By Marney Blom
The date was September 30, 1938. Then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain held high the paper both he and Adolf Hitler had signed the day before in Munich, Germany – a document asserting that war with Hitler had been averted by allowing Germany to over-run Czechoslavakia. In return, Hitler promised to maintain calm on the European continent. According to Chamberlain, the document in his hand was proof of “peace for our time.”
However, less than two months later, on November 9, 1938, the German dictator implemented the Kristallnacht pograms, clear evidence that state-sanctioned anti-Semitism was in progress. Less than one year later Britain had no other recourse than to declare war on Germany. With Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, it became clear: Chamberlain had been duped. Sacrificing Czechoslavakia to appease the German Wehrmacht had not deterred Hitler from his even greater desire to conquer Europe.
Fast forward 75 years and Munich has once again come to the fore as a host to international talks aimed at thwarting war. This time leaders of the free world, lead by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, have found themselves working to curtail the modern-day aggressor, Iran, from threatening world peace through the development of its nuclear program. Once again there is genuine hope that an agreement will prevent military action, however, in the eyes of Israel, this scene is eerily reminiscent of the past.
“Like Czechoslovakia [in 1938], which was not party to the discussions that effectively sentenced it to death, Israel today watches from the sidelines how its existential interest is being sacrificed by the Western powers,” said Israeli Member of the Knesset Moshe Feiglin. “Any rational person understands that we are in the midst of a process [that] leads to a nuclear-armed Iran.”
But Kerry disagrees. During a gathering of the world’s top diplomats and security officials in Munich on February 2, 2014, the U.S. Secretary of State emphasized the need for both sides to negotiate in good faith. Mohamad Javad Zarif was optimistic.
As Iran’s foreign minister, Zarif agreed Iran and the international community need to restore mutual trust. He projected that Tehran’s ultimate goal was “a good solution – a balanced solution.” Referring to both the deal Iran struck with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on November 11, which gave U.N. inspectors wider access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, and to the P5 +1 agreement penned in Geneva on November 24, Zarif said, “That’s an important beginning, it’s not the end of the road.”
The Geneva agreement, however, has been criticized by Israel as an ineffective deterrent. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the deal was an “historic mistake.”
American Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist and political commentator Charles Krauthammer took it a step further. According to Krauthammer, the “Iran agreement is a farce.”
As the world leaders have condoned the deal, the popular columnist asserts that President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry can be likened to the European leaders whose appeasement of Adolf Hitler resulted in World War II. According to Krauthammer, the Geneva Iran nuclear agreement will go down in history as “the worst deal since Munich in 1938,”
And as history would have it, the city that will always be associated with the historic and fatal miscalculation of diplomatic good faith – an error that led to the death of 50 million people during
the Second World War, last week played host to our modern-day world’s attempt to secure “peace for our time.” A mere coincidence? Or a stark warning. The world should sit up and take note. If “good faith” once again overrides good judgement the outcome could exponentially eclipse the horrors of World War II.
By placing confidence in the promises made by an extreme regime that has consistently failed to demonstrate that it can be trusted, the leaders of the free world may be sending a message to Iran that once again they can be duped.
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