John Bolton's NYT oped " To stop Iran's bomb, bomb Iran
Yes, that is HIS title -- and no, he does not consider that there could be a super unfortunate ramification - WWIII!
Here is his conclusion:
[div class ="excerpt"]
The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.
Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.
Mr. Obama’s fascination with an Iranian nuclear deal always had an air of unreality. But by ignoring the strategic implications of such diplomacy, these talks have triggered a potential wave of nuclear programs. The president’s biggest legacy could be a thoroughly nuclear-weaponized Middle East.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?_r=0
Essentially, he argues that if we "let" Iran get a bomb lots of other countries in the region will then work to get them. He explicitly notes that it was different with Israel (this is why I "saved" one paragraph.)
Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.
Yes, because all the Arab countries had such more faith in Israel.
In a way, it might solve some good having this put on the table. Bolton is saying out loud what smoother neocons (including Netanyahu) simply implied as a possible solution. Netanyahu spoke of the possibility of a better deal - ignoring that 6 countries' diplomats have worked on this for decade and this is by far the closest they have been to a deal.
For those who forgot or only vaguely remember, the Republican controlled Senate failed to get him confirmed OR get him endorsed by the SFRC. This in spite of pulling every trick in the book and forcing a hearing to vote on it without giving the committee information the Democrats requested. (If you want a walk down memory lane - here is a DU thread that starts with Frist actually recessing the Senate so no Democrat could put a hold on the SFRC meeting to vote on this. It then has comments on the anger by EVERY Democrat at the subsequent hearing. There is a link to another DU thread on a more major forum of the meeting itself, but the entire run up shows how hard the Republicans worked to make this creep Secretary to the UN. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=273x23657 Or read the Dailykos live blog - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/04/19/107894/-Live-John-Bolton-Vote-Diary
= new reply since forum marked as read
Always taking us into nightmarish wars and then forgetting they ever happened.
