Iran deal foes reach new low in fear mongering, claim Iran will nuke US, kill millions

by Ian Reifowitz

This is how you scare people.

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse than a full-page newspaper advertisement that opposed the Iran deal by conflating Barack Obama with Neville Chamberlain, and thus contemporary Iran with Hitler's Germany. The newest full-page ad from The World Values Network, led by Executive Director Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, breaks new ground in fear-mongering:

We implore you to kill the deal with Iran. Before Iranian nukes kill millions of Americans.

Back up a second. It's one thing to claim that Iran will cheat and attempt to build nuclear weapons after signing this treaty, and that they will succeed. It's another to claim that they will use those weapons against Israel—despite Israel having more than enough of a nuclear arsenal to respond in a devastating fashion, not to mention the response from the U.S. that would almost certainly follow a nuclear attack on its ally. But here we have a claim that Iran will not only make and use nuclear weapons, but will use them against the United States. I'm just going to let the extremeness of that claim sink in. Never mind that the Iran deal was endorsed by leading U.S. scientists, including "some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control," as well as three dozen retired admirals and generals, and someone who as late as this spring argued that no deal worth doing could be had with Iran and who was, until a few days ago, the president of an cabal called, wait for it, United Against a Nuclear Iran. Here's what UANI's former president, Gary Samore, says now in endorsing the deal: "I'm skeptical that we can reject this agreement and negotiate a substantially better deal within any kind of reasonable time frame."
The only way the opponents of this deal can win is through fear. They certainly can't do it through reason. They offer no feasible alternative to the deal, no path to a better one, no way around the fact that the other five countries who negotiated this deal alongside us will abandon the sanctions if we walk away from it, leaving Iran 100 percent free to proceed however it wishes when it comes to its nuclear program. How exactly would that make things better?
Who would you trust on whether to vote yes: someone who says Iran is not only suicidal, but, I don't know, suicidal squared, or someone who said he couldn't be convinced that the world and Iran could reach a fair agreement—until he saw the agreement now before Congress. The ad under discussion here targeted Sen. Cory Booker. I urge you to tell him and/or your senators and representatives to choose reason over fear, expertise over propaganda, and leadership over demagoguery.