Is it too late for the West to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without engaging in direct military action to stop the radical theocracy from getting to the bomb?
According to Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operative and current senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, yes.
Gerecht, appearing on Just the News’ John Solomon Reports podcast that Iran has essentially reached the point where, to stop it, the US (or, presumably, Israel) could only really stop it by sending in the bombers.
Speaking on the issue of the Iranian nuclear program to John Solomon, he said:
“Essentially, they’re home free, which means you either accept them going nuclear and you’re perhaps willing to engage in some type of containment strategy — think of the Soviet Union. Or you strike. You try to prevent them from becoming a nuclear state.”
Either hope the ayatollas don’t use the bomb if they build it or try to hit a country on the verge of becoming a nuclear power with a strike of some sort before it’s too late. Neither seems like a particularly good, or safe, option.
Describing those options in a recent op-ed, Gerecht said:
The actual options: Iran gets the nuke but America tries to deter and contain its ambitions. Or America essentially gives up (Iran becomes Israel’s problem, not ours). Or America ramps up sanctions, tries to obtain a “good deal,” or induces a nuke-stopping, popular insurrection. Or, politically the least appealing choice, America goes to war to prevent the Islamic Revolutionary Guards from becoming custodians of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.
How’d we get here, get to a point where the only options are a strike or giving up on trying to prevent Tehran from becoming a nuclear power?
Again according to Gerect’s op-ed, the issue was that we waited too long to deal with it under the Trump Administration. In his words:
Trump chose a stop-the-nuke sanctions strategy, which should have changed when it became obvious two years ago that Tehran had stockpiled — or figured out how to import outside of sanctions — high-tech, nuclear-related components and a lot of maraging steel…
[…]Before January 2021, anti-deal Republicans who believe an Iranian nuke is simply unacceptable should have been encouraging Trump to bomb Iran’s program. That was the only approach that offered any chance of restraining Tehran’s ambitions. Arms control always had a negligible chance of success with an oil-rich, exuberantly mendacious, revolutionary Islamic state.
So, perhaps it’s just too late. But, then again, this “Iran is about to have a bomb” rhetoric is coming from a former CIA agent, an agent of the “WMD’s in Iraq” agency. So, take what he says with a grain of sait.
Perhaps he’s right, perhaps Iran really is on the verge of having a bomb. But, then again, we never found those WMDs that Saddam was supposed to have, the WMDs that kicked off a war in which thousands of Americans died and on which we spent trillions of dollars.
So, while Gerecht is pushing toward war, remember how that went last time we tried to deal with the WMDs supposedly in the Middle East.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
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This story syndicated with permission from Will, Author at Trending Politics