American Middle-East expert Elliott Abrams once wrote that in his many meetings with Middle East dignitaries the question he was most often asked was not, “What are you Americans doing about the Israeli-Palestinian problem?” It was, “What are you doing about Iran?”
As I mentioned in last week’s “Thinking Out Loud,” Iran is by far the world’s foremost exporter and supporter of terrorism. It provides funding and military assistance to the terrorist groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, as well as to Shiite militias in Iraq and the ruthless butcher in Syria, Bashar al-Assad. And it is making inroads in the former pro-western nation of Yemen.
Its ultimate goal is to establish “a universal holy government and the downfall of all others” — that is, a global caliphate in which Sharia religious law is forced on everyone.
It’s other priority goal, as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini has openly and repeatedly stated, it to annihilate Israel, which — given Iran’s lack of conventional military strength compared to Israel — can only be done with nuclear weapons.
Hence Iran’s undeniable attempts to develop a nuclear weapons capability, which a coalition of western nations, ostensibly led by the United States, has been unable to stop. As far back as 2002 the West realized that Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles necessary to deliver them, but efforts to negotiate an end to this weapons program have been unsuccessful. It is true that harsh economic sanctions imposed on Iran did bring it to the negotiating table, but those sanctions have been watered down to the point that Iran has easily bypassed them, and while deadline after deadline to settle this matter has passed, Iran’s nuclear centrifuges continue to spin. And both Khameini and Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, are openly contemptuous of President Obama’s attempts to negotiate a delay, if not an outright halt, in Iran’s nuclear weapons program through a United Nations Security Council resolution.
Indeed, Iran has repeatedly violated existing agreements and recent evidence shows Iran has established secret nuclear supply networks. No written treaty, even if Iran signs one, will stop its nuclear weapons quest.
And should Iran gain nuclear weapons, the threat to Israel, while grave, may be overshadowed by the fact that all of those Middle East countries that once asked what the United States is “doing about Iran” will take matters into their own hands. That is, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates will use their considerable financial resources to quickly launch their own nuclear weapons program. That means a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which is both the Earth’s most politically volatile geographic region and the producer of most of the world’s oil.
