ATTACK ON IRAN A GREAT IDEA
By Mike Evans
The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency said last week that an attack on Iran to stop its drive to produce nuclear weapons would be "an act of madness." This was supposedly a warning to the United States and Israel.
Perhaps madness lies in the eyes of the beholder, but International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei also helpfully pointed out that Iran might have some 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges producing weapons-grade plutonium by the end of July. This just happens to be the production array that the IAEA has referred to as the point of no return for Iran’s nuclear arms program.
Are we missing something here? Isn’t this the same Iran whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been spreading Islamist terrorism throughout the world, while constantly threatening to “wipe Israel off the map”?
ElBaradei suggests that if Iran would heed UN Security Council calls to stop developing nuclear weapons this would be a "good confidence-building measure." Why does this sound like Chamberlain’s response to Hitler’s confidence-building measure regarding Czechoslovakia? Does anyone doubt that, if Hitler had the atomic bomb, we would all be speaking German today?
Both the US and Israel have followed the Security Council’s lead in calling for a negotiated solution to this mounting crisis. But as self-respecting democracies believing in the right of self-defense, both have declined to dismiss the possibility they might be forced to attack Iran to eliminate its nuclear threat.
It makes no difference to the Islamofascists of Teheran whether their victims are Jews or Christians or even fellow Muslims. Just as it makes no difference to terrorists whether their target is “the Great Satan” America or “the Little Satan” Israel. Both are the targets of their perverted dreams of world jihad. There is an unavoidable sense that this same terrorism will return to America for another 9/11 – or worse – unless it is stopped by necessary military force.
When Ahmadinejad declared to the General Assembly that Iran would “wipe Israel off of the map,” the world listened as if this were the most reasonable proposal regarding the Jews since Hitler. But like Hitler, Ahmadinejad is aiming at bigger conquest: first the Middle East, then an Islamist-dominated world without “the Great Satan.” Defeating Iran at the outset is not just Israel's interest, but that of the entire civilized world.
In the post 9/11 reality, security authorities worldwide are preoccupied with protecting their populations against the threat of ever more terrible scenarios: weapons of mass destruction that could strike down entire cities by spreading some hideous plague or detonating a suitcase-sized nuclear device. The one country that represents the worst threat to world security in terms of its support for Islamist terrorism and defiant pursuit of a nuclear capability is Iran.
No one should think Iran’s “Islamic revolution” is over. The Islamic Republic’s rulers have not abandoned the worldview of their founder, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who declared Saudi Arabia's rulers unfit to be the guardians of Islam's holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, on the one hand, and who branded the United States “the Great Satan” on the other. In Iraq today, Khomeini’s heirs are infiltrating and arming thousands of terrorists who are daily killing American soldiers, as well as Iraqi civilians struggling to establish a democracy.
Sanctions have not stopped Iran from exporting its “Islamic revolution” to Lebanon, sponsoring Hizbullah and Hamas terrorism against Israel, and backing terrorism from Europe to the Far East. The time for diplomacy is running out while Iran’s nuclear arms program approaches critical mass. Because a nuclear Iran ultimately threatens the whole world, the task of meeting this threat is rightfully the job of the world’s only superpower. If Iran refuses to withdraw its nuclear threat, an attack by the US to eliminate this peril is not just a great idea, but the only alternative that makes sense.
Mike Evans is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Final Move Beyond Iraq published by Frontline.
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