What To Do About Iran?

What To Do About Iran?
By Daniel G. Jennings
The crisis over Iran’s nuclear ambitions is a perfect example of what’s wrong with modern American foreign policy. The media manufactures a crisis i.e. the hype and hysteria about Iran’s attempts to enrich uranium, and demands that the president and the international community do something about it. Then if our leaders and their foreign counterparts do something the media condemns whatever course of action they take.
The possibility of Iran manufacturing nuclear weapons is hardly a grave crisis, Iran is several years away from building a nuclear bomb at best. It will take several years of research, construction and testing for Iran to build a nuclear bomb. By the time the bomb is ready the Iranian government maybe democratic or our best ally.
And even if the Iranians succeed in building a nuclear bomb so what? An Iranian nuclear bomb would be no threat to the USA, or the rest of the world. The US has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons of its own. If Iran used its nuclear weapons against the US would incinerate Tehran, no Iranian leader would dare use the nuclear bomb. Nor would nuclear Iran be a threat to Israel, Israel has it’s own nuclear stockpile.
A nuclear armed Iran wouldn’t necessarily be a strong nation. The Soviet Union created the greatest stockpile of nuclear weaponry in human history. Yet it still collapsed into the ash heap of history.
Nor would Iran be likely to supply a nuclear bomb to terrorists. Would the Iranians go to all the time and expense of manufacturing a nuke to give it to terrorists? Most of the Islamic terrorists are Sunni Moslems and the Iranians are Shiites, whom the Sunni hate. Would the Iranians give their arch enemies a nuclear bomb?
Since the Iranian nuclear bomb wouldn’t be much of a threat to the US or any other nation. The crisis over it is a false one that is a threat to international peace and stability. So what should the United States do about this crisis?
As I see it we have three options, the best option Plan A, would be to do nothing. To sign a face saving agreement of some sort with Iran then quietly ignore the Iranian nuclear ambitions.
This would humiliate the ayatollahs and their windbag of a president. They’d be exposed as what they are hot air merchants. It’d send the message to the developing world that nuclear weapons won’t attract attention or make you a great power. That would do more to contain nuclear weapons than all the attention focused on them.
Iran is only building nuclear weapons because of the attention paid to it. Take the attention away and the motivation goes away.
The next option, Plan B would be to rely on diplomacy to use sanctions, etc. to force Iran to agree to halt it’s nuclear program. The problem with this strategy is that it obligates the US and the International Community to take action against Iran whether it makes sense to do so or not. The US might be obligated to take actions that could antagonize a potential friend and who knows Iran might be one of our best allies in a few years.
The worst option would be plan C military action, attacking another country destroying its property, killing its citizens and potentially bringing down its government and for what? The possibility that Iran might build nuclear weapons sometime in the future. The risks of such a course of action out weigh the perils.
So the answer to the question what should we do about Iran is an obvious one. We should do nothing and let the situation sort itself out.