"Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutesMaybe Hannity's bestest buddy can drop a preemptive Israeli warhead or three on Iran's ambitions. It's believed he has hundreds to spare.
the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence," Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu said.
Not that I'm advocating for Iranian nukes, but why exactly should Israel be trusted with them any more — or less — than its rivals?
4 comments:
comment on the previous post- because Israel hasn't promised or wished Iran to wiped off the map. Really... when the leader of a country says that another country needs to be "wiped off the map" it tends to make them a bit nervous. I forgot that Iran is the beacon of all that is good in this world.
I forgot that Iran is the beacon of all that is good in this world.
I don't know who told you that. If Iran is a beacon of anything, it's religious fanaticism and theocracy.
Ahmadinejad is not Iran's leader, by the way. Ali Khamenei is, who rejected Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel off the map" remark.
Nevertheless, there's little doubt that the Iranian regime is fiercely opposed to Israeli governance over the Palestinians and indeed the very existence of the Israeli state.
But that doesn't mean Iran has any plans to attack Israel militarily. So my question stands. If Israel has a sovereign right to protect its security with nuclear weapons, then why doesn't this other sovereign state.
I fear, iT, that you minimize the Iranian threat. Recent analysis of its quite explicitly expressed nature, here, roughly summarized as follows:
What emerges from a comprehensive analysis of what Ahmadinejad actually said – and how it has been interpreted in Iran – is that the Iranian president was not just calling for “regime change” in Jerusalem, but rather the actual physical destruction of the State of Israel. When Ahmadinejad punctuates his speech with “Death to Israel” (marg bar Esraiil), this is no longer open to various interpretations.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, has made statements about Israel similar to Ahmadinejad. On December 15, 2000, he declared on Iranian TV: “Iran’s position, which was first expressed by the Imam [Khomeini] and stated several times by those responsible, is that the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region.”
"Death to Israel" is the charming slogan they place on their long-range missiles. Add to that what you very euphemistically term Iran's "fierce[] oppos(ition) to Israeli governance over the Palestinians" -- which takes the form of massive military subvention to Hamas, an explicitly anti-Semitic and arguably genocidal movement -- and there's a pretty good basis for alarm. (Same can be re: Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah, with the crucial proviso that that has nothing to do with the Palestinians.)
So my question stands. If Israel has a sovereign right to protect its security with nuclear weapons, then why doesn't this other sovereign state.
For one thing, Iran is expansionist and imperialistic. If you want to say that Iranian (Persian, really) hegemony over the Persian Gulf is both necessary to its "security" and that the world would be no worse off, then I suppose we should just go ahead and let them have the Bomb. Ditto re: using a nuclear exchange to coax the Hidden Imam out of his well.
Very briefly otherwise: No one's chanting "Death to Iran." Maybe the better question is not why the Iranians should have the bomb for "security" purposes but, rather, why we ought to trust the theocratic loons running the show to exercise good judgment all of a sudden once they acquire their new toy. Even if Iran doesn't use the bomb against Israel, acquisition will have a profoundly destabilizing effect on the region. Increased Iranian adventurism will only be encouraged; and, we could well see efforts by Arab countries and Turkey to go nuclear in self-defense (something they haven't done in the 4+ decades Israel's been a nuclear power).
Regardless of what I think, President Obama is going to have to halt his Long March through the banking system to deal with Iran's own "methodical march":
Iran continues methodically marching towards nuclear-armed missile capabilities that can threaten states in its region with nuclear weapons, and perhaps beyond. These events have occurred just as the Obama administration has made diplomatic overtures to the Iranian leadership. It seems that Iran may not give Obama time for diplomacy to work.
Voting "Present" isn't a good option, even if it is his default position.
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