Letter: Criticism of Iran deal is political

The next 60 days will bring an avalanche of attacks on the Iran agreement. The main criticism, though not explicitly stated, is essentially that we should not engage diplomatically with the enemy of Israel. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, representing the majority of the American Jewish community, has committed $40 million to get Congress to reject the agreement. I do not predict the outcome, but if this succeeds, the rest of the world might wonder about the level of influence this organization can apply to control our government’s actions.

Success would demolish a multiyear effort by the six leading world nations to resolve a conflict we ourselves generated many years ago when we foisted the Shah of Iran on its people.

Since the 1973 war, this country has been an unflinching guarantor of Israel’s existence. Donald Neff described these events in his book “Warriors Against Israel” about how Israel won the battle to become America’s ally. We have a nuclear fleet in the Persian Gulf prepared to engage against any hostile act by Iran in addition to Israel’s undeclared nuclear capacity. The Israeli government needs to admit that the world’s strongest military power can do the job.

The critics also express concern about the approximately $200 billion being spent on terrorism.

Have they forgotten that it took only a few dollars’ worth of box cutters plus some flying lessons to bring down the Twin Towers and cause the trillion-dollar spending spree to establish a security state?

We hear about the verbal threats by Hamas. Consider the order of battle. Israel: 600 planes, 1,000 tanks and more than 60 armed ships. Hamas: Zero planes, tanks, vehicles or ships. Israel: 200,000-pus soldiers. Hamas: 200 to 300 fighters.

The primary purpose of the naysayers is to diminish our president’s extraordinary achievement.

Stefan Edlis

Aspen