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by Charles Krauthammer
On Tuesday, Iran announced it was installing 6,000 more centrifuges – they produce enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon – in addition to the 3,000 already operating. The world yawned.… The latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions, which took a year to achieve, is comically weak. It represents the end of the sanctions road. The president is going to hand over to his successor an Iran on the verge of going nuclear. This will deeply destabilize the Middle East, threaten the moderate Arabs with Iranian hegemony and leave Israel on hair-trigger alert.
This failure can, however, be mitigated. Since there will apparently be no disarming of Iran by pre-emption or by sanctions, we shall have to rely on deterrence to prevent the mullahs, some of whom are apocalyptic and messianic, from using nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, we prevented an attack not only on the U.S. but also on America’s allies by extending the American nuclear umbrella – i.e., declaring that any attack on our allies would be considered an attack on the United States.
Such a threat is never 100 percent credible. Nonetheless, it made the Soviets think twice about attacking our European allies. It kept the peace. We should do the same to keep nuclear peace in the Middle East.… It is, of course, hardly certain that deterrence would work on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other jihadists.…
For the first time since the time of Jesus, Israel is the home of the world’s largest Jewish community. An implacable enemy has openly declared genocidal intentions against it – in clear violation of the U.N. charter – and is pursuing the means to carry out that intent. The world does nothing. Some, like the Russians, are literally providing fuel for the fire.
For those who believe that America stands for something in the world – that the nation that has liberated more peoples than any other has even the most minimal moral vocation – there can be no more pressing cause than preventing the nuclear annihilation of an allied democracy, the last refuge and hope of an ancient people openly threatened with the final Final Solution.
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