While still working to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, President Joe Biden’s administration has finalized a maritime agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which critics believe benefits pro-Iranian Lebanese terror group Hezbollah and offers Israel nothing in return.
The deal proposed by the Biden White House will be “undermining both [Israel’s] security and its constitution by signing a deal that would give the Iranian puppet-state in Lebanon hundreds of miles of territory in the Mediterranean Sea—and the vast reserves of natural gas underneath,” noted U.S.-based legal scholar, Professor Eugene Kontorovich, wrote in the Newsweek.
Professor Kontorovich further explained:
[The deal] does not advance U.S. strategic interests to propose a deal that would strengthen Hezbollah, a State Department-designated terror group that was found liable for $110 million in federal court just last week for rocket attacks that injured U.S. citizens. But the stakes are even higher for Israel, whose government is replaying the wishful-thinking diplomacy that has led to its costliest historical blunders.
The Biden administration rewards Lebanon with a lucrative and one-sided deal despite threats made by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to target Israel’s offshore drilling operations.
As Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov noted in the Jerusalem Post, Biden’s deal gives into Lebanese and Hezbollah demands without receiving anything in return. She observed: “Israel is giving up the entire zone in dispute – something concrete – in exchange for theoretical, amorphous promises and things it already has.”
The Lebanese demand for a share of Israeli natural gas reserves had no leg to stand on. Satellite images have shown that Israeli drilling operations are well within the country’s maritime borders.
Biden’s deal, which comes days after irreparable damage to Russian natural gas pipelines to Europe, will position Tehran’s puppet regime in Lebanon and Hezbollah as major players in Europe’s energy market. As European energy prices skyrocket ahead of the winter, the gas revenue will bolster Hezbollah, the world’s most heavily armed terrorist group.
Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister and opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected the Biden administration’s proposed deal, calling it a “humiliating surrender” to the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.
Netanyahu also slammed Israel’s caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, for going along with the Biden White House proposal.
The Likud party leader, who holds a slight lead in the opinion polls ahead of next month’s election, urged Israel’s interim government to seek the approval of the national parliament and put it to a referendum. According to Israel Hayom, “former PM warns it must get Knesset approval and be submitted for referendum.”
The Israel Hayom reported:
Lapid heads a caretaker government ahead of a Nov 1 election. His challenger, conservative ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has argued the Lebanese deal could benefit Hezbollah, and accused Lapid of evading parliamentary scrutiny.”Lapid is making a humiliating surrender to [Hezbollah chief] Hassan Nasrallah,” Netanyahu said on Sunday., “He is doing this without a referendum or a Knesset debate; he is giving away sovereign areas with a massive gas field – which belongs to you, the Israelis.” Netanyahu went on to say that if Lapid manages to “pull a fast one” by approving this without triggering a national referendum, we won’t consider it binding.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz blasted the Biden White House for forcing Israel to capitulate to Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.
Former US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who served during President Donald Trump’s tenure, blasted the disastrous deal for undoing the progress already made by the previous administration.
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