OPINION:
Protocol is a valuable tool of diplomacy, but protocol must defer to harsh reality when a nation’s survival is at stake. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped on protocol and President Obama’s toes when he accepted the invitation of Speaker John A. Boehner to speak to the House of Representatives without the customary endorsement of the White House. We say, good for him.
Mr. Netanyahu has the opportunity to talk in plain speech with no equivocation about the threat that Iran, armed with the Islamic bomb, poses to the survival of the Jewish state and perhaps the United States as well. Perilous times call for strong measures, and these are perilous times. Survival is more important than any president’s toes.
Mr. Obama is in an unholy hurry to seal a legacy-making deal with Iran, and with a March 31 deadline to reach an agreement the president is sending secret entreaties to Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. Over his six years in office, the president has retreated from his vow that the mullahs would not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, to simply seeking to a one-year delay in Iran’s pursuit of the bomb. Such a delay would give the civilized world, and the president himself, a little time to run for the tall grass.
If Mr. Obama is desperate, so is Mr. Netanyahu, determined to point out from the well of the House that his country would be the No. 1 target of an Iranian bomb. Ayatollah Khamenei himself has on several occasions said he is determined to erase the Jewish state, or the “Little Satan,” from the map of the world. Mr. Netanyahu takes these threats seriously because to do otherwise would be criminally negligent. Is there a responsible leader anywhere who would not?
Iran calls the United States the “Great Satan,” deserving of destruction, too. R. James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, and Peter Vincent Pry, a prominent national security adviser, point out in an op-ed article on these pages, that “Iran is either very close to being able to field a nuclear weapon, or it should be regarded as already having that capability.” Moreover, they write, “Iran works very closely with North Korea on its nuclear and missile programs. It has the ballistic missile capacity to launch weapons of substantial size and intercontinental range against us, or to orbit satellites above us.”
The two men recall that Ashton Carter, the new secretary of defense, and his Clinton-era predecessor, William Perry, urged in 2006 that the United States make a pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s long-range missiles. The threat has only intensified since.
“The United States of America stands with the State of Israel because it is in our fundamental national security interest to stand with Israel,” Mr. Obama declared on March 20, 2013. A Kuwaiti newspaper, citing high Israeli sources, reported last week that Mr. Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli warplanes if they attempted to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Mr. Obama has clearly accepted the inevitability of the nuclear Iran that he said he would never allow. The Islamic bomb may be the legacy the president is working so hard to establish. Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Washington just in time to stiffen the will of Washington and to redeem Mr. Obama’s hope for change.
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