From McCain AIPAC speech:
The threats to Israel’s security are large and growing, and America’s commitment must grow as well. I strongly support the increase in military aid to Israel, scheduled to begin in October. I am committed to making certain Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. Israel’s enemies are too numerous, its margin of error too small, and our shared interests and values too great for us to follow any other policy.
Foremost in all our minds is the threat posed by the regime in Tehran. The Iranian president has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and suggested that Israel’s Jewish population should return to Europe. He calls Israel a “stinking corpse” that is “on its way to annihilation.” But the Iranian leadership does far more than issue vile insults. It acts in ways directly detrimental to the security of Israel and the United States.
A sponsor of both Hamas and Hezbollah, the leadership of Iran has repeatedly used violence to undermine Israel and the Middle East peace process. It has trained, financed, and equipped extremists in Iraq who have killed American soldiers fighting to bring freedom to that country. It remains the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism and threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East, from Basra to Beirut.
Tehran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an unacceptable risk, a danger we cannot allow. Emboldened by nuclear weapons, Iran would feel free to sponsor terrorist attacks against any perceived enemy. Its flouting of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty would render that agreement obsolete and could induce Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others to join a nuclear arms race. The world would have to live, indefinitely, with the possibility that Tehran might pass nuclear materials or weapons to one of its allied terrorist networks. Armed as well with its ballistic missile arsenal, an Iranian nuclear bomb would pose an existential threat to the people of Israel.
European negotiators have proposed a peaceful endgame for Tehran, should it abandon its nuclear ambitions and comply with UN Security Council resolutions. The plan offers far-reaching economic incentives, external support for a civilian nuclear energy program, and integration into the international community. But Tehran has said no…
…we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before. Yet it’s hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another. Such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents, as the radicals and hardliners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the appearance of respectability.
Rather than sitting down unconditionally with the Iranian president or supreme leader in the hope that we can talk sense into them, we must create the real-world pressures that will peacefully but decisively change the path they are on.
It is purblind idiocy, sorry to say, when Obama says he will meet with the Iranian leadership without preconditions. If an enemy of the United States wanted to figure out the best way to strengthen the mullahs, diminish America and set the stage for global catastrophe, he couldn’t script anything better than an American President kowtowing to Iran’s murderous government. McCain, on the other hand, notes that Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons – with the implication being that military action will be used if nothing else works – and lays out a program of international diplomacy and economic warfare to bring Iran’s government to heel. Key to this is attacking Iran’s Achilles heel – the fact that Iran imports most of its gasoline; deny Iran this gasoline, and Iran’s economy will grind swiftly to a halt, and if that doesn’t get them to talk, nothing will, ever.
Iran with nuclear weapons is a standing threat to the lives of millions of innocent human beings, including innocent Iranians. Iraq with nuclear weapons is a nation which will feel free to sponsor terrorism all around the globe, safe under a nuclear umbrella from any direct retaliation. Iran with nuclear weapons is something which cannot be allowed to happen – and by electing McCain to carry forward policies designed to force Iran to back down, we’ll have a good shot at preventing a nuclear Iran. By electing Obama we will just ensure that Iran obtains nuclear weapons, and becomes a horrible threat to the entire world.
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