Iranian Terrorism is as much an Enemy to Arab Nations as it is to America and Israel: Yoram Ettinger

more and more Iranian supported anti-American Islamic terrorist cells are established on US soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel and institutions and installations this has been the Ayatollah's vision from day one in the 1980s and 1990s Ambassador Yuram Ettinger held a number of high-profile positions within Israel's government from its minister of congressional affairs in DC to director of its press office a now retired insider and expert on USIsrael relations he regularly advises Israel and America's legislators and produces a weekly newsletter challenging conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs the State Department still is under the delusion that the US is a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by human rights the choice is between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights in this episode we dive into key realities of the USIsrael relationship that are poorly understood and the threat to both countries and free nations more broadly posed by the Iranian regime this is American thought leaders and I'm Yana Keller you're a Messenger such a pleasure to have you on American thought leaders thank you it's my pleasure thank you i often hear the Israeli US relationship as characterized by Israel having this inordinate influence over American decision-making and so how do you view the USIsrael relationship well USIsrael relations has uh two sets of foundations uh the first one has to do with the US culture US political system uh which are based largely on uh biblical uh values and biblical legacies uh mostly what the founding fathers refer to as the Mosaic uh legacy and it goes back to the arrival of the early pilgrims in 1620 before the first Jew arrived to this country before uh the first Jewish community was established here it had to do with the fact that the early pilgrims and the founding fathers to a large extent viewed themselves as the modernday chosen people they viewed this country as the modernday promised uh land and they considered the manner in which Moses governed the Jewish people to be a foundation for the system which they established the separation of uh of powers later on the constitution and the bill of uh of rights uh this is one set of foundation the more modern set of foundation has to do with the critical role played by Israel in advancing the strategic uh interest of the US in the Middle East and beyond it has to do with Israel's capabilities mostly technological defense and commercial capabilities which has uh have transformed Israel into the number one innovation center for the US commercial high-tech and for the US defense uh high-tech and uh in addition uh ever since 1967 Israel was transformed from a misperceived burden and liability upon the US uh into a strategic asset and more so a force multiplier for the US a dollar multiplier for the US and in very concrete terms battle tested laboratory for the US defense industry and US aerospace industry as it has been for many many years uh Israel receives a very critical military systems without which we wouldn't be able to make ends meet and for which we are immensely grateful however this is not a one-way street relations where the US gives and Israel receives it's a mutually beneficial two-way street whereby Israel receives those military systems and use it in the most intense manner way way beyond the manner which American military forces are using American military system and as a result of that intense use of the F-35 and the F-16 and the F-15 and the missile launchers and the missiles and the tanks and armed personnel carriers etc we have concluded multitude of lessons all of which we share with the American manufacturers which integrate those lessons as upgrades into the next generation of the American military hardware i visited the plant in Fort Worth Texas Loheed Martin plant which manufactures the F-35 and the F-16 and one of the plant manager indicated that there is an Israeli team on location receiving every single day lessons learned by Israeli pilots operational lessons maintenance and repairs and those lessons are integrated for instance um the cockpit of the F-16 is roughly 50% based on Israeli lessons the firing control of the F-16 75% developed based on the Israeli uh lessons and he said that there are hundreds hundreds of such upgrades which are derivative of the Israeli lessons when I asked him if he could attach a dollar value to those upgrades his response and it's a quote mega billion dollar bonanza to the manufactured i asked him how do you arrive at such a an amazing number is it based on some facts and his response was that the Israeli uh lessons uh shared with the manufacturer saves Led Martin between 10 and 20 years of research and development and anyone who knows anything about the cost of research and development of combat aircraft knows that by itself amounts to many billions of dollars however that's only the first stage of the benefits accorded by Israel to the manufacturer of the F35 and the F-16 because due to those upgrades it has enhanced the competitiveness of the F-35 and the F-16 in the global competition in the global uh market and that has generated much more export which again amounts to billions of uh of dollars i never visited uh the Boeing plant in St louis Missouri the F-15 which again we receive from the US and we use in Israel but I assume that similar mega billion dollar is also uh the share of uh of Boeing uh in this mutually beneficial two-way street type of relations and we uh enjoy uh we benefit from hundreds of American military systems Each one we use intensely uh in what I would call this structure of battle tested uh laboratory and that uh uh underscores the fact that it's a two-way street not a one-way street type of uh relationship and you're on one quick sec we're going to take a break and folks we'll be right back and we're back with author of the Edinger Report you're a Metinger so one of the things I've been hearing a lot about lately about the US let's call it the militaryindustrial complex is that it's bloated there's like you know too there's too much money being fed into middlemen places that it actually doesn't need to go it's not paired down what you're describing i mean it could be characterized as you know money coming from the US taxpayer into Israel that then goes into the defense industrial complex would that be an accurate way to portray it no first of all money does not reach Israel we get credit to buy American uh products and we get those American uh products and we return much more than the value of the products which we uh receive um we we're talking about uh an defense industry which employs about 3 and a half million uh people in addition to subcontractors and the Israeli contribution of the Israeli lessons shared with the manufacturers not only save billions of research and development cost not only increase exports by billions of dollars but also expand and employment in the United States in fact we cannot buy Israeli products with a credit which is extended by the US we must buy American uh product but that's only uh part of the contribution by Israel to American uh defense national security we provide the US with unique scope of intelligence intelligence on countering terrorism which has spared many American lives um uh intercepting uh intercepting Islamic terror attacks on Americans in Syria Americans in Jordan Americans in Iraq we provide Americans intelligence on enemy and rivals military systems we confront uh enemies in the Middle East who use Chinese and Russian and British and French and and Italian and other military systems following every clash we share with the Americans our own findings about those military systems which once again has enhanced the quality of the American military product but also has spared American lives in fact uh a former uh head of the US Air Force intelligence General George Keegan who was very enthusiastic about expanding intelligence cooperation between the two countries claimed that if the US were to procure on its own the intelligence which the US receives from Israel then the US would have to establish five IAS this is one heck of return on investment uh which is 4 500 times of what we get uh annually in what is wrongly referred to as foreign aid while in fact it's an American investment in uh in Israel we are located in a very critical area the late General Alexander Heg was supreme commander of NATO Later on Secretary of State suggested that for him Israel constitutes the largest American aircraft carrier which does not require a single American on board cannot be sunk and is deployed in the most critical area between the Mediterranean the Red Sea the Indian Ocean the Persian Gulf between Europe and Asia and Africa uh situated in an area which is the number one epicenter of anti-American terrorism and anti-American drug trafficking and the late Alexander Heg suggested that if there would not be a Jewish state in the Middle East then the US would have to manufacture few more real aircraft carriers deploy them to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean in addition to a few ground uh divisions deployed to the Middle East all of which would have cost the American taxpayer between 10 and 20 billion dollar annually all of which is spared by the existence of Israel and the capabilities of Israel in the Middle East uh we have done the same thing when it comes to uh the commercial high-tech in America some 250 giant high-tech uh corporations have established in Israel research and development centers leveraging the very unique brain power in uh Israel which has sustained American leadership global leadership in the area of high-tech recently the CEO of Intel said if not our research and development centers in Israel we Intel would have been decimated by the global competition uh CEO of Microsoft uh said that by the day Microsoft becomes increasingly an Israeli company because of the impact on of the research and development centers in Israel on Microsoft own uh product and the same applies to irrigation where we collaborate closely with American companies the same applies to agriculture the same applies ties to health and medicine there has been very very tight collaboration between American and Israeli institutions and uh and companies israel obviously has benefited from uh the number one country in the world uh but at the same time our unique challenges have produced multitude of innovations groundbreaking uh applications most of which we have shared with Americans maintaining Americans global leadership in the area of high-tech which employs many many millions of uh of Americans how would you respond to And there are a number of prominent voices that believe this that it's actually America's relationship with Israel that's keeping America in the region well the the US uh has been interested in in the Middle East before there was a Jewish state but more than that Islamic terrorism which is centered in the Middle East has targeted the USA irrespective of US relations with Israel irrespective of US policy uh Islamic terrorism and other enemies of the US do not consider Israel to be the number one uh influence on their policy they view Israel as the vanguard of the US in the Middle East they view Israel and rightly so as the most effective US beach head in the Middle East iran's Ayatollas refer to Israel as the little Satan while referring to the US as the great American Satan which tells us about the priorities there's no zero sum game between uh US relations with Israel and US relations with Arabs namely supposedly ostensibly the US is losing uh Arab favors the more it gets closer to uh to Israel the fact is that the US has maintained very productive relations with Israel and at the same time very productive relations with Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates Baharim Egypt Jordan and all these countries in fact have considered Israel to be an asset rather than a liability for the Saudis and the Amiratis and Baharin and also Egypt and Jordan israel has been regarded as a power of deterrence in the face of the threat posed by Iran's Ayatollah and the Muslim Brotherhood the Saudis and the Amiratis and Baharin have the machetes of the Ayatollas and the Muslim Brotherhood at their throat and they look around and ask themselves who can we rely on well uh sometime they can rely on the US depending on the tenant in the White House uh does the tenant uh uh try to appease the Ayatollas or is the tenant facing the Ayatollas very decisively um so the US sometimes is reliable as far as they are concerned sometime not so reliable uh they have written off the Europeans because the Europeans have lost their will to flex a muscle against Islamic terrorism every single relatively moderate Arab regime has the machetes of terrorists at their throat the only country upon which they can rely to an extent has been Israel and therefore American ties with Israel are not at the expense of America American ties with the Arabs because the Arabs realize Israel serves as a major line of defense of the Hasheite regime in Jordan the pro-American Hasheite regime in Jordan israel has developed pretty close defense ties with Saudi Arabia the same goes for the king of Morocco who highly respects Israel's uh capabilities in combating uh combating terrorism and and the the bottom line is that when it comes to facing Islamic terrorism US and Israel and the pro- US Arab countries are facing a mutual enemy well Yoram this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion a final thought as we finish well final uh thought as I have always believed uh it's incumbent upon western policy makers to refrain from sacrificing the inconvenient frustrating reality on the altar of very convenient very appealing alternate reality because alternate reality has led the world to disasters as we saw in the precond world war as we have seen in the pre- ascension of the Ayatollas to power in uh in Iran the western world would be better off sticking with inconvenient reality than falling into the trap suicidal trap of alternate reality well Yura Meter it's such a pleasure to have had you on thank you very much my pleasure and uh and uh my uh certainly deep satisfaction thank you all for joining your Etener and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders i'm your host Yana Kellik