This from a leading neocon intellectual, Danielle Pletka, vice president, foreign and defense policy studies, American Enterprise Institute:
The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it's Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don't do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, "See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you that Iran wasn't getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately." And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.
In other words,
if Iran were to build a nuke (by the way,
Iran is not doing so), it might act responsibly, which would be interpreted to mean that Iran is
in fact a responsible power in the Middle East.
And
that would be
bad -- because the U.S. government would then lose a major rationalization for dominating the Middle East. Take away the Iranian “problem” and there goes a lot of prestigious and profitable power opportunities for U.S. officials and government contractors. So Iran must be stopped from developing a weapon that 1) it is not developing, and 2) that it wouldn’t use if it
were developing it.
See the Pletka video for yourself.
Pletka's colleague
Thomas Donnelly agrees: "We’re fixated on the Iranian nuclear program while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East."
When will these arrogant people realize that managing a balance of power is a dangerous mission (though lucrative for special interests, to be sure). They might consult the foreign-policy speeches of Richard Cobden and John Bright, whose analysis of Britain's attempt to manage the European balance of power are as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Then again, the power elite would have to have real people's interests at heart for this line of thinking to have any effect.
Top Israeli officials also say they wouldn’t expect an attack from a nuclear Iran.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoted defense minister Ehud Barak as saying:
The real threat to Zionism [from an Iranian bomb] is the dilution of quality. Jews know that they can land on their feet in any corner of the world. The real test for us is to make Israel such an attractive place, such a cutting-edge place in human society, education, culture, science, quality of life, that even American Jewish young people want to come here…. Our young people can consciously decide to go other places. Our best youngsters could stay out of here by choice.
So Israel might have to attack Iran not because Iran might attack Israel first, but rather because young people won’t want to live in the country otherwise. Outward migration from Israel exceeds inward migration. The country’s leaders fear that continued regional tension will accelerate this exodus. Has it occurred to them that young people might not like being citizens of an increasingly isolated occupier and apartheid state that exists in constant tension with its neighbors?
It may seem reasonable to the power elite that a military attack on Iran would create an atmosphere hospitable to young people looking for a better future. But if that’s what Israel’s rulers think, they need to open their eyes.
