Uzi Landau: 'Israel's Churchill' Warns of Iran's Hitler

NewsMax.com
Kenneth R. Timmerman

Former Israeli Interior Minister Uzi Landau, a leading contender to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was in the United States last week to sound the alarm on Iran.

He believes the world needs to wake up to the threat from Iran, and compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler in 1938.

"In 1938, the world faced a gathering storm, when there was a fanatic enemy who publicly said he was going to destroy you, and the world did nothing."

Today, Iran is presenting a similar dilemma to the world with its nuclear weapons program, Landau believes. "Iran is Germany, and Ahmadinejad is Hitler," he told NewsMax in an exclusive interview.

Landau, who left the Israeli parliament (Knesset) last year after losing a leadership battle within the conservative Likud party, is poised to make a political comeback.

As minister of public security in the government of Ariel Sharon in March 2002 when a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered scores of Jews at a Passover dinner, he advocated a full-scale invasion of the Palestinian territories and is known for his hard-line approach to Israel's enemies.

During Hezbollah's attack on Israel this summer, he told NewsMax that Israel should strike Damascus because the Syrian government was harboring the Hezbollah leadership and allowing Iran to openly supply missiles and other weapons to the terrorist militia in Lebanon through the Damascus airport.

Landau says he was dismayed by the recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton commission for the United States to open negotiations with Iran and Syria. "This is 1938 revisited," he said.

That was when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from negotiations with Hitler in Munich and declared that Hitler had promised "peace in our time."

"The Baker report recalls Chamberlain's policy of appeasement," Landau said. "One would have hoped, instead, for this report to sound the alarm."

A stubborn British opposition leader named Winston Churchill sounded the alarm against Hitler, but no one listened to him at the time. While not pretending to be a reborn Churchill, Landau said he believed it was critical to learn from the past "to make sure we avoid a similarly bleak future."

The Islamic regime in Tehran is "motivated by a malignant ideology," he said. "This is a regime that has no regard for freedom, no regard for human life, that turns its own kids into suicide bombers," he said. "You would have wished a study group of such learned people would alert the American people" to the threat that Iran is posing to U.S. forces in Iraq, the region, and the United States.

"Instead, the Baker committee report reflects the belief that if you throw sheep one after another to a hungry wolf, you will turn it into a vegetarian," he said.

Landau noted with dismay the Baker-Hamilton report's repeated calls for the United States to put pressure on Israel in response to the deteriorating security situation in Iraq.

"What does Israel have to do with the United States getting bogged down in Iraq?" he wondered. "This all goes back to Arab rhetoric, and State Department rhetoric. This is a view that is totally detached from the realities of the Middle East."

While the Iraq Study Group report acknowledges that Iran and Syria have power to influence events in Iraq, it concluded that both countries saw it in their interest to prevent Iraq from descending into chaos.

"This is simply out of touch with reality," Landau said. "Iran is very much behind the violence, as is Syria. Do the people on the Baker commission really believe they want the United States to leave Iraq as a free a democratic country? On the contrary: Syria and Iran fear a free and democratic Iraq because that example will endanger their own dictatorial regimes."

Understanding the goals of Iran and Syria was not all that complicated, Landau said. "These things are clear to every boy in the Middle East."

His real concern, even more than the Baker panel's suggestion that the United States put pressure Israel, is the message the report sends to other countries in the Middle East who would potentially look to the United States for protection or support.

"Countries such as Sudan, Qatar, Yemen and others are wondering with whom they should align themselves. Should they go with Iran, which these days is backed by Russia and China, or with the United States?"

By beating up on the Iraqi government and on Israel, a long-standing American ally, the Baker-Hamilton report sends the message that it is worse to be a friend of America than to be America's enemy. "Who is going to make an alliance with a broken reed?" Landau said.

Faced with Iran's nuclear program, Landau believes Israel must take a "conservative" view. "We have to do whatever we can to stop them," he said.

Whether Iran is two, three, or five years from the bomb, what is clear is that they are building facilities "capable of producing 25 atomic bombs a year," he added.

Iran has already test-fired missiles capable of reaching Europe, and have announced they are working on a future generation missile that can reach the United States. "They mean business," Landau said.

Landau said the U.S. and its allies also needed to keep an eye on Iranian subversion in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich eastern province. "Iran's political objective is to gain dominance in this region, and if they do, they will become a power with global influence that will dominate the air and maritime routes connecting Southwest Asia and the Far East to Europe and the West."

Should Iran ever reach that point, "it will be a totally different kind of ball game," he said. "I think we need to alert the free world. This is a global plan in the service of a mad ideology."

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert broke 40 years of ambiguity toward Israel's alleged nuclear weapons arsenal in an interview with a German television network.

Olmert was widely condemned in Israel for his remarks, which openly referred to Israel as a nuclear weapons state. Former Likud colleague, Yuval Steinitz, called on him to resign.

Landau pointed out that "there is no change in Israel's policy" of nuclear ambiguity, but said he would withhold further comment until returning to Israel next week.

For some, politics still stops at the nation's shores.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is president of the Middle East Data Project, author of "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran," and a contributing editor to NewsMax.com.