Patrick Buchanan: Is the Superpower Afraid Of Iran? – OpEd

Albany Tribune ^ | November 26, 2013 | Patrick J Buchanan

[Colonel Kangaroo]

“Iran’s Nuclear Triumph” roared the headline of the Wall Street Journal editorial. William Kristol is again quoting Churchill on Munich.

Since the news broke Saturday night that Iran had agreed to a six-month freeze on its nuclear program, we are back in the Sudetenland again.

Why? For not only was this modest deal agreed to by the United States, but also by our NATO allies Germany, Britain and France.

Russia and China are fine with it.

Iran’s rivals, Turkey and Egypt, are calling it a good deal. Saudi Arabia says it “could be a first step toward a comprehensive solution for Iran’s nuclear program.”

Qatar calls it “an important step toward safeguarding peace and stability in the region.” Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have issued similar statements.

Israeli President Shimon Peres calls the deal satisfactory. Former Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin has remarked of the hysteria in some Israeli circles, “From the reactions this morning, I might have thought Iran had gotten permission to build a bomb.”

Predictably, “Bibi” Netanyahu is leading the stampede:

“Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.”

But this is not transparent nonsense?

In return for a modest lifting of sanctions, Tehran has agreed to halt work on the heavy water reactor it is building at Arak, to halt production of 20-percent uranium, to dilute half of its existing stockpile, and to allow more inspections.

Does this really make the world “a much more dangerous place”?

Consider the worst-case scenario we hear from our politicians and pundits — that Iran is cleverly scheming to get the U.S. and U.N. sanctions lifted, and, then, she will make a “mad dash” for the bomb.

But how exactly would Tehran go about this?

If Iran suddenly moved all its low-enriched uranium, to be further enriched in a crash effort to 90 percent, i.e., bomb grade, this would take months to accomplish.

Yet, we would be altered within hours that the uranium was being moved.

Any such Iranian action would expose Barack Obama and John Kerry as dupes. They would be discredited and the howls from Tel Aviv and Capitol Hill for air and missile strikes on Natanz, Fordo and Arak would become irresistible.

Obama and Kerry would be forced to act.

War with Iran, which would mean a shattered Iran, would be a real possibility. At the least, Iran, like North Korea, would be sanctioned anew, isolated and made a pariah state.

Should Iran test a nuclear device, Saudi Arabia would acquire bombs from Pakistan. Turkey and Egypt might start their own nuclear weapons programs. Israel would put its nuclear arsenal or high alert.

If, after a year or two building a bomb, in an act of insanity, Iran found a way to deliver it to Israel or a U.S. facility in the Middle East, Iran would be inviting the fate of Imperial Japan in 1945.

So, let us assume another scenario, that the Iranians are not crazed fanatics but rational actors looking out for what is best for their country.

If Iran has no atom bomb program, as the Ayatollah attests, President Hassan Rouhani says he is willing to demonstrate, and 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded six years ago and again two years ago, consider the future that might open to Iran — if the Iranians are simply willing and able to prove this to the world’s satisfaction.

First, a steady lifting of sanctions. Second, an end to Iran’s isolation and a return to the global economy. Third, a wave of Western investment for Iran’s oil and gas industry, producing prosperity and easing political pressure on the regime.

Fourth, eventual emergence of Iran, the most populous nation in the Gulf with 85 million citizens, as the dominant power in the Gulf, just as China, after dispensing with the world Communist revolution, became dominant in Asia

Why would an Iran, with this prospect before it, risk the wrath of the world and a war with the United States to acquire a bomb whose use would assure the country’s annihilation?

America’s goals: We do not want a nuclear Iran, and we do not want war with Iran. And Iran’s actions seem to indicate that building an atom bomb is not the animating goal of the Ayatollah, as some Americans insist.

Though she has the ability to build a bomb, Iran has neither conducted a nuclear test, nor produced bomb-grade uranium. She has kept her supply of 20-percent uranium below what is needed to be further enriched for even a single bomb test. Now, she has agreed to dilute half of that and produce no more.

If Iran were hell-bent on a bomb, why has she not produced a bomb?

Just possibly, because Iran doesn’t want the bomb. And if that is so, why not a deal to end these decades of sterile hostility?

[HiTech RedNeck]

No, you are confusing the two. Their CLAIMING that they do, and actually objectively doing so, are two states of affairs. Have you audited every verse of the Koran against the practice there? No, I do not think you have. Also you probably haven’t visited the more enraged Al Qaeda sects.

[Tau Food]

I don't believe that the Iranians or the Israelis really want to destroy one another or to send the Middle East back to a radioactive form of Biblical Times. But, if they do want to, they can do it and we can't stop them.

Personally, I believe that the whole bunch of them are bluffing. I don't believe Israel is going to send troops into Iran and I don't believe Iran is going to send troops into Israel. Nor do I believe that they will agree to just nuke one another just so that the rest of us can move on with life.

But, in the final analysis, their future is in their hands and not ours.

[kabar]

According to journalist Robin Wright,

During the Fateh offensive [in February 1987], I toured the southwest front on the Iranian side and saw scores of boys, aged anywhere from nine to sixteen, who said with staggering and seemingly genuine enthusiasm that they had volunteered to become martyrs. Regular army troops, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards and mullahs all lauded these youths, known as baseeji [Basij], for having played the most dangerous role in breaking through Iraqi lines. They had led the way, running over fields of mines to clear the ground for the Iranian ground assault. Wearing white headbands to signify the embracing of death, and shouting "Shaheed, shaheed" (Martyr, martyr) they literally blew their way into heaven. Their numbers were never disclosed. But a walk through the residential suburbs of Iranian cities provided a clue. Window after window, block after block, displayed black-bordered photographs of teenage or preteen youths.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

They’re mean all right. I Just think even then they were sacrificing others and exploiting their fanaticism while staying safe themselves.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

But, in the final analysis, their future is in their hands and not ours.

I wish the people in Washington would realize that.

[kabar]

You can’t compare current day Christians with Muslims.

[kabar]

But there is a level of fanaticism that most in the West don’t understand. Buchanan is trying to use western logic on a culture that has a much different world view.

[kabar]

No, you are confusing the two. Their CLAIMING that they do, and actually objectively doing so, are two states of affairs. Have you audited every verse of the Koran against the practice there? No, I do not think you have. Also you probably haven’t visited the more enraged Al Qaeda sects.

I have lived five years in Saudi Arabia, two in Iran, and two in Indonesia. There are variations in how countries and people practice Islam, but the Koran is still central to the daily lives of the individual. When you pray five times a day, fast for a month, and make a pilgrimage to Mecca, you are far more involved with your religion than most Christians or Jews. In many ways Islam is more akin to a cult than a religion. Apostates are treated harshly.

[RichInOC]

I’m not a fan of people assuming Iran has good intentions.

[rmlew]

Evidently, Pat wants Iran and Saudi Arabia to have nukes.
We'll be much safer then.

[nathanbedford]

As one who invariably supports Pat Buchanan on these threads, I nevertheless agree with you on this one.

Perhaps it is Buchanan's reflexive anti-Zionism (I deliberately did not say anti-Semitism) or his isolationist proclivities, but he seems to have got this wrong. I take seriously your observations concerning the mindset of Islam because it is confirmatory of what we have heard from other sources. I do not believe that Netanyahu is so exercised about the situation for no reason.

But it does not take a fanatical Muslim to be self-destructive. Consider the fanaticism of the Japanese in World War II, consider the degree of self-sacrifice and destruction they were willing to endure. Consider the degree of suffering borne by the Germans under Nazi administration in World War II. When you have tens of thousands of people dying every night in Japan and in Germany and those administrations nevertheless carrying on the war when it was utterly hopeless, we have a mindset that is not far from inviting Armageddon.

We must understand that this situation is not put to a plebiscite in Iran, rather it is the policy of a theocracy. Consider the fanaticism of those who ruled Japan, we consider them to be militarists but it was also in a sense a theocracy in that the Emperor was considered divine and the "militarists" were in a sense his apostles. No one can deny that Nazi-ism was a kind of secular religion and that Hitler himself enjoyed a super human charismatic reputation among the Germans.

It does not take the whole of Iran to make a conscious decision to invite Armageddon to gain the gates of Allah's paradise, it requires only the fixed determination of a few fanatical mullahs in custody of the bomb.

[SunkenCiv]

Once again, Pat Buchanan shows his associations.

Iran’s Rouhani: Nuke Plan ‘Continues Today and Will Continue Tomorrow’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3095914/posts

[Colonel Kangaroo]

I don’t think anybody is arguing that Iran is a model nation. But if we fought every nation with a less than ideal regime, we’d be in perpetual war. We don’t have unlimited manpower or unlimited money, so sometimes we have to chose the lesser of evils.