From surreptitious efforts to effectively capitulate to Iran, to contending with a hornet’s nest of Palestinian terror, this week’s Action Update, unfortunately, brings challenging news.

Shhh…. President Biden Has a Secret Plan

It must be a day ending in “y.” The Biden administration has decided to, yet again, look for a path to thwart the will of Congress, the American people, and our allies by making what very well seems to be an unwritten, but spoken, agreement with Tehran concerning its nuclear program. In a nutshell, the U.S., which has already lessened the intensity with which it pursues legally mandated sanctions against the Islamic Republic, is now seeking to make a small, silent, and shaky agreement with Iran that will leave Tehran richer and enable Iran to maintain its status as a nuclear threshold state. A far cry from the “longer and stronger” approach promised by this administration.

This is both strategically unacceptable and legally indefensible. According to reports, under the small, silent, and shaky deal, Iran would be able to enrich uranium to a level that makes it fissile but voluntarily chooses not to do so (with a huge assumption that Iran is not doing so clandestinely). This would immediately enable Tehran to engage in a consistent campaign of nuclear blackmail against Israel, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and anyone else Tehran doesn’t care for. And in turn, make the Biden administration its lobbyists against any effort to pressure the regime.

Legally, as House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul articulated in a letter to President Joe Biden last week, Congress advanced the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) when it was clear that then-President Obama would have preferred making a deal with Iran without sending it to Congress for approval (We know…. Democracy is just such a hassle!).  According to McCaul, “INARA was enacted with strong bipartisan support to ensure Congressional oversight of U.S. policy regarding Iran’s nuclear program. It requires the President to submit to Congress within five days any nuclear agreement reached with Iran.” And most importantly, McCaul writes that the definition of a deal “makes clear that any arrangement or understanding with Iran, even informal, requires submission to Congress.”

As such, if President Biden proceeds with this small, silent, and shaky Iran deal, he will be enabling Iran’s nuclear ambitions, violating INARA, and undermining the will of The American people - the overwhelming majority of whom support Congressional review of the deal.

Jenin is the Capital of West Bank Palestinian Terror

In recent days, Israel’s military conflicts with Palestinian terrorists in Jenin have reached a fever pitch. So significant has the issue become, with seven Israeli soldiers wounded, that Monday, the Israelis called in close air support for ground troops operating in the West Bank for the first time in years.

That specific incident took place when, predictably, Palestinian terrorists fired on an Israeli helicopter evacuating wounded soldiers. At that point, Israel called in an Apache helicopter gunship to eliminate the threat to the wounded Israelis and those seeking to save them.

According to reports, the fighting in Jenin has been highly intense with one commentator simply saying, “Jenin is out of control.” It is likely Israel will be compelled to engage in a more significant military operation - as opposed to individual strikes aimed at stopping specific terror groups and attacks upon which Israel has been focused - in the coming weeks or months.

It should be noted that the U.S. is far from blameless in the wider problem of Palestinian terrorism. By supporting entities like UNRWA, the Biden administration frees up Palestinian Authority (PA) funds that should be spent on infrastructure and humanitarian work, and in doing so, enables the PA to continue its pay-to-slay terror program, unabated. But at the end of the day, the fault here lies with those Palestinians that support terror, and there are many. 

What Partner for Peace?

As readers of the Update are well aware, from the day of its modern founding the Jewish state has made numerous offers to the Palestinians in an effort to bring peace to the Holy Land. All of these offers have, of course, been rejected. President Bill Clinton famously placed the blame for the failure to achieve peace during his time in office on Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat’s intransigence. Conversely, foreign policy elites seek to attribute the failure of peace talks to differences on specific issues, and then they press Israel to inappropriately compromise on those issues.

The foreign policy elites are wrong. And while President Clinton was right, he was describing the symptom, not the disease.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research – hardly a pro-Israel bastion – released a poll of Palestinians with some deeply troubling, but highly illuminating, results. Here are a few key findings:

• 71% of Palestinians support the existence of terrorist groups.

• 86% of Palestinians reject the idea that the PA has the right to arrest those planning terror attacks against Israel.

• 66% of Palestinians do not believe Israel will exist in 25 years.

• 84% of Palestinians believe the PA is corrupt.

• Finally, if elections were held today, PA President Abbas would lose to Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh by a whopping 23 points.

Bottom line, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (of blessed memory) and current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both articulated that “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no ‎more Israel.” The polling above, as well as the ever-increasing threat of Palestinian terrorism, indicate that Bibi is as right today as Golda was when she first uttered the phrase.

In the coming weeks, the Action Fund Team will be putting together our legislative agenda for the upcoming CUFI Summit. We look forward to sharing it with you, and for those who will be joining us at the CUFI Summit, we look forward to seeing you in Washington in just a few weeks.

Sincerely,

The CUFI Action Fund Team