Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

First of all, I’m vehemently opposed to ethnic profiling.

The practice is a national embarrassment and disgrace to any nation engaging in the practice, and in Germany in the late 1930’s and 1940’s, we see how glaringly dangerous and outrageous became the results of mindlessly deciding a group is ill-fitted for inclusion in a society.  Profiling leads to hatred, or perhaps hatred leads to profiling … not sure about that chicken and egg discussion at the moment, but under Nazi rule, the next logical step was a string of death camps.  May we never forget the lessons of Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen.

Two code words in being Jewish are, “Never Again.”  Never here, never there, never anywhere.  That philosophy, that NEED, became the bedrock on which the State of Israel was created, and there was an immediate understanding that in order for Israel to survive while surrounded by so many nations hostile to her existence, she had to be stronger than her adversaries.  Only the strongest shall survive is a fundamental law of nature and that is how species evolve and flourish.  And Israel has sprouted wings.  Her deserts bloom, and her military establishment and rank and file men and women know that they are the thin line preventing slaughter of their families.  You probably have read that the sworn goal of Jihadist Iran is to kill every Jewish man, woman, and child in Israel and when that is what’s at stake, one tends to fight more determinedly to avert catastrophe and another holocaust.  Necessarily, the IDF has become a force with which to be reckoned.  Ultra-modern conventional weapons, an air force second to none, and a formidable array of nuclear weapons give Israel a significant combative edge while still being vastly outnumbered in the region.

Would Tel Aviv be concerned if Iran or Egypt purchased five hundred T-14 Armata battle tanks from Russia?  Of course, but that purchase would not tip the scales of power in the Middle East.  Israeli jets might use neutron weapons to instantly exterminate hostile tank crews, and IDF paratroopers could then capture the unmanned and silent tanks in the field.  In warfare, technology is power, and the State of Israel has the power to control her own destiny.

Well, HAD the power to control her own destiny, at any rate.

On March 3^rd, 2015 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress, and his plea fell on deaf ears.  He strongly urged the United States not to move forward with an agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, in which we and other key nations allowed billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets to be released.  And in return, Iran agreed not to have more than 5,060 centrifuges at their nuclear facility at Natanz for a period of ten years.

The State of Israel has every intention to exist for more than just the next ten years.  Benjamin Netanyahu would not have flown to Washington to express concern over a conventional weapons sale between Russia and an Islamic nation, especially when Israel’s military has the technology and expertise to neutralize any threat those weapons might pose.  In fact, the IDF might actually welcome the deployment of five hundred sophisticated Russian-built battle tanks, because they would become Israeli tanks in a battle lasting at most two hours.  But Iran being allowed to build nuclear weapons with a mere decade moratorium is a horse of an entirely different color.

So I wrote a novel, entitled, The Tenth Plague.  The acorn from which it grows is the Iran nuclear deal, and in it, that nation has perfected nuclear weapons by the year 2028.  Prime Minister Netanyahu’s greatest fears have become reality, and with the knowledge that if only one missile pierces through Israel’s nuclear umbrella, Tel Aviv would instantly become a sheet of glass for the next thousand years, Mossad and Washington ponder what to do about this very real threat.

That brings me to the tip of the spear, the sharp point of this article.

In an article written by Jordan Arizmendi and published on January 29, 2017 on the online site, “Medium”, the author states, “Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) did a study about the education levels of certain ethnic groups in America. The study found that more than one in four Iranians hold a Master’s degree or a doctorate. This statistic makes Iranians the most highly educated group in America. President Trump has authorized executive actions banning Iranians from our country.”

And according to the site PAAIA, Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, “According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey, 470,341 (+/- 21,201) individuals reported their first or second generation ancestry as Iranian.  However, it is widely believed that this figure is an undercount of the Iranian American community.  This can be attributed to a lack of participation in the census surveys, as well as the methods used by the Census Bureau to obtain such information.  Estimates of the size of the Iranian American community range from 500,000 to one million.”

So this is a puzzle, and here’s yet another piece … an article written by Laura Bridgestock entitled, “Top Tech Schools: MIT or Cal Tech?” and published on June 11, 2018.  From her article, “MIT’s 11,466-strong student body makes it roughly five times the size of Caltech’s 2,238.  Both institutions have a greater number of postgraduates than undergraduates, reflecting their research-intensive focus.   Well-established among the world’s top tech schools, both attract applications from talented students all around the world, leading to highly diverse student bodies.  International students account for around 29 percent of enrollments at both MIT and Caltech.  At Caltech, the proportion of international students is much higher among graduate students, with 45 percent coming from outside the US, whereas only eight percent of undergraduates are international.”

Back to the lead in to this article … racial profiling.  If we have more than 500,000 people of Iranian descent living in the United States, and revered institutions such as Caltech and MIT have at least a few hundred international graduate students (I selected that number modestly) studying physics and electrical engineering, let’s be generous and say there is just one such student who will, with his newly acquired talents and expertise, return to Tehran and participate in that nation’s nuclear weapons program.  Just one.  Brilliant, driven, doctorate in hand, and he returns to Natanz to supervise centrifuge installations.

So what do we do about all this?  Put Iranian Americans in internment camps or solve this dilemma Nazi-style?  Nope.  Never again.  Not to Jews, and certainly not to Iranian Americans who breathe the same free air as you and I do.  Or can we refuse to educate ALL foreign students, for a young and seemingly innocent man with a British passport may possibly be an ardent Jihadist, and he could end up working at Natanz, as well.  Or do we refuse to educate Iranian Americans at all, for fear some of them will return to Tehran?  That’s as ridiculous as refusing to educate a kid from Germany, because just maybe his great-grandfather fought in World War II.  And while I’m on that subject, President Trump traces his ancestry to the village of Kallstadt in Germany, and we elected him president.  No, no, no.  The focus on citizens here or those who seek education is incorrect and is fluttering with stupidity.

We cannot and should not cause our own precious citizens to suffer, nor should we diminish our commitment to educate those with the will and desire to learn, because the government of the nation of their ethnic heritage has embarked on a perilous course.  If the statistic cited here is accurate, I applaud Iranian Americans for their commitment to education and the number of higher degrees they hold.  And perhaps some of these people have complaints about our loose and decadent society, concerns I readily share with them.  We’re all entitled to our opinions.

We are a nation of free thoughts and spirit.  We are a nation of discord and rampant disagreements, and from those processes stems our greatness.  We must remain tolerant within, but impatient with those who seek to harm us.  There has always been a line in the sand, and while it’s easy to wipe it away, it nonetheless remains.  Just as the State of Israel cannot tolerate an authoritarian state embarking on a project to develop and deploy nuclear weapons, neither can this nation allow that eventuality.

The issue at hand has nothing to do with education or the lack thereof.  It has nothing to do with how many people of what flavor or ethnicity reside where or do what.  It has nothing to do with religion or race.  Rather, it has everything to do with a serious threat from a bully, and we must recognize and fend off that threat with whatever measures are necessary to eliminate it.

There is no such thing as theoretical power.  If you have it and you use it, then you have it.  If you have it and you don’t use it, but others fear you might, then you still have it.  But if you have it and you don’t use it, and others believe you will not use it, then you are a Eunuch.

Tragically, there are nations who believe we are powerless.  First and foremost, we must show those in Tehran the error of that thought process.  We should not have entered into the nuclear deal with Iran, obscurely labeled the, “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.”  Just think about that moniker for a moment.  If anything, it’s a plan of IN-action, in that we’re going to allow Iran free reign to develop nuclear technology and devices after a decade of purported peace and tranquility.  A better name might have been, “The Ostrich Agenda”, wherein the free world’s formerly powerful nations stick their collective heads in the sand and hope for the best.

The approach used by this nation to a dedicated and unwavering enemy state is similar to the failed international concepts utilized by Washington a few decades ago, a thought process still embraced today.  Stop the spread of Communism.  We don’t need a plan, we simply need to arm the opposition in dozens of nations, prop up dictators like the Shah of Iran simply because they warm to us rather than to Moscow, and everything will be just fine.  We have never understood that a reactionary international foreign policy will never defeat a consistent, driven, and focused enemy, whether that enemy is Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran.  To react, by definition, implies that an event has first occurred to which a response is suggested or required.  And often the response is too little, too late.  Or insignificant and powerless.  Pointless.

When we sided with and armed the Shah of Iran, we chose to support a brutal totalitarian regime.  And when his regime was overturned by the masses, the pendulum in Iran swung swiftly in the opposite direction.  By virtue of our shortsightedness, the United States created the menace that is now the Islamic Republic of Iran, a dedicated and focused adversary that possesses the will and the means to do us harm.  We can sign papers of agreement and compromise and afterward sip twenty-one year old Balvenie in celebration of our successes, but those actions show a deep and foreboding misinterpretation of the men with whom we are toying.  Iran poses a significant terroristic threat to the security of this and other nations.  We must deal with that threat while it is still feasible to do so, before that adversary becomes one of an entirely different magnitude.  In April of 1951, General Douglas MacArthur openly advocated expanding the Korean Conflict and attacking China with the observation that China, “has now taken on the character of a united nationalism of increasingly dominant, aggressive tendencies.”  President Eisenhower recalled MacArthur and rebuked him for openly advocating that position.  But History repeats herself, and we are once again at a pivotal moment on a treacherous slope.

Assuming there remain historians in the year 2050, what will they write about America’s decision-making prowess in 2013, 2018, and beyond?  We have history against us here.  We entered World War I because our allies were attacked.  We entered World War II because of Pearl Harbor.  Again, we were attacked (well, maybe FDR wanted that to happen, in order to move us into the war, or perhaps that statement is a monumental example of why we’re not supposed to believe everything on the Internet).  But, regardless of manipulation and structure, we were attacked.  And that’s our modus operandi.  America reacts.  In the scenario I’ve described, zeroing in on individual citizens is an affront to humanity, and it is also part of a shell game that makes us appear to be taking steps to curtail something or other.  In the meantime, the true jaguar in the jungle is lurking and gaining strength.  Do we wait until Tehran pounces mightily and devastatingly?  Do we react forcefully or with bleak words of opposition if and when Tel Aviv ceases to be the beating heart of a free nation?  Or do we become truly angered when Washington, New York City, or Baltimore erupt as fireballs engulf those cities?

Waiting and reacting are no longer options, not when an attack will be with nuclear weapons by an enemy that believes it is glorious to die in the name of Jihad.  To predict our immediate future and the serious nature of a threat from Iran, we cannot hold dear to the concept of MAD being a reasonable deterrent, for we are dealing with an unreasonable enemy.  Jihadists look forward to death, and if we value our existence, we must recognize with whom we are dealing.

When we structured and moved forward with the “deal” with Iran a few years ago, and I place the word “deal” in quotation marks because normally, both sides gain something in a “deal”, it was entirely one-sided.  Iran was given billions of dollars in withheld funds in return for a promise.  I envision their representatives reaching out and shaking our hands, with their other hands behind their backs, fingers crossed.  A promise not to develop nuclear technology, i.e., weapons, for ten years.  Seriously?  We call that a “deal”?  To President Trump’s credit, he has consistently stated what I’ve claimed here.  This was not a deal, or at least it was an atrocious one, for we gained nothing in the scheme of things.  Now, we’ve renewed sanctions, but that decision will merely harden the resolve of those in Iran.  With billions at their disposal and strong ties to North Korea and Russia, it doesn’t take much imagination to structure a new deal between Tehran and Pyongyang … a flow of desperately needed dollars to North Korea in return for assistance in the development of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.  By imposing sanctions once again after the original deal was put in place is akin to closing the barn doors after all the livestock has escaped … too little, and much too late.

In our dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we have been doing this for quite some time, we are reaching out to pet a rabid dog and feeling everything is going to be just fine.

He hasn’t bitten us.  Yet.  If this nation waits to react to what Iran intends to do with newly perfectly nuclear technology and weaponry, we are on a collision course with monumental disaster.  Their path is clear.  Ours awaits the courage to act.

Alan N. Levy is the author of the thriller, The Tenth Plague, published by Chickadee Prince Books in 2019.

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