Puzzled

Hugh Hewitt leaves me puzzled in his latest column in the Washington Post. It contains any number of statements, claims, and conclusions that I do not understand. So, for example, he implies that he approves of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements about the Golan Heights. Under UN Security Council Resolution 497 Israel’s annexation of the Golan is illegal. It is an act of war, aggression.

Or there’s this, something else of which he apparently approves:

On Sunday, the two men appeared together, with Netanyahu bluntly stating that Israel would never leave the Golan Heights, which abuts Syria, and Bolton underscoring the strength of the Trump-Netanyahu bond and emphasizing that Iran poses the most serious threat in the region.

“Despite getting out of the Iran nuclear deal, despite the sanctions,” Bolton said to Netanyahu, “we have little doubt that Iran’s leadership is still strategically committed to achieving deliverable nuclear weapons.”

That isn’t what the U. S. intelligence community has said. My recollection is that their finding is that Iran ended its nuclear weapons development program more than a decade ago. And does Iran actually “pose the more serious threat in the region”? I would say that distinction belongs to Saudi Arabia or, perhaps, Israel.

This is a near-perfect example of the U. S.’s pursuing someone else’s foreign policy objectives rather than our own. IMO the correct posture for the U. S. WRT Iran is what’s been called “strategic patience”. I understand that Iran’s threats against Israel are taken seriously by the Israelis and understandably so. One nuclear weapon is enough to destroy Israel. But is Iran actually the gravest threat?

In contrast Saudi Arabia is murdering journalists or dissidents or both, is one of the most repressive of women in the world if not the most repressive, finances radical imams throughout the world who promote hatred of the West, and supports terrorist groups.