In “Nearing a decision on Iran nukes”, Tribune Media Service columnist Cal Thomas writes:
“[Former Israeli diplomat Yoram] Ettinger believes the reluctance to engage in a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities ‘is harmful, ignores precedents, plays into Iran’s hands and threatens Israel’s existence’ because it conveys ‘hesitancy, skepticism, and fatalism, aiming to preclude pre-emption and assuming that Israel can co-exist with a nuclear-armed Iran,’ which of course it cannot, anymore that the United States could have co-exited with Cuba when the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles there during the Kennedy administration.”
WATCHDOG: We hear the sabers rattling as a concerted efforts takes place to justify a U. S. or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear capacity. Concerning the danger of missiles in Cuba, within a decade of their removal Soviet nuclear powered submarines with atomic weapons were stationed twenty-five miles off both of our coasts.
The best thing that came out of JFK’s clash with Nikita Kruschev was the U. S. commitment not to invade or support the invasion of Cuba.
There are those who feel that American and Israeli intransigence has enabled the otherwise unpopular current regime in to remain in power. There are others, like Thomas, who fear suitcase atomic bombs going off in a major American city.
It is a tough call and it won’t be made easier by the type of misinformation and propaganda that drew the county into the Iraq debacle.
Very interesting article. I agree with the Watchdog and I would like to add that while the regime in Iran is vile, despicable and homicidal, they are not suicidal.
Further, the politicians and the media keep saying that Ahmadinejad said that “Israel will be wiped off the map”. Deep in his heart he may wish for that, however he never ever uttered those words. I speak the language and what he said was not that. It has been twisted and deliberately mistranslated to further their agenda which is the justification for an attack on Iran.
(Remember yellow cake uranium from Niger and its link to Saddam Hussein, and other none sense such as Iraq and 9/11)
What he said was that the Zionist regime has to disappear. This in the worldview of the regime is in the same vein as saying apartheid must disappear. The word Israel was not even mentioned in the sentence. This made him very popular in the Arab world. Our politicians do the same here with Israel in order to get the Jewish vote.
Would he like to see Israel disappear? Maybe, but then so would more than a dozen Arab country… particularly those surrounding Israel. In fact anti-Israel sentiment is many times stronger in the Arab world than in Iran. No one talks of going to war with those Arab countries.
The regime (not the people) in Iran is very anti US. They view Israel as a proxy for the US. Hence the rhetoric against Israel.
Israel is strong enough to take care of itself. Iran is no threat to Israel. The US should not engage in a war with Iran because Israel is paranoid.
Iran, however, is of grave danger to the west. Not in military terms but in ideological terms. Iran has in the past and continues presently to spread very strong anti-West sentiments in the Muslim world. This in the long run is far more dangerous for the West than if Iran got the bomb but had a regime that was not ideological in its current form and was preferably democratic.