Israel’s president, Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to press the United States to give Iran an ultimatum: prove you aren’t building a bomb or we’ll attack.
President Barack Obama continues to resist. And perhaps he is telling Netanyahu that Israel will be on its own if it tries to take out Iran’s nuclear factories.
Iran has a population of about 67 million. It has a navy of sorts, an air force and an army that fought an eight-year war with Iraq between 1980 and 1988. It also is a major producer of oil. Considering that our nation is still engaged in Afghanistan and is just winding up the war with Iraq we started in 2003, it is not surprising President Obama is reluctant to send U.S. troops into still another Middle East conflict that could eat up more trillions of borrowed dollars and cost thousands more U.S. lives.
The evidence is that Iran is on the way to making atomic weapons. If it succeeds, that would level the military playing field with Israel, which Iran apparently considers a major threat. Israel has had atomic weapons for decades.
Israel hasn’t used those weapons. Maybe Iran would be equally hesitant to subject itself to certain retaliation that would bring devastation to its cities and death to tens of thousands of its people.
Obama and his administration must decide whether the certainty of war presents a greater threat to the United States than does the probability of Iran’s success in joining the nuclear club.
From this small corner of the country comes a vote against another war.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
