Popular New Jersey Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach took to The New York Times on Friday to criticize President Barack Obama's emerging nuclear deal with Iran, saying it could spell disaster for the Middle East region and the world. Boteach's World Values Network ran a full-page ad in the paper warning that the agreement -- which might be finalized by Tuesday -- could backfire like the ill-fated 1938 Munich Agreement and result in a war. "Mr. President: Fighting al-Qaida made you like Churchill. Appeasing Iran will make you like Chamberlain," the ad read. It warned that Obama was rushing to a deal that would ignore the brutality of the Iranian regime and allow it to maintain "the potentially catastrophic one-year-weapons-breakout period, which endangers Israel, the Middle East, America and the world." "Those of us who were awed at your resolve in taking out America's foremost enemy, Osama bin Laden, are now mystified by your willingness to appease its foremost threat, [Iranian Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the terror overlord who just last week promised 'Death to America'. ... Today, Mr. President, you are on the verge of concluding a pact that will enable the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism to become a nuclear power -- even as its leader defiantly calls for a holocaust in Israel," the ad continued. The ad featured a picture of Obama superimposed on The New York Times' front page from Sept. 30, 1938, the day the Munich deal was announced, next to a picture of Chamberlain delivering his infamous speech shortly after he signed the deal. The ad went on to predict that the current language of the deal will ensure calamity. "Just as there was no 'peace for our time' in appeasing Hitler in the 1930s, there will be no peace by appeasing the Hitler-wannabe Khamenei in the 2010s," it warned, using the immortal phrase Chamberlain used to tout the agreement. The organization wrote that no deal should be signed unless Khamenei "personally and publicly repudiates all genocidal threats against Israel" and ceased "all support of terror worldwide." The ad signed off with a Churchill quote: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war."
