Peaceful approach to Iran won’t work

Stanley Ryba, Henderson

Sunday, Aug. 2, 2015 | 2 a.m.

The theme of President Barack Obama’s speech to the VFW members in Pittsburgh reminds me of the immortal words of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938, “Peace in our time.” Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry characterize the proposed agreement with Iran as “sign on or war.”

Why war at this point? No matter how weary the poor negotiators are, common sense dictates that all should stay at the table. Negotiations should continue for as long as it takes to eliminate any prior-notice concessions and allow for surprise audits. Economic sanctions give the U.S. and our allies the strong hand we will never again have after sanctions are removed. The billions of dollars that will flow into Iranian society will strengthen its leadership, ease its internal stress and allow funds to form new alliances, and I am sure Iran will be in a position to tell us to go hang if we try to garner support for re-establishing sanctions.

Obama confidently states that the “Death to America, Death to Israel” slogans are mere political strategies to soothe Iranian hardliners. Nonsense. They mean it. I speak from experience, for as an 18-year-old U.S. Navy crewman based on a destroyer at Haifa at the birth of Israel, I saw how strong Arab emotion ran. I did four deployments to the Middle East, and looking back after nearly 70 years, Arab fervor to destroy Israel has not abated.

In conclusion, this warning: Modern technology will allow the development of tactical atomic weaponry at Israel’s peril. The young insiders in Washington should awaken to the fact that the civilized world in modern times has not had much success dealing in a peaceful way with supreme leaders. We need to take a strong position and stay with it.