Nuclear Weapons

The ongoing failure of talks concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program, most recently in Istanbul on July 3, is no surprise. This latest negotiation charade between Iran and the Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany (P5+1) is the culmination of 10 years of innumerable diplomatic endeavors. These efforts rested on the erroneous premise that Iran could be talked out of its decades-long effort to build deliverable nuclear weapons.

In 1993, James Carville, President Bill Clinton’s political strategist, said that “if there was reincarnation,” he’d like to return as the bond market, because then he could “intimidate everybody.” Today, with interest rates historically low, the fantasy of choice would no doubt be to come back as the oil market, which intimidates even the U.S. government. 

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) on November 8 released a new policy that falls just short of urging total nuclear disarmament while surmising that reliance on nukes might be idolatrous.

NAE was founded in the 1940’s to counter the liberal and then influential National Council of Churches, and was historically a conservative bulwark. Its most famous public moment was likely President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “evil empire” speech to NAE.

On Tuesday, the United Nations again made itself an international laughing stock – except perhaps to the American taxpayers who continue to foot 22 percent of the bill – by appointing North Korea chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. That would be the same North Korea that, according to an article this week by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has “twice tested nuclear weapons…is developing missiles to carry them…has built facilities capable of producing highly enriched uranium for more nuclear weapons” and has defied a U.N. arms embargo by exporting weapons and sensitive technologies to rogue regimes.

How the End Begins

The Road to a Nuclear
World War III

Reuel Marc Gerecht writes at The Atlantic's website:

Speculation about a possible attack on Iranian nuclear sites has reached a fever pitch over the summer.  The talk is so wild that even level-headed commentators on the right like Michael Barone opine aloud that perhaps Israel won’t be the instigator; rather the Obama administration might order a U.S. strike.

Last month, we published an editorial under the title “A Period of Consequences.” The phrase was taken from a speech in the House of Commons in late 1936 in which Winston Churchill warned: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

Here is Benjamin Netanyahu on Fox News with Chris Wallace: 

when the president [of the United States] says that he's determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that all options are on the table, I think that's the right statement of policy. ...the president's position that all options are on the table might actually have the only real effect on Iran...—if they think it's true.

In last week's print edition of TWS, I wrote: 

Just when you thought the Iran problem couldn’t get worse, it’s worse. 

The Telegraph (UK) published an astonishing bit of news over the weekend.  Actually, it’s not quite “news,” as the story has been bouncing around for some years.  But the Telegraph cites an article sanctioned by the highest authorities in Beijing, which gives the story a fresh imprimatur of credibility.

In 1969, when Sino-Soviet relations were at their worst, the Russians contemplated destroying Chinese nuclear sites with a first strike.  They had the presence of mind to realize that letting nukes fly might have unintended consequences.   So Moscow gingerly approached Washington with the news.  The reaction was surprising.  American officials told the Soviets that if they struck first, we would hit Russia with a nuclear strike of our own.  Needless to say, nothing happened.