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Opinion
Home / Gisborne Herald / Opinion

Iran given free hand to sponsor terrorism

Opinion by
Gisborne Herald
14 Oct, 2023 06:01 AMQuick Read

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Clive Bibby

Clive Bibby

We should not be persuaded by the crocodile tears from Joe Biden or those of his Democrat predecessor Barack Obama professing they have been and always will be right behind the Israeli nation as they try to find a way of defending themselves against this monstrous invasion sponsored and possibly engineered by Iran.

The blood of all those Israeli dead will be on the US president’s hands as he disingenuously attempts to show his support for the victims of this outrageous incursion.

I say that because, on examination, this apparent failure of US and Israeli intelligence to keep a track on terrorist movements during the planning months of this latest attack has all the hallmarks of distraction and misinterpretation of information as it came to hand.

It is astonishing that the most sophisticated intelligence gathering system known to man failed to the extent that we are being led to believe.

In my humble opinion, there was a failure to pass on to the Israelis vital information that suggested something was brewing, which would have at least put their border troops and Iron Dome defence batteries on high alert.

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You don’t have to be an international terrorism expert to follow recent history covering the radically different US/Iranian relationships under the last three US administrations.

They are in stark contrast when it comes to how the Trump and Obama-Biden administrations

dealt with the world’s No.1 sponsor of terrorism.

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On the one hand, Trump abandoned the Obama cash for restrained activity/appeasement policies and instead imposed sanctions that had the immediate effect of not only limiting Iran’s progress with its uranium enrichment programme aimed at producing nuclear weapons of its own, but also its ability to sponsor terrorist organisations bent on the destruction of Israel.

And since the advent of the Biden administration, Iran has contemptuously ignored Trump’s sanctions — enabling it to increase its oil sales by 70 percent and its uranium enrichment programme to a position where it has achieved about 60 percent enriched capability.

This failure to police the sanctions has allowed Iran to build a war chest that allows it to fully fund all the terrorist operations at whatever level in the Middle East — so much so that the Israelis are more than likely to be facing a war on most of its borders where it has a common terrorist enemy; Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south and west.

Yet Biden’s response is to:

a) claim ignorance of the build-up on the Israeli borders and non-personal responsibility for the destruction and human suffering that has already occurred; and

b) move the US Mediterranean Carrier Fleet closer to the coast of Israel.

Given the duplicitous record of his administration when it comes to saying one thing but doing another, it will be interesting to see whether Israel gets anything like the backing he has promised to deliver.

Pigs can fly!

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