Obama adviser wants Israel to give up nukes

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

TEL AVIV – The president of a think tank that arranged a conference call Monday between the White House and progressive activist organizations in which participants discussed how to coordinate public defense of President Obama’s pending Iran deal has another ultimate target in mind.

Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, wants Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, arguing such a move will ensure Iran halts its illicit nuclear program and will help to create a Mideast nuclear-free zone.

On Monday, White House officials held a private strategy conference call with progressive organizations to discuss ways of convincing lawmakers to support a deal with Iran being brokered by the Obama administration.

The conference call organized by Ploughshares Fund, an anti-nuclear weapons advocacy group, had about 100 participants.

Cirincione previously advised Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign on nuclear issues.

The Ploughshares president outlined in his 2008 book, “Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons,” that he favors Israel giving up its nuclear weapons to ensure Iran doesn’t obtain nukes.

He presented his position in a March 2005 opinion article for The Globalist, “Iran and Israel’s Nuclear Weapons.”

In the piece, Cirincione stated, “Now is the time to put U.S. muscle behind long-standing U.S. policy of seeking a nuclear-free Middle East region” with specific focus on Israel’s nuclear weapons.

He called for an “even-handed policy that views all nonconventional weapons in the Middle East as threats to regional peace and stability.”

“Everyone already knows about Israel’s bombs in the closet,” Cirincione wrote. “Bringing them out into the open and putting them on the table as part of a regional deal may be the only way to prevent others from building their own bombs in their basements.”

For Cirincione, targeting Israel’s nuclear program is a long-term policy aim.

“It will not be easy and will likely take years to fashion such an agreement. That is why there is no time to lose.”

Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, yet, as a policy, the government does not acknowledge it.

Israel is said to have launched its nuclear program as early as the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In March, at about the same time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress, the Obama administration approved a Freedom of Information Act request that resulted in the release of an extensive Pentagon report discussing Israel’s nuclear weapon capabilities.

‘An issue of the presidency’

On Monday, the Washington Free Beacon reported it obtained an audio recording of the conference call that day arranged by the Ploughshares Fund. In the call, White House officials described Obama’s Iran negotiations as the president’s “signature foreign policy accomplishment,” a policy that must in turn be supported by Democrats.

“This has really been on the front burner from a foreign perspective, although not in the public eye necessarily, since the very beginning,” Matt Nosanchuk, an official in the White House Office of Public Engagement, told participants, according to the audio description. “This is not an issue of the day, this is really an issue of the presidency.”

Another official with the White House’s Public Engagement office, John Bisognano, stressed “the importance of this to the president.”

“This is clearly an issue that is very close to his heart and something that’s extraordinarily important for the future of frankly the world,” Bisognano said. “I want to make sure everyone understands this is a top priority for the administration, and this is clearly something that we’re all focused on moving forward and excited about hoping that we can come to a solid agreement.”

A key participant in the call was Robert Creamer, a member of the progressive Democracy Partners group and the general consultant to United for Change, which was formed to support Obama’s governing agenda.

“We have to take to our memberships all over the country,” Creamer told participants in the call. “We all have to step up. The other side will go crazy with intensity.”

Creamer urged progressive activists to target Democrats by “blitzing the hell out of the Hill.”

“What will be ultimately decisive is the level of intensity that members of Congress feel, particularly Democrats,” said Creamer. “Democrats are actually the key people here because if we can have enough votes to prevent a presidential veto override [of the deal], then we win.

“That means tons of phone calls, lots of lobbying contacts, not just a couple of good conversations, I mean just blitzing the hell out of the Hill,” Creamer said, predicting “a big, big battle” over the deal. “This is going to be a real war for the next week.”

Creamer reportedly also provided participants with input from his wife, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.

“Let me just also note, my wife, Congresswoman Schakowsky, just yelled across the room to me to make clear to everybody that we have to be clear that this is a good deal because it prevents Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Creamer said. “The other side will go crazy. We have to be really clear that it’s a good deal.”

As WND reported, the Ploughshares Fund opposes America’s development of a missile-defense system and contributes to scores of anti-war groups highly critical of U.S. foreign policy and military expansion.

The Ploughshares Fund has a long history of anti-war advocacy and is a partner of the Marxist-oriented Institute for Policy Studies. The institute has urged the defunding of the Pentagon and massive decreases in U.S. defense capabilities, including slashing the American nuclear arsenal to 292 deployed weapons, WND also previously reported.

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Obama adviser wants Israel to give up nukes

"Iran nukes will be Israel"s gas chambers"

Secretary of State John Kerry negotiates with Iranians

WASHINGTON – Stark sentiments and dire warnings on an occasion that was to be a night of celebration:

• Iran’s nuclear weapons will be the new gas chambers for Israel.

• It would cost only $ 2 billion to fix the threat that could destroy America at any moment, but Congress and the president ignore it.

• We’re on the brink of disaster: The only chance the U.S. has of surviving is to be the best friend to Israel we can.

• The FBI is investigating ISIS in all 50 states: The barbarians are not just at the gate, they are inside.

• Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. They target Israel today, America tomorrow.

• Speaking out for the truth is not Islamophobic.

• Amazing – a dinner where people are given awards for simply telling the truth.

• Anti-semitism did not die at Auschwitz.

Those were just some of the poignant, sobering and insightful observations made by a roster of eminent speakers in a series of powerful speeches at an awards dinner on Thursday evening.

The event was the 9th annual “Rays of Light in the Darkness” awards ceremony and dinner held by the Endowment for Middle East Truth, or EMET.

The organization is a Washington, D.C., based think tank and policy center which informs and advises lawmakers and their staff, develops close working relationships with them, and challenges what it characterizes as “the falsehoods and misrepresentations that abound in U.S. Middle East policy.”

EMET describes its mission as working with lawmakers who “understand the importance of a strong and secure America, and a strong American-Israeli alliance against the forces of radical Islam and terror.”

Honorees were:

• Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

• Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas

• Talk show host Erick Stakelbeck

• Muslim Zionist Kasim Hafeez

• Canadian lawmaker Irwin Cotler

• Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Other speakers included master of ceremonies, and former assistant secretary of defense, Frank Gaffney and EMET founder Sarah Stern. Talk radio host Mark Levin opened the event by leading the gathering in the pledge of allegiance to America.

Sen. Cotton was the only member of the Senate to vote against a bill that turned the chamber’s treaty powers upside down, when it comes to striking a deal with Iran. The tally 98 to 1, with one senator not voting.

By law, the Senate must approve any treaty with a foreign power by a two-thirds vote. The legislation, approved by the Senate in May, would require a deal with Iran on its nuclear program to be submitted to Congress. But, if Congress rejects the deal, President Obama could veto the rejection. The Senate and the House would then have to come up with a two-thirds majorities to override the veto. So, instead of a two-thirds Senate majority needed to approve the treaty, a two-thirds congressional majority would be needed to disapprove of it.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

Cotton is also the senator who wrote an open letter informing Iran’s leaders that Congress has a constitutional role, by law, in ratifying international agreements. 46 Republican senators signed the letter.

The Senator was not able to address the EMET dinner in person because he was called to emergency meetings in Ukraine. The freshman is the youngest member of the Senate and a graduate of Harvard Law School. Emerging from the army with the rank of captain, Cotton served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and was awarded the Bronze Star.

In recorded remarks played at the EMET dinner, Cotton stressed that the bottom line in any deal struck with Iran must be: Does it dismantle their nuclear program or not? If not, it should be rejected, he emphasized.

Cotton also noted that used to be the position of the Obama administration, but that has changed.

The senator emphasized a recurring theme of the evening: The importance of speaking the truth about the threats facing America’s allies and the rest of the world.

Rep. Gohmert was the driving force behind the speech given to Congress in March by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who received a remarkable 26 standing ovations while delivering a passionate warning against the Iranian nuclear peril.

Gohmert originally had the idea when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was still House Speaker. He drafted a letter, signed by colleagues, proposing Netanyahu address Congress. That went nowhere, but Gohmert had better luck when Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, because House Speaker.

It was the texan who told the EMET dinner crowd that Iran’s nuclear weapons would be the new gas chambers for Israel.

“By the grace of God, we can’t allow them to kill millions more Jews or anyone else.”

Gohmert said the Obama administration knows that as long as the U.S. talks with Iran, no matter how “worthless” the talks may be, Israel cannot militarily destroy the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

That’s because, he said, Israel knows the Obama administration would side with Iran in the United Nations, and, “This is an affront to Israel.”

“We’re on the brink of disaster,” warned the congressman. He told the largely Jewish crowd he was a Christian who reads the Bible every day.

And, he said, acquaintances of his had claimed to identify the United States in biblical prophecies. He didn’t know about that, but, he remarked, the only chance America had of being around in end times “is to be the best friend of Israel we can.

Talk show host and author Erick Stakelbeck rhetorically asked why should Americans care about the threat posed by ISIS from the other side of the world?

Because, he said, the FBI director recently announced the bureau is investigating ISIS activity in all 50 states.

“The barbarians are not just at the gate, they are inside the gate,” Stakelbeck announced.

But, he said, in such trying times, there is still great reason for hope.

He noted how Israel’s enemies such as Haman, Nebuchadnezzar and Hitler all wound up on the ash heap of history.

“Take heart”, he comforted, “You are on the winning team.”

Kasim Hafeez, a man of Pakistani descent who lived in England, described his conversion from an anti-Zionist Jew hater who became a Muslim Zionist who married a Jew.

He said the turning point came when he read Alan Dershowitz’s book “The Case for Israel,” then went to Israel and fell in love with it.

And, as a Muslim he now works for Christians United for Israel.

Hafeez said, if not for Israel, “I’d be in a jihadist training camp.”

He believes Israeli soldiers aren’t just defending Israel, but the entire free world. Hafeez said Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. “They target Israel today, America tomorrow.”

“Speaking out for the truth is not Islamophobic,” he declared.

And, Hafeez concluded, “To be free of hatred is incredible.”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach expressed amazement at “a dinner where people are given awards for simply telling the truth.”

“I’m not pro-Israel because I’m Jewish. I love Israel because I am Jewish. I am pro-Israel because I am an American,” the rabbi declared.

Boteach called Israel is “the greatest blessing to Muslims in the Middle East” because it is the only place they can be free, and it is the only country in the region where women, gays and other minorities are not persecuted.

“If you don’t love Israel, you have no heart,” he summed up.

“Anti-semitism did not die at Auschwitz,” grimly observed honoree Irwin Cotler.

The Canadian member of Parliament told a hushed crowd how Iran executes one person every two hours.

“Unprecedented persecution,” he called it.

Yet, “The world never hears about it.”

Cotler noted it is said there would not be an Israel but for the holocaust, but, he insisted, “It is the other way around: There would not have been a holocaust if they’re had been an Israel.”

Frank Gaffney, assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration and current president of the Center for Security Policy, warned about the impending threat to America’s existence posed by Iran.

He saluted the efforts of former CIA Director Adm. James Woolsey, who was in attendance, to alert lawmakers and citizens to the ease with which Iran could knock out America’s electric grid with an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack, by merely exploding a single nuclear bomb over the Midwest.

Gaffeny said it would be a “genocide of unprecedented proportions” eventually resulting in the death of 90 percent of the U.S. population.

“And it could happen at any moment,” especially considering Iran’s partnering with North Korea, which has the technical capability to launch such an attack without detection.

Gaffney noted it would take only $ 2 billion dollars to secure America’s electric grid and neutralize the threat of such an attack, but neither Congress nor the president seemed in any hurry.

He also reminded the audience of the sentiment expressed by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that destroying America was “not only desirable but possible.”

Sarah Stern, a tireless advocate for Israel, is the founder and president of EMET.

As for the Obama administration’s pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran, she declared, “We are not negotiating, we are groveling.”

Stern said the president had turned Machiavelli’s advice to “keep your enemies close and your friends at a distance” into, “Hold you enemies close and throw your friends under the bus.”

“Unfortunately, our president does not think like many Americans. He seems to base his foreign policy on how the world ought to be, not how the world actually is.”

She noted how Obama said in an interview he could envision Iran becoming “a very successful regional power.”

This is the same Iran, she noted, that is the world’s leading state sponsor of Islamic terrorism and a state that celebrates “Death to America Day” every year on Nov. 4.

Stern also observed it is also a regime that prosecutes women for being raped and men for being gay.

“The moral universe has been turned upon its head,” she concluded.

“This is 1939 all over again.”

Follow Garth Kant @DCgarth

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"Iran nukes will be Israel"s gas chambers"