No one should doubt that President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail, the president’s former special assistant on Iran said.
Obama has “made it very clear” that he regards a nuclear- armed Iran as so great a threat to international security that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance to use the force” to stop them, Dennis Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, said in an interview yesterday.
I imagine that the drones circling in the Iranian skies right now are bird dogging this very eventuality, that at some point the US might engage in a low-level air war against Iranian targets. The risks are tremendous, as Iran has a very real capability to strike back, either through conventional means or through terrorist proxies. But a nuclear capable Iran is unacceptable. I do not subscribe to the mindset that, because they are Muslim, they have no desire to live and will use the capability as soon as they reach it. Rather I think that they are beyond rash and their mindset is one of ignorance - the members of the ruling regime think that they could survive a nuclear exchange and so might consider it a plausible scenario in dire circumstances.
As I've said before, a scenario where millions of Iranians are incinerated by an Israeli nuclear weapon is a victory for Iran. A scenario where millions of Israelis are incinerated by an Iranian nuclear weapon is a victory for Iran. There are simply not enough restraints on Iran to use nuclear weapons if they managed to get one and, as long as members of the Iranian regime think they could personally survive an exchange, there are too many circumstances where any exchange is seen as an Iranian victory.
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