Despite the catastrophic consequences it would unleash throughout the entire Southwest Asia region, many warmongers are calling on Israel—and implicitly the U.S.—to escalate against Iran. President Biden, who had said earlier in the week that Israel should not his Iranian nuclear sites, told reporters Friday: “Well, look, the Israelis have not concluded how they’re—what they’re going to do in terms of a strike. That’s under discussion… If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields.” He added that Israel has the right to respond to Iran’s attack.
- At a campaign rally in North Carolina Friday, Donald Trump responded to Biden’s comments about not hitting Iran’s nuclear sites: “I think [Biden] got that wrong. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit?” Trump asked. “The answer should have been to hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later,” he said.
- Foreign Policy magazine published an article by Matthew Kroenig, vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center, titled: “The Case for Destroying Iran’s Nuclear Program Now.” Kroenig wrote that Biden “should reconsider” his stance, and that “now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.” He also chastised “skeptics of military action” that “conditions have changed in recent weeks and months—and all of the previous obstacles to military action have melted away.”
- Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board published an article demanding that Iran’s attack “warrants a response targeting Iran’s military and nuclear assets.” They claim that, “Israel’s restraint has now yielded this escalation, and it is under no obligation to restrain its retaliation this time.”
If Biden doesn’t respond, they write, it will “further erode U.S. credibility.” “Iran is closer than ever to a nuclear weapon and won’t stop itself. The question for American and Israeli leaders is: If not now, when?”
- Britain’s Telegraph published an article by the well-known nut Hamish de Bretton Gordon. “If ever there were a time to neutralise Iran’s nuclear research and development facilities,” Gordon wrote, “it is now.” He makes sure to tie his geopolitical madness back to Putin as well: “Amidst all the nuclear sabre-rattling in the Middle East, we must not lose sight of the second leg of the ‘axis of evil’ in Moscow. Putin is likely revelling in the West’s near-total focus on the Middle East, and the grim possibility that military resources desperately needed in Ukraine could be diverted elsewhere,” Gordon says. Therefore, he concludes: “Bold action wins wars; dithering tends to lose them.”
