Critics of President Donald Trump‘s involvement in the Israel–Iran conflict claim that we’ve been warned for decades that the mullahs are on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon, and yet it never happens. The contention is meant to trigger memories of the flawed intelligence used to support the Iraq War effort and to accuse Israel of manipulating the president.
There are many problems with this theory.
Now, I should preface this by saying that the debate is something of a red herring, because the driving argument of the isolationist is that the Middle East is none of our business. Neither the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) faction nor the Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) faction would want to intervene against Iran, or even assist Israel, even if there was definitive evidence the Islamic Republic was hours away from integrating the nuclear component with a warhead. Most critics of our foreign policy don’t care if Iran has nukes. Some, it seems, are hoping it does. They simply can’t say it.
But let’s take the argument in good faith.
There’s a good reason Iran’s objectives have been delayed. Stuxnet, uncovered in 2010, significantly damaged Iran’s nuclear program, likely delaying it for around two years. The malware, incidentally, was one of numerous viruses that have infected Iranian systems over the years. There was the Flame virus, the Stars virus, and, no doubt, others. Then there is the sabotage. There have been scores of explosions at Iranian nuclear facilities and assassinations of numerous leading Iranian scientists. Any delay in Iran’s production of a nuke is due to the efforts of Israel and its allies, not the good graces of the Supreme Leader.
Though it is also perfectly conceivable that Iran slowed and sped up its nuclear program to gain leverage in negotiations with the United States and Europe. Those pallets of Swiss Francs and Euros aren’t airmailing themselves.
Setting all that aside, does anyone really believe that Iran isn’t working towards developing nuclear weapons? Did the mullahs build enrichment facilities deep into mountain sides for innocent reasons? Iran, a signee of The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has been offered the ability to have civilian nuclear programs by numerous administrations, including this one. Yet, for obvious reasons, it insists on enriching uranium to levels that are only used for one purpose. Iran isn’t throwing funding into electrical infrastructure. It builds military fortifications around those alleged civilian nuclear facilities.
Many people have pointed out that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who, we should note, has an ideological aversion to U.S. intervention, told Congress not long ago that the U.S. intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” You’ll notice isolationists have absolute trust in our intelligence services when they tell them what they want to hear.
Less known is that Gabbard also said that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was “at its highest levels” and “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.” What do people think that means? It means Khamenei could accelerate the program at any time and quickly approach, or breach, the point of no return.
Of course, the notion that Israel needs to wait for Iran to be hours away from ballistic missiles falling on their heads to act is suicidal. It leaves the country with zero room for mistakes. Iran has a clandestine program — ensconced deep in the earth — for a reason. They aren’t marking their nuclear deadlines on calendars.
Also, being wrong in the past doesn’t disprove new evidence (Though it should be noted that the Israeli government, despite popular perceptions, warned George W. Bush not to invade Iraq). This time the Israeli military gave the president intelligence showing tangible progress by Iran in producing components for a nuclear bomb, including a uranium metal core and a neutron source initiator for triggering a device. Trump believed what he saw. One assumes he gave the evidence to US intelligence services, which also believed what they saw.
The underlying conspiratorial paranoia of many isolationists is that the Jewish State just loves war and death and putting itself in danger and manipulating the world. In truth, these people are loath to admit that the Islamists in Iran, nearly the singular source of Middle Eastern tension right now, created this crisis with their crusade to obtain a weapon of mass murder.
Iran has been too close to a nuclear weapon for too long. This war was inevitable. And there’s only one country to blame.
