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“Stop Iran – Or I Will” ACTION ALERT – CONTACT THE U.S. SENATE TODAY Dear Solsticewitch13 , Our email yesterday addressed the issue of Iran launching a nuclear weapon over the United States in order to ignite an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could short-out electrical equipment, power grids, and sensitive electronic equipment. Those of us who have lived without electricity for a few days after a storm understand how this cripples our way of life. Imagine electrical power and communications wiped out for months or longer. The devastation to our economy and our very way of life is almost incalculable. Severe food shortages and lack of fresh water, leading to panic and chaos, would be just the beginning. In the article below Jeffrey Goldberg reports on the recent interview he conducted with new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s message to President Obama was clear and unequivocal: Stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or Israel will. We have highlighted in yellow segments of the story that we find especially relevant to the ACT! for America message regarding how we must view and deal with Islamists – which is the theme of Brigitte Gabriel’s bestseller They Must Be Stopped. (If you haven’t yet read it you need to get a copy right away). As we noted yesterday, the Obama administration’s various actions and overtures do not inspire confidence that President Obama will exert the kind of pressure on Iran that is necessary to convince the mullahs to abandon their nuclear weapons program. Perhaps this is why Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered this unmistakable – and necessary – message to President Obama. The good news is we can take action on Iran TODAY! We have just learned that Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) have sponsored an amendment to President Obama’s budget that will hit Iran where it hurts – by making sure your U.S. tax dollars DO NOT support companies that do business with Iran’s energy sector. The Senate will vote on this amendment TODAY. It is crucial that five Senators, listed below, are contacted as soon as possible and urged to vote “yes” on this amendment. If you live in Indiana, North Dakota, New Jersey, Washington, or New York, it’s especially important that you call your Senator listed below. So please take less than 5 minutes to call the Senators listed! Tell them to stop Iran’s nuclear bomb by voting in favor of Amendment 932!
March 31, 2009 Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will The message from Israel's new prime minister is stark: if the Obama administration doesn't prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, Israel may be forced to attack. An Atlantic exclusive. In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself. “The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons. In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.” History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.” But Netanyahu also said that Iran threatens many other countries apart from Israel, and so his mission over the next several months is to convince the world of the broad danger posed by Iran. One of his chief security advisers, Moshe Ya’alon, told me that a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. “This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region—Washington or Tehran?” Netanyahu said he would support President Obama’s decision to engage Iran, so long as negotiations brought about a quick end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “How you achieve this goal is less important than achieving it,” he said, but he added that he was skeptical that Iran would respond positively to Obama’s appeals. In an hour-long conversation, held in the Knesset, Netanyahu tempered his aggressive rhetoric with an acknowledgement that nonmilitary pressure could yet work. “I think the Iranian economy is very weak, which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.” When I suggested that this statement contradicted his assertion that Iran, by its fanatic nature, is immune to pressure, Netanyahu smiled thinly and said, “Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous.” He went on, “Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest. People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?” Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.” [Editor’s Note: This is why President Obama’s words to the Iranian leaders, that claim we share the same values of the “preciousness of humanity”, were incorrect, and reveal a stunning misunderstanding of the worldview of the Iranian mullahs. They don’t share this value –even when it comes to their own people.] He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation at the hands of Israel or America. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said. Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me. Both Israeli and American intelligence officials agree that Iran is moving forward in developing a nuclear-weapons capability. The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, said earlier this month that Iran has already “crossed the technological threshold,” and that nuclear military capability could soon be a fact: “Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.” American officials argue that Iran has not crossed the “technological threshold”; the director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, said recently that Israel and the U.S. are working with the same set of facts, but are interpreting it differently. “The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view,” he said. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, recently warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would undermine stability in the Middle East and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf. The Obama administration agrees with Israel that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to Middle East stability, but it also wants Israel to focus on the Palestinian question. Netanyahu, for his part, promises to move forward on negotiations with the Palestinians, but he made it clear in our conversation that he believes a comprehensive peace will be difficult to achieve if Iran continues to threaten Israel, and he cited Iran’s sponsorship of such Islamist groups as Hezbollah and Hamas as a stumbling block. Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff who is slated to serve as Netanyahu’s minister for strategic threats, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, telling me that “jihadists” interpret compromise as weakness. He cited the reaction to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza four years ago. “The mistake of disengagement from Gaza was that we thought like Westerners, that compromise would defuse a problem—but it just encouraged the problem,” he said. “The jihadists saw withdrawal as a defeat of the West … Now, what do you signal to them if you are ready to divide Jerusalem, or if you’re ready to withdraw to the 1967 lines? In this kind of conflict, your ability to stand and be determined is more important than your firepower.” Click here to continue reading this article ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACT for America P.O. Box 12765 Pensacola, FL 32591 http://www.actforamerica.org/ ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure. HOW CAN I TELL OTHERS ABOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION? Send a personalized version of this message to your friends. HOW CAN I SUPPORT YOUR ORGANIZATION? Click here to give an online donation. |
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