Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
Iran had a party last week.
It was a celebration, of sorts, at which its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gleefully announced that Iran had, indeed, become a nuclear state. Elements within Iran and, I suspect, millions upon millions of people around the globe were not so enthusiastic. The understatement is intentional.
A few questions immediately come to mind — just in case folks haven’t been paying attention. The first, of course, is: Does this planet need yet another country with a capacity coupled with a desire to enrich uranium sufficiently to build nuclear weapons?
That’s easy. Heck no!
The next question is more specific to Iran. Does this world, or any part of it, relish the thought of a nuclear-armed Iran led by one of the cagiest and, seemingly, nuttiest people on the planet? (Here is a fellow who hates everything about the United States, our Western culture, our friends and allies — including nearby neighbor Israel, a country he often talks about in the same sentence with words like destroy, obliterate and the like.)
The answer to that question should also be, “Heck no.”
Questions remain: What has the sane world been doing about this problem for the past few years, and when are we going to see some headway so we don’t have to watch that maniac shove his nuclear capability in our face?
I believe the answers to those questions are not as clear-cut as the first two. There is no question the Obama administration has been working hard with our allies, friends, acquaintances and whoever else should be concerned about madmen and suicide bombers armed with something significantly more potent than run-of-the-mill bombs. Most countries that cherish their citizens’ lives and futures understand the gravity of the problem, which is growing in severity each day, and we refuse to do anything to stop it.
And, to be fair, some in our country believe Iran is further away from producing nuclear weapons than they would have us believe. Conversely, other players who should know a bit more about the problem — mostly because they have so much more to lose — contend that the threat comes dangerously close to reality every day and failure to act can bring consequences too horrible to contemplate.
I don’t know wherein that particular truth lies, but I learned long ago that when you talk about life-and-death situations, erring on the side of caution is a far more responsible path.
In short, if we fail to act because we don’t think the crazies in Iran have a bomb, we do so at our peril because if they do have or get a bomb, everything they have said, everything they have signaled and everything they have expressed as their fervent desire could happen in the blink of an eye.
The easy thing for the United States and the rest of the civilized world to do is turn its collective back and let Israel, a country squarely in Ahmadinejad’s sights that has some experience in taking out nuclear capabilities, try to resolve the problem. That would be messy. For sure it would be noisy.
And certainly those countries too timid to act in their own best interests will condemn tiny Israel for an act of self-defense that could save the entire planet years of nuclear nightmares.
But, that’s not the way the United States wants to go. We prefer to talk — at least in public — about the “what ifs” in the world to come.
What if we can get China to approve sanctions? What if we can get Iran to agree to produce enriched uranium for peaceful purposes only, a desire professed to be the intent of the Islamist regime but one that is undercut by its rabid dislike for the West and Israel? And what if we can turn the clerics in Iran and Ahmadinejad into peace-loving people willing to work with their neighbors and not against them?
That’s another course of action — or inaction.
Yet another comes in the form of an op-ed piece in The New York Times last Tuesday. Written by a defense analyst at the Air Force Research Institute, the piece argues for letting Iran become a full-fledged nuclear state and then using that status as leverage against her neighbors to lower the price of oil, make peace with Israel, increase the sale of arms to the Middle East and break the back of OPEC, the oil cartel.
It was an inspired piece, but I have to agree with critics who called it “dangerously naive.”
Whether we wait until Iran gets a nuclear bomb as part of our plan to change the dynamics of oil, weapons purchases and the path of peace in that region; or we dither away the little time we have left trying to get China or Russia or whoever else stands in the way of unified action; or we continue to hold Israel back from committing a worldwide act of selfless self-defense; the result will be exactly the same.
A country that has demonstrated its dislike of Western ways, its lack of concern for the basic human rights of its own people, and its seething hatred for Israel, her friends and allies — including the United States and a good part of the civilized world — will have the capacity to annihilate cities and destroy millions of lives at the drop of a suitcase, missile or bomb — pick your poison.
I know we have a lot to worry about these days. The economy, or lack of it, looms large. The health care we get, or don’t get, looms large. Our ability to lead the world or be relegated to a follower status looms large. And a world bent on its own destruction — because we send too much hot air and carbon-based gases into an overburdened atmosphere — looms large.
But all that said — which is not only a mouthful but an incredible plate full of hard stuff to accomplish — there has to be the kind of life-and-death focus on Iran’s party last week.
Ahmadinejad is serious in a seriously demented way. We need to be just as serious. Now!
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
