When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked down the halls of Congress to deliver his speech on the implications of a nuclear Iran, many thought he was irreparably harming U.S.-Israeli relations. It was, to many on the left, a partisan ploy to play to the conservative members of Congress, to embarrass and gain leverage over President Barack Obama and ultimately interfere with and stifle a nuclear deal with Iran. 

Netanyahu talked about the dangers of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons capability through the channels of their nuclear energy proliferation program without any substantive reproach and action by the West. 

A number of Democrats either chose to boycott the speech or stay seated for the majority of it, rarely applauding the Israeli leader in an act of defiance against Netanyahu and the perceived politicization of his speech.

Meanwhile, Republicans commended the speech, a sign of an increasingly polarized Congress on the topic of Israel and the containment of Iran.

But elections have consequences. And one thing is crystal clear in light of Likud’s resounding win in the March 17 Israeli Knesset elections, which gives Netanyahu’s party the highest chance of forming a government with Netanyahu at the helm: Israel is serious about its security from all existential threats. America should be too.

The terms of the deal with Iran have been murky, with more being leaked to media outlets than to actual members of Congress, much to the dismay of Washington, D.C. politicians like Texas Senator Ted Cruz.  

But what is known is that the drafte nuclear deal would “cap Iran’s centrifuges at 6,000 for [a] decade” while phasing out economic sanctions on the nation over time, according to the Associated Press. 

The Obama administration believes that  this deal would extend the duration of time that Iran would need to develop a bomb to “at least a year for the 10 years it is under the moratorium.” Then all bets are off.

One doesn’t need to look far to see just how rotten this impending deal is. It does absolutely nothing to stop an incredibly dangerous country from acquiring nuclear weapons. 

Ever since the Shah of Iran was deposed in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran has been a state-sponsor of global terrorism by channeling funds to and ordering terrorist attacks on the United States, Israel and other nations through external terrorist groups.

One of the many execrable attacks happened in 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon, when a delivery van—armed with 18,000 pounds of explosives—struck a U.S. Marine barracks while another car bomb targeted a French military building, killing a total of 299 servicemen. The perpetrators were members of Hezbollah, Lebanon’s prominent Islamist terrorist organization operating on direct orders from the Iranian regime. 

The Iran-Hezbollah partnership is just as strong—if not stronger—today, with the U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stating in 2012 that Iran and Hezbollah are in “a partnership arrangement ... with the Iranians as the senior partner.” 

Indeed, even in light of austerity measures implemented by the Iranian government in 2014, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “continues to fund Hezbollah through his separate budget,” according to the Jerusalem Post. 

And it shows, with Hezbollah having thousands of rockets and missiles at its disposal and possibly having a tunnel network that leads straight into Northern Israel, according to Foreign Policy.

Still more, there is mounting evidence suggesting that Iran was actually behind the 1993 Lockerbie bombing, which downed a Pan Am Boeing 747. 

The murders of 270 innocent people, according to defected Iranian intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi, allegedly were ordered by Khomeini in response to the accidental shootdown by an American Navy missile cruiser of an Iranian jumbo jet that saw 290 people lose their lives in 1988. 

But there’s even more. Iran’s campaign of global terror goes farther than just Hezbollah alone.

After the 2008 Gaza War, Iran aided in the rebuilding of Hamas’ underground tunnel infrastructure which was damaged or lost during the conflict. And in 2013, with help from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Iran was able to expand the smuggling of rockets and other weapons into the Gaza Strip by land and sea, according to a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs report. 

Iran’s funneling of money, weapons and aid to Hamas, the premier terrorist organization of the West Bank and Gaza, was then used to terrorize Israel and its people.

The labyrinth of terror tunnels that led straight to Israeli kibbutzim discovered in this past summer’s hostilities between Israel and Hamas, as well as the thousands of rockets launched at Israel, seem directly through the work of Iran. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Iran actively seeks to surround Israel from the North and the South by aiding and abetting terrorist groups–just this past November, Ayatollah Khamenei emphatically stated that the “barbaric” Israel “has no cure but to be annihilated.”

Besides waging a campaign of global terrorism, Iran is also notorious for hiding their nuclear ambitions from public view. In 2010, the New York Times covered Iran’s increasing tendency to hide “its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.” 

Foreign Policy cited the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which found that Iran was clandestinely building a nuclear plant underground in Natanz, where the Institute for Science and International Security found that Iran was enriching uranium. 

Moreover, in 2005 NCRI “announced that Iran was digging tunnels for missile and nuclear work at 14 sites, including an underground complex near the city of Qom,” violating the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards. 

Why such secrecy and inaccessibility for a “peaceful nuclear energy program?” Iran cannot be trusted. 

But President Obama wants this deal badly. He and his administration castigated the 47 U.S. Senators who wrote a letter informing Iran how our constitutional system of checks and balances for foreign treaties works, claiming that the senators wanted “war.” The administration even went so far as to just a few days ago take Hezbollah and Iran off the U.S. Terrorist Watchlist, an unprecedented move especially during a time with high-profile attacks on Jews and Westerners in Israel and in Western Europe by terrorists who subscribe to the same radical ideology and just two months after Hezbollah killed two and injured seven Israeli Defense Forces soldiers on Israel’s northern border. 

The cynical nature of this deal, which points directly at an attempt to boost President Obama’s legacy on foreign policy rather than focus on what is best for America, Israel and the rest of the West underscores the seriousness of standing up to Iran.

No deal is better than a bad one. More importantly, Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his speech to Congress, said that the alternative to a bad deal is “a better deal.” 

That’s why President Obama must stop vacillating over to what extent he should appease Iran and start focusing on the safety and security of our citizens and allies. Radical Islamists already have arms, funds and followers; a nuclear weapon in the hands of religious extremists is something the world cannot afford.