Letter: Deal helps Iranian people; shows leaders rejoining family of nations

The Iran Nuclear Agreement is not about Israel and Iran. It is about Iran, the entire Middle East, and the rest of the world. Yet, opponents of the agreement always talk about the danger to Israel.

In the world of the Middle East, the danger to Israel is not from Iran and its leaders; it’s from Israel’s closest neighbors.

It is impossible to understand the Middle East without a large map showing the countries from Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea east to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Knowledge of the history and religion of each country on that map is basic to evaluating the Iran Nuclear Agreement.

When you look at the map, you will see how small the Israeli territory is in comparison to the other countries on the map. What would Iran gain by destroying Israel? The territory would be meaningless to them. The holy sites in Jerusalem have little meaning to Iran. Shia Islam’s holy sites are in Iraq and Mecca; Mecca is in Sunni Islam’s Saudi Arabia.

When Egypt attacked Israel in 1973, I gained firsthand insight into the dangers facing Israel. I was stationed in the U.S. Army’s Theater Army Support Command (TASCOM) in Germany. We established an around-the-clock combat operations center to follow the war.

It became clear that Israel would need immediate assistance. The Department of Defense directed TASCOM to begin emergency shipments to Israel. We sent munitions, tanks, artiller and vehicles withdrawn from the prepositioned stocks to be used if Russia attacked our forces in Germany. Those stocks were significantly depleted.

I was sent to Israel to coordinate the arrival of the shipments coming from Germany. Without these shipments of American ammunition and equipment, Israel would have been overwhelmed.

After I retired from the Army, I managed a project for an Iranian company that had a contract to modernize the logistics systems of the Iranian Army. My project employed more than two hundred people from four different countries. Our employees were a diverse group: Shia Muslims, Jews, Zoroastrians, Armenian Christians, and 50 American and European Christians.

From June 1978 to February 1979, the governing structure of Iran slowly disintegrated. Street riots grew larger, and a military government was installed in August. Revolution was promoted from every mosque through taped messages from the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The people of Iran did not realize how a government headed by religious extremists would affect their lives. They only knew they wanted the Shah and his government gone. They replaced a somewhat tolerant society run by a king, his wealthy friends and secret police with an intolerant society controlled by a dictator, his mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard.

I believe the Nuclear Agreement will improve the lives of the Iranian people and will stop the development of a nuclear bomb. The long negotiations leading to this agreement have shown that the Iranian leadership has agreed to rejoin the family of nations.

Jack E. Hembree LtC. US Army, Ret., lives in Springfield.