Today's Washington Examiner quotes Israeli President Shimon Peres as saying that Iran is a threat to the whole world--not just to Israel. He made that statement while speaking at a memorial service for soldiers and civilians killed in Israel's wars and terror attacks.
The Washington Examiner reports:
"Peres added that a threat to "the peace of the Jewish people always carries the danger of turning into a threat to the civilized world as a whole."
David Aikman, former journalist for TIME magazine, is quoted as saying that Jewish communities everywhere in the world have often been known as the 'canary in the coal mine.' The way a government behaves toward Jews is the first sign of how it intends to treat all the people under its control. We need to keep this thought in mind as we watch the nations of the world deal with the threat of Iran going nuclear. Israel is not the only nation at risk, and if we ignore the risk to the entire world, we do so at our own peril.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported yesterday that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned that the United States does not have a policy in place for dealing with Iran's development of nuclear weapons. This may be one of the reasons that Iran was not discussed in President Obama's recent nuclear summit--the Administration has no answer on how to deal with the problem.
The obvious answer to Iran becoming a nuclear power is to support the people who want to overthrow the current regime in Iran. That would most likely end the country's progress toward nuclear weapons. However, President Obama's unwillingness to at least verbally support the 'green revolution' in the past makes this solution unlikely. The only economic sanction that would impact Iran would be shutting off its supply of refined gasoline. Iran has a huge supply of oil, but no refineries to speak of. The danger in this solution is that we might alienate the people involved in the 'green revolution' in the process and make things more difficult in the future. There are also doubts that other countries would join us in this effort.
There are no easy answers here, but to do nothing is to accept the fact that Iran will join the ranks of nuclear nations. Since Iran is the worlds greatest supporter of terrorism (Hamas, Hezbollah, and sometimes Al Qaeda), that is not a reasonable solution.
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