In 1947, U.S. President Truman made history by launching the Marshall Plan, sending $13 billion (about $140 billion in today's dollars) to help rebuild post-war Europe, in order to prevent Western Europe from falling to Communist expansion.
Today President Obama is trying to make history through an Iranian nuclear deal that will give an astounding $150 billion of sanctions relief to a regime that was in 2014 considered by the U.S. Department of State, along with Sudan and Syria, one of the world's leading sponsors of terrorism.
The Marshall Plan was spread out over 17 countries that were U.S. allies and considered critical in the long struggle that would put Soviet communism on the "ash-heap of history," in the words of President Ronald Reagan.
Under the President Obama's disastrous Iran nuclear deal, $150 billion would go to a single regime that has been a state sponsor of terrorism for the entire 36 years of its existence.
$150 billion is an enormous amount of money to the Iranian regime, whose failed statist economic policies, ongoing expansionism and internal mismanagement -- not even to speak of its horrifying human rights record in imprisonments, torture, and widespread executions -- have led to a stagnant economy.
How might Iran spend the $150 billion?
Iran has brutally cracked down on dissent in its own country. It brutally imprisoned, tortured, and murdered those in the Green Movement, whose peaceful demonstrations, begun in 2009, had brought together up to three million protesters, and which threatened to topple the regime.
With the new inflow of money, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will have many more resources at its disposal to crush dissent and tighten its grip on power, making regime change -- which should be our urgent and ultimate goal, rather than a fleeting nuclear deal -- all the more unlikely.
Iran has backed the Assad regime in Syria, helping it keep control in a brutal civil war that has cost over 210,000 lives.
Assad even wrote a congratulatory letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the deal, probably in the likely assumption that he will get a substantial boost from this $150 billion boom.
A flush $150 billion in the hands of the Iranian regime will also likely give a boost to the Iranian-sponsored Houthi rebels trying to take over Yemen.
Iran has in the past used its Shia militias to kill an estimated 500 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the Iraqi Shia militias may be fighting ISIS now, they almost certainly will be fighting and killing more moderate Sunnis in Iraq, who worked with the U.S. government and are willing to work for a peaceful Iraq.
Iran has long backed Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups trying to destroy Israel.
Iran is already sending millions of dollars to Hamas to build and repair tunnels for use in kidnapping and murdering Israelis, and to rebuild Hamas's missile supply.
Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, already has an estimated 100,000 missiles it could use to attack Israel.
With $150 billion, Iran can fund a massive new war against Israel through its terrorist proxies -- using conventional weapons -- to try to obliterate Israel even before Iran gets nuclear weapons.
The fact that Iran pushed to have the UN arms embargo lifted as part of the nuclear deal shows its intentions for where to spend this $150 billion.
The Iran deal, in five years, will actually lift a ban on sending Iran conventional weapons, including (in eight years) intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. But Iran is already wasting no time buying weapons and producing weapons on its own.
Russia recently finalized the sale to Iran of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system -- in violation of the existing embargo.
Although there may still be an official UN arms embargo on Iran, there is no ban the transfer of raw materials that they could use to make arms domestically. Iran already has an advanced weapons manufacturing industry.
If the Iran nuclear deal goes through, the mullahs will have to decide how much of the $150 billion will be used to boost their own arms manufacturing efforts and shore up their domestic reign of terror, and how much will be shared with their totalitarian and terrorist allies?
The Iran deal does not prevent a nuclear Iran. At best, it only delays it a few years.
Iran has brazenly vowed not to change its current policies and will continue to finance war, through its terrorist partners, against Israel and Sunni Muslim states. With ICBMs, Iran will not only threaten Middle East neighbors, but also the United States and Europe.
When President Obama leaves office, he may think that any catastrophe caused by the Iran deal will not "technically" be his, but the next president's. But it is his. It's as if someone is lighting a long fuse and will then say he was not near the dynamite when it detonated. Any explosions that result from this huge military and financial payday to Iran will, and should, be known as "Obama's war."
Members of the U.S. Congress should move swiftly and boldly to vote this terrible deal down and try to stop the $150 billion from going to boost tyranny and terrorism and spread war throughout a region already on fire.
George Phillips served as an aide to Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, working on human rights issues.
Gail Hardes