Rep. Lee Zeldin on Obama, the Middle East, and the Dangers of Mixing the Two

New York’s 1st Congressional representative, Lee Zeldin sat down with Secure Freedom Radio today to start off Frank Gaffney’s daily intelligence brief on the war for the free world. Below is the full-text of the interview. Click here for the audio version.

FG: You have been thinking very carefully it seems to me and quite commendably about the threat that is being posed to us, not just our friends in Israel and other allies in interest in the part of the world that you fought so valiantly a while back, but here at home as well and I was struck by a quote from you that was recently picked up in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. It says:

‘Iran is not negotiating in good faith and they smell American weakness. Our enemies do not respect weakness, they only respect strength. But today…I challenge our President… to bring the Iranian government to their knees. You are the leader of the free world. Act like it’

Bravo, Congressman, Give us a sense of why you think this call to strength and leadership is so imperative.

LZ: That is the nature of these leaders of nations like Iran. Quite honestly, they don’t respect weakness at all. The President, as a negotiating style, will start off talk with making good faith concessions and will try to equalize himself with the person that he is speaking to on the other end of the table even if the person on the other side of the table is one of the great enemies of the country that President Obama was elected to be the leader of.

FG: And sworn to defend among other things.

LZ: The President of the United States, whoever that person is, whether now or in the past or in the future, bares a burden when sitting down on that table, there’s a much more important role than just making friends personally with the individual on the other side. So when the person sits down with the Iranian regime or the Castro regime, he needs to understand better that the person on the other side of the table- these are individuals that don’t want the best for America. They cant be trusted, they wont be talking in good faith and in the case of Iran- the President is leaving a whole lot out of the negotiation- from Iran’s efforts to overthrow foreign government’s or sponsor terrorism or unjustly imprisoning American prisoners- the list goes on. So it’s a combination of what I believe him not playing for the same team that I do and most Americans do, combined with the fact that he’s a horrible negotiator, and he doesn’t understand what the make up is of the enemy. So when you say there’s going to be a consequence for a particular action, there needs to be a consequence. You can’t keep having moving lines. You need to have strong, consistent foreign policies. So it’s just a combination of so many factors that leaves him, his administration, but most importantly our country, very vulnerable at the table with these leaders.

FG: I’m afraid it’s not just at the table, it translates into real vulnerability and Congressman Zeldin you are not only a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the HOR, but also the Transportation and Infrastructure Committees and you have as a result, an oversight responsibility for one of the pieces of our vulnerability that I’m particularly seized with, and that is our electrical grid. I know there are other committees that have direct jurisdiction but without that critical infrastructure, none of our other critical infrastructure is going to be of any use. The Iranians have made very clear, as one of your colleagues- Trent Franks- has pointed out to us, that they consider an EMP attack against the U.S. to be part of their doctrine and I just wonder- doesn’t this really put into very sharp relief the kinds of concerns you and others, including some bipartisan colleagues of yours who have joined you in a letter on this subject- are now expressing about this deal President Obama is cutting and really especially when you hear the president talking about how we’re going to foreclose all of the pathways to the bomb and it’s going to be very verifiable or no deal, as he put it yesterday? Are we not at the point where there really should be no further negotiations, let alone this bad deal?

LZ: The president should walk away from the table. I was just raising certain things that one part of the negotiations you just brought up, another one of Iran’s developments of ICBMs. The list goes on of stuff that isn’t even part of these negotiations if the president wants to strike the deal and he was presenting the American public with a deal in English and we’re reading it, one very important question is whether or not it is accurately translated and that the version that the Iranians are interpreting is an accurate translation. What I don’t trust about both sides right now is that I strongly believe and suspect that if they cannot agree to a critical component of a deal that they will start negotiating how to play with the wording of both agreements in both languages so that each side can go back to their own country, see that they have an agreement and in fact there actually is no meeting of the minds on these critical terms.

FG: We’ve actually seen that in practice in the April extravaganza when the President rolled out his fact sheet and the Iranians promptly said, “No that isn’t what we agreed to at all.” And in the interval, we’ve seen a lot more concessions that seem to bring us closer and closer into alignment with their position. I want to take advantage of your expertise as a military officer and particularly with your specialization in intelligence. Are you troubled by what seems to be another facet of this Administrations blindness at best, ‘playing for the other team’ I think is the way you put it that they are not accurately describing the nature of these jihadist enemies and we are endlessly told that we have nothing to  worry about in countering violent extremism and we are not only embracing the Iranians who represent the Shiite wing of this global jihad, but also outfits like the Muslim Brotherhood that represent the leading edge of the Sunni stripe. Before we get to the Islamic state, doesn’t this represent a fundamental failure that really essentially dooms any kind of military or other action we might take in the absence of understanding the enemy we’re confronting?

LZ: One of the most fundamental, basic lessons that is number one upon confronting a particular challenge is to be able to identify it. You cannot strategize successfully on how to eliminate a particular threat if you cannot accurately define what it is and that’s not just about identifying exactly what the enemy looks like, but also what exactly your friends look like, who they are, where they are and what were seeing right now and we were just talking about in Iran and what we’re facing with Islamic extremism. The President- not only will he not accurately identify exactly what radical extremism is but when its time to brainstorm on all the ways to be able to develop a successful strategy, he’ll come up with a multi-pronged approach that features and highlights the need to get more jobs for those in the Middle East who are trying to destroy the free world and eliminate religions off the map in the Middle East. So before even getting into all the failures of the specifics of the strategy, what is most concerning is that he won’t even accurately come out of the gate with an accurate analysis of whom specifically we are up against.

FG: Yeah, it really does doom any prospect of, as you say, strategic thought, let alone operationalizing it. Congressman Lee Zeldin, I’d hoped we’d have time to speak of the Gaza report, speaking of the failures to understand the nature of the enemy, but well have to do that on another occasion, I hope soon. In the meantime we are tremendously appreciative of your time today and also the great work you are doing now out of uniform mostly, but also that you have provided to our country in uniform. I hope you’ll come back to us again very soon, Sir. Thank you for your time.

LZ: I look forward to it, thank you.