, a despotic regime run by rapacious Shi’ite fanatics that openly persecutes homosexuals, promotes misogyny, brutally puts down political protest and shammed its last elections.

Not many fair-minded people, including in this region, have lost sleep over the fact that responsible Israel reportedly has nuclear warheads. Much of this region is profoundly panicked by the specter of a nuclear Iran.

Preventing this is the single most important challenge that faces the Obama administration. If we take Ahmadinejad’s statements at face value, and there is no reason why we should not, he wants to “wipe Israel off the map,” and to focus, too, on the “big Satan” America.

Among other immediate and dire repercussions for Israel, fear of an Iranian nuclear attack could effectively paralyze the IDF in the face of Iran’s Hamas and Hizbullah proxies. Were Iran’s nuclear program to reach fruition, it would also quickly exercise its benighted influence throughout this region, notably on the Gulf states, including imposing control over the Straits of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world’s seaborne oil shipments pass.

IT SHOULD be crystal clear that, instead of allowing Egypt to sidetrack it with talk of disarming Israel, the US should focus on galvanizing the international community to stop Iran.

Glibly calling for a “nuclear free Middle East” blurs the moral distinctions between the hegemonic designs of that messianic, apocalyptic regime and the essential deterrent and defensive needs of our small, embattled democracy. The Obama administration should be commended for attempting to reach out to the Muslim world, but it should not be blinded to its own and its allies’ interests when the response, as with Iran, is ruthless and uncompromising. And it must stop at nothing to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.

Read it all.

I'm still trying to figure out what the Egyptians' game is in all this. They're supposedly as worried about Iran as we are.

Israel Matzav: The nuclear conference's skewed focus