Does Iran Really Want a
Bomb?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
March 10, 2015 "ICH"
-America, we have a problem.
In the blood-soaked
chaotic Middle East, with few exceptions
like the Kurds, our friends either can't or
won't fight.
The Free Syrian Army
folded. The U.S.-armed Hazm force in Syria
has just collapsed after being routed by the
al-Nusra Front. The Iraqi army we trained
and equipped fled Mosul and ran all the way
to Baghdad.
The Turks could annihilate
ISIS in Syria, but they won't fight. Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf Arabs have sent zero
troops to fight ISIS. A handful of air
strikes is it.
Now consider what our old
enemies have done and are doing.
Hezbollah and Iran have
sustained Bashar Assad's Syrian army for
four years and have ISIS and the al-Nusra
Front on the defensive around Aleppo.
Iran and its allied Shiite
militia in Iraq are battling ISIS for Tikrit.
Backed by Hezbollah,
Houthi rebels have seized Yemen's capital
and are battling al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula. AQAP is the No. 1 terrorist
threat to the U.S. homeland.
While Iran and its allies
are fighting al-Qaida and ISIS, Turkey and
our Arab allies are malingerers at best and
collaborators at worst.
How explain this? Not
difficult.
The Shiites, a religious
minority in the Muslim world — Hezbollah,
Assad's regime, Baghdad, Tehran — see ISIS
as a mortal threat and are willing to fight
to kill the monster.
Our Sunni allies won't go
out and fight ISIS, because that would make
them allies of Iran and the Shiites, whom
they fear even more.
Our Sunni friends want
America to crush ISIS and al-Qaida, then to
crush Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. But why is
it in our interest to send U.S. troops back
into any of these wars?
Is America more threatened
than our Arab allies?
Rather than listening to
allies who are non-combatants, we should
take a hard look at the Mideast. To whom
does the future belong? And with what can we
live?
The Republicans want to
give a blank check to Obama and any future
president to fight ISIS and al-Qaida
everywhere and forever. And they want the
United States to treat Iran as we should
have treated Nazi Germany had Hitler been
about to get the bomb.
But if the GOP platform
takes the neocon-Netanyahu line that we must
not only fight ISIS and al-Qaida, but also
Iran and Syria, the party will imperil its
improving chances for 2016.
Americans don't want another
war.And if John
Kerry comes home with a deal on Iran's
nuclear program, Americans are likely to
reject a party that is seen as trying to
torpedo that deal, when the alternative is
war with Iran.
We do not know exactly
what is in the Kerry deal, but what has been
revealed thus far is no cause for panic or
hysteria.
Though Israel has 200
atomic bombs, Iran has not produced a single
ounce of uranium enriched to bomb-grade 90
percent.
Since talks began, Iran
has diluted all of its 20-percent enriched
uranium and halted production. Tehran is
willing to cut her operating centrifuges by
a third.
Inspectors and cameras are
now in all of Iran's nuclear facilities. The
heavy-water plant at Arak, which would
produce plutonium, has been halted. The
reprocessing plant that would be needed to
extract bomb-grade material has not even
been started.
U.S. intelligence agencies
in 2007 and 2011 declared, with high
confidence, that Iran has no active bomb
program.
While Bibi Netanyahu says
the Ayatollah tweeted that Israel must be
"annihilated," the same Ayatollah issued a
fatwa against Iran ever producing nuclear
weapons.
We cannot trust Iran, we
are told. Correct. Nor should we, as history
has proven. Moscow cheated on Nixon's SALT I
agreement by replacing its light
single-warhead SS-11 missiles with heavy
SS-19s with multiple warheads.
But as Meir Dagan, ex-head
of Mossad points out, if Iran cheats at any
of its facilities, we will know it, and it
would take a year before Tehran could
produce enough highly enriched uranium even
to test a bomb.
Plenty of time to gas up
the B-2s.
Another question, too
rarely raised, is this:
Why would Iran test and
build a nuclear bomb, when this would set
off a nuclear arms race across the Middle
East and put Iran in mortal peril of being
smashed by the United States, or by Israel
with a preemptive strike?
Right now, Hezbollah
dominates Lebanon. Assad is gaining ground
in Syria. Iraq, thanks to "W," is Iran's
ally, not the mortal enemy of Saddam's day.
The Houthi have Sanaa.
The Shiite majority in
Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is
berthed, will one day dominate that Gulf
state. And the Shiites in oil-rich northeast
Saudi Arabia will one day rise up against
Riyadh.
Why build a bomb, why get
into a war with a nuclear-armed superpower,
when everything's going your way?
Patrick J. Buchanan is
the author of the new book "The Greatest
Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat
to Create the New Majority." To find out
more about Patrick Buchanan and read
features by other Creators writers and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at
www.creators.com.
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