{"id":14800,"date":"2012-10-11T17:01:50","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T21:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=14800"},"modified":"2012-10-11T17:01:50","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T21:01:50","slug":"the-glaring-contradictions-in-anti-iran-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2012\/10\/the-glaring-contradictions-in-anti-iran-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Glaring Contradictions in Anti-Iran Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another Manufactured Crisis<\/strong><\/span>
\n by SHELDON RICHMAN<\/span><\/p>\n

President Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have at least one thing in common when it comes to Iran. All are guilty of flagrant self-contradiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each says that a nuclear-armed Iran could not be effectively contained the way the U.S. government contained the nuclear-armed Soviet Union and Communist China. Yet each also says that Iran can be prevented from acquiring a nuclear capability or weapon if the United States and Israel draw a \u201cred line\u201d and threaten Iran militarily if it crosses the line.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both assertions cannot be true.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his speech before the United Nations, Netanyahu, holding a poster of a cartoon bomb, said,<\/span><\/p>\n

There are those who believe that a nuclear-armed Iran can be deterred like the Soviet Union. That\u2019s a very dangerous assumption.\u2026 Militant Jihadists behave very differently from secular Marxists.\u2026 Deterrence worked with the Soviets, because every time the Soviets faced a choice between their ideology and their survival, they chose their survival. But deterrence may not work with the Iranians once they get nuclear weapons.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great scholar of the Middle East, Professor Bernard Lewis, who put it best. He said that for the Ayatollahs of Iran, mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent, it\u2019s an inducement.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Obama\u2019s UN speech, he said,<\/span><\/p>\n

Make no mistake, a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained.\u2026 And that\u2019s why the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Romney has said similar things. In his speech in Jerusalem last August he saidthat Iran \u201cgives us no reason to trust them with nuclear material\u201d and that \u201cpreventing [their developing a nuclear capability] must be our highest national security priority.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

All three men portray the Iranian regime as consisting of suicidal fanatics who, once having acquired even one nuclear weapon, would use it against Israel. Obama, Romney, and Netanyahu seem to believe the Iranians would use the bomb regardless of Israel\u2019s powerful military and its nuclear arsenal of at least 200 warheads, some of which are mounted on submarines, permitting a devastating second-strike capability.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, if the Iranian regime were to acquire a nuclear bomb (a very big \u201cif\u201d), there would be no reasoning with it. Threats of massive retaliation \u2014 the essence of containment and deterrence \u2014 would likely have no effect whatsoever.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if that is true, why would Obama, Romney, and Netanyahu expect that setting red lines backed by military threats would have the desired effect of deterring Iran from developing a nuclear capability or a weapon itself? How can Obama and Romney hope that harsh sanctions will dissuade Iran\u2019s \u201capocalyptic leaders\u201d from developing a nuclear capability?<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is deterrence expected to fail in one case but succeed in the other? The same allegedly suicidal fanatics would be making the decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have yet to hear the mainstream media ask any of them these questions. Instead, the national \u201creporters\u201d \u2014 stenographers, really \u2014 supinely pack Obama, Romney, and Netanyahu\u2019s fallacious premises into softball questions designed simply to let these men enunciate their talking points. You\u2019d never know from their \u201ccoverage\u201d that top military and intelligence figures in the United States and Israel say that Iran\u2019s leaders are \u201crational actors,\u201d that is, open to reason and not suicidal. The mainstream media have shamefully ill-served the American public, whose interests would be gravely harmed by a war with Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

The media accept another of these men\u2019s premises rather than putting it to the test. This is the assertion, as Netanyahu would have it, that Iran is racing toward acquisition of a nuclear weapon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both the Israeli and the U.S. intelligence communities say that Iran has not decided to acquire a weapon. Contrary to Netanyahu\u2019s hysterical warnings of a pending existential threat (warnings that go back decades), Iran has been turning its enriched uranium into a form that, while suitable for producing medical isotopes, is unsuitable for making weapons. Twice America\u2019s intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran scrapped its suspected nuclear program in 2003, after the U.S. military ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Moreover, Iran, unlike Israel, has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is subject to inspections by permanently stationed International Atomic Energy Agency personnel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Iranian \u201cthreat\u201d is another manufactured crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Manufactured Crisis by SHELDON RICHMAN President Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have at least one thing..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,166,21,97],"tags":[197,199,230,200,211],"class_list":["post-14800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elections","category-government","category-international","category-us-news","tag-imperialism","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-israel","tag-zionism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/013698-netanyahu-iran-bomb_14800_05073.jpg?fit=650%2C366&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}