As we were sitting down to write last week's Action Update, news was
just coming out about the blast in Beirut. This week, we'll share
what's been reported, and what we feel must come in the wake of this
horrific tragedy. In addition, we'll look at broader nuclear
proliferation in the Middle East. The common denominator in all these
troubling events is, unsurprisingly, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Beirut Blast

As anyone reading the news is aware, last week there was a horrific
blast at the Beirut port in which 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate
detonated. The explosion laid waste to a massive swath of the city and
killed at least 160 people while wounding thousands more. The highly
explosive material had been stored at the port for years after being
seized from a Russian ship.

Since the blast, the Lebanese people have taken to the streets demanding
the corrupt, incompetent thugs that run their country, and are therefore
responsible for this tragedy, be replaced. And earlier this week, the
Prime Minister and his entire cabinet resigned. This is a good first
step towards bringing Lebanon out of the death spiral in which it
presently finds itself. But it's not enough.

Hezbollah-stan

Changes at the top in Beirut will have no lasting impact as long as
Hezbollah remains the de-facto ruler of the country. The President of
Lebanon, who did not resign, has been allied with the terrorist
organization for years.

Moreover, Hezbollah's culpability here is not just that it uses mafia
tactics to ensure its largely incompetent candidates sit in power. An
Israeli news outlet reported recently that "Hezbollah apparently
planned to use the ammonium nitrate stockpile... against Israel in a
"Third Lebanon War." This tracks with what we know about
Hezbollah's affinity for ammonium nitrate as stockpiles of the
explosive fertilizer have been discovered in Hezbollah warehouses and
safehouses in Cypress, the United Kingdom and Germany.

The only way the people of Lebanon will be able to rebuild their country
and avoid such tragedies in the future is if they rid themselves of the
terrorists in their midst and their cartel of corrupted leaders. Lebanon
has a choice: remain a terrorist front in Iran's imperialist war
against the West and the rest of the Middle East or rid themselves of
the Islamic Republic's foot soldiers on Lebanese soil.

Speaking of Iran

Despite the fact that the Iran nuclear deal has been proven
time-and-again to have been nothing more than a windfall for Tehran, and
despite the fact that the Trump administration's maximum pressure
campaign against Iran has borne fruit, there are still some in the
foreign policy elite that think a return to the JCPOA is a good idea.
Well, Israel disagrees. And so too Arab countries across the region.

Recently both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have expanded
their domestic nuclear programs. They aren't yet developing nuclear
weapons, but they aren't sitting idly by and waiting for another
nuclear accord to enable Tehran to develop the weapon first. Critics of
the Iran nuclear accord noted that its failings could lead to a nuclear
arms race in the Middle East. These latest moves by Riyadh and the UAE
indicate those critics were right.

If the UAE or Saudi Arabia go down the path to nuclear weapons, it'll
be because they were pushed there by the foreign policy Utopians who
ignore all of Iran's actions and most of their words, and insist on
making a deal with the world's most maniacal regime. Saudi Arabia and
Gulf States want stability in the region, and that's part of the
reason they have come out in unanimous support of renewing the UN arms
embargo against Iran - which is set to expire on October 18.

American leaders from both sides of the aisle would do well to listen to
the Arabs and Israelis when it comes to Iran. After the Iranian people
themselves, the first victims of Iranian malevolence are always Arab and
Israeli. There should be no return to hopelessly flawed Iran nuclear
accord, and the UN Security Council should extend the arms embargo
against the world's leading sponsor of terror.

Sincerely,CUFI Action Fund Team

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