Mossad to Khamenei and Iran: 'Kilroy was here'
It was quite a revelation in late April when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed the world that Iran had intensified its efforts to hide evidence of its nuclear weapons program after signing the deal in 2015. The proof for this came from documents and computer discs seized by Mossad agents from a secret warehouse in Tehran.
Europe and Iranian apologists in the U.S. say Bibi didn't present anything new. Translation: We knew that the Iranians were lying, but we pretended not to see. Indeed, according to Rob Malley, a former senior official in Obama's National Security Council and a member of the team negotiating with Iran, the agreement was made possible only by letting Iran lie about the past while promising to be honest in the future.
According to the British newspaper the Telegraph:
The documents include official letters, spreadsheets, blueprints, photographs, videos and more, all attesting to the Iranian regime's clandestine plans to build nuclear weapons. One document proclaimed an ominous mission statement for the covert programme: to 'design, produce and test fire warheads, each with ten kiloton TNT yield for integration on a missle.'
It is feared among much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and Europe that Netanyahu's presentation will give President Donald Trump an excuse to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Their panic is obvious. The Boston Globe reported that, in spite of the Logan Act, the master of the Iranian deal, former secretary of state John F. Kerry, has been secretly working with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to salvage the agreement...and his tattered legacy.
As for Europe, it's in a fix. If Trump reinstates sanctions, which were suspended in 2016, when the deal went into effect, France and Germany will have a bitter choice to make: either trade with Iran or trade with the U.S. This disrupts the norm that Europe prefers, of having its cake and eating it, too.
Time will tell what the Trump administration decides to do on May 12. Whatever it is, Netanyahu's presentation will still have a profound effect in Tehran. That's because in this caper, the Israelis were not content with just scanning the top-secret papers of Iran onto a flip drive and carrying it out in their pockets. Rather, the Israelis physically took a half-ton of documents from the Iranian vault. As Caroline Glick wrote, this is as if the Mossad written Kilroy was here on the bedroom door of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Critics of Netanyahu sniff that his presentation was nothing but a "dog and pony show" for an audience of one: President Trump. Not so. This act of audacious espionage has humiliated the Iranian regime and made it a laughingstock throughout Iran. It also supports the Iranian belief that the Jews can do anything and know all the regime's secrets. This has a twofold benefit. First, it makes the regime lose confidence in itself while it weakens its hold on its support base. Second, it adds fuel to the fire of the Iranian people, especially the young, who want a regime change. Iranian women in particular are sick and tired of the regime's religious coercion, which forces them in hijabs, keeps them out of public events, and enforces misogynist regulations with female goon squads patrolling the streets to beat women with hair showing.
Glick noted that Channel 10 News Arab affairs commentator Zvi Yehezkely reported that the Arab world is laughing itself silly at Iran's humiliation. As Saul Alinsky, that paragon of the left, wrote in his Rules for Radicals, "ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
Where does this leave us?
First off, there are now reports that Israel is expecting attacks from Iran in retaliation for the recent air strike that killed Iranian operatives in Syria. Maybe. But maybe not. Not only is Iran losing confidence in itself, but whereas Obama kept Israel on a tight leash as far as taking military action goes, it's likely that Trump has turned the Israelis loose. This is evidenced by that Israeli air strike. An attack on Israel by Iran or one of its proxies could bring dire consequences to Iran's doorstep. And note that in a similar vein, Iran has stopped harassing U.S. naval ships in the Persian Gulf. Why? Because Trump is commander-in-chief and not someone like Obama. Iran fears that the Navy may have permission to sink any harassing vessels and destroy the ports they came from.
Secondly, Israel figuratively writing Kilroy was here on the bedroom door just might hasten the regime change that the Iranian people and the world have been praying for. What's that, you say? A second Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump?