Corsi vs. Buchanan: On Atomic Iran

The Chronwatch:

The question of how to handle Iran’s nuclear ambitions looms like a mushroom cloud on the horizon. As has become the norm with any crucial national security decision, there are multiple schools of thought on how to approach the mullahs’ desire to go nuclear.

Do we impose sanctions on Iran? Do we use military force? Do we look the other way and hope the mullahs didn’t read Kim Jong Il’s playbook, entitled, ‘How to Fool The United States into Allowing you to Build Nukes Right Under Their Noses.’ Or was that Bill Clinton’s playbook? I forget.

Anyway, since the answer from liberals on any subject is never anything more than ‘whatever would be worse politically for President Bush,’ one is forced to look to Republicans for both legitimate sides of the argument. READ MORE

On one side stands Jerome Corsi, John Kerry nemesis and best-selling author of Unfit for Command and more recently, Atomic Iran.

In Atomic Iran, Dr. Corsi builds a case for aggressive action to prevent Iran’s militant mullahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. Corsi explains the attitude of the mullah’s toward the United States and Israel (in case you’re unaware, they hate us and want us all dead), as well as the strategy they will employ to acquire atomic capabilities under the noses of the United Nations, the European Union, the IAEA, and the United States.

Most importantly, in Atomic Iran, Corsi details the effects of what he calls an ‘Atomic 9/11,’ in which a terrorist group such as Al Qaeda uses a nuclear device (like Iran is attempting to develop) on a city like Tel Aviv or New York City.

Furthermore, Dr. Corsi predicted that the E.U.-3 negotiations with Iran would fail. In his article last week at World Net Daily.com, Corsi added the following: “During the months of negotiations, Iran has put in place somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 advanced centrifuges. Just as soon as Iran gets enough uranium hexafluoride produced at Isfahan, Natanz will be re-opened to begin processing the uranium hexafluoride to weapons-grade uranium.”

Corsi continued, “The E.U.-3 negotiations were bound to fail, simply because the mullahs were playing the Europeans for fools. They only stopped enriching uranium because they had technical problems at Isfahan and Natanz, so they wanted to buy time. What will happen next? Iran will make an atomic bomb.”

Corsi maintains that the time for action against the mullahs is running out.

“The opportunity for peaceful internal change—the best option, the one we should have pursued with prompt and meaningful funding to serious opposition groups—is slipping by fast. We can go to the Security Council, but that will be worthless. China and Russia will block any meaningful actions. Besides, with oil at $66 a barrel, nobody in the world is going to take more sanctions against Iran seriously. Unfortunately, we are now headed toward one of two undesirable outcomes—military confrontation, or the mullahs will soon have all the atomic weapons they want.”

On the opposing side is veteran Republican and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who believes Iran is not a threat to America or Israel. (Buchanan’s stances on other imaginary issues including the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and pro-life liberals are not yet known.)

Buchanan cites a recent U.S. intelligence review that claims Iran may be 10 years away from developing an atomic bomb. He also seriously downplays the threat Iran poses to America and Israel.

In his column last week, Mr. Buchanan wrote the following: “What is the worry? Just this. If or when Iran goes nuclear, she has a deterrent to intimidation. U.S. freedom of action in the Persian Gulf comes to an end. We would have to behave as gingerly with the mullahs as we do with Kim Jong Il, something intolerable to our neoconservatives and President Bush.”

Buchanan also dismissed the Iranian threat to Israel. “For the Israelis, an Iranian bomb would have the same impact as Stalin’s explosion of a bomb had on us in 1949. Israel’s invulnerability would come to an end. She would enter the world of Mutual Assured Destruction, like the one we had to live in during the Cold War.”

Of Iran, Buchanan said, “no matter how militant, (Iran) has shown no desire for war with America.”

Is this the same Iran that endorses a policy of ‘Death to Israel and Death to America?’ Just curious.

Iran’s aversion to war with America has a lot less to do with philosophy and more to do with available weaponry. Would you want war with a nuclear powerhouse that has wiped out the governments of your two terrorist-loving neighbors, at least until you had an atomic bomb of your own to ‘negotiate’ with? Like Nuclear Viagra, building the bomb would make the mullahs friskier and more aggressive, a threat that should make clear thinking Israelis and Americans shudder.

Even if, as Buchanan muses, Iran does not have the stomach or the desire to launch nuclear missiles directly at Israel or against American troops in the Middle East, they are certainly capable (and willing) to hand weapons off to any number of terror organizations currently finding refuge in their country, as last week’s discovery of Iranian-made weapons in Iraq proves.

Backers of Buchanan’s theory don’t believe the Iranians would do it; Corsi doesn’t want them to have the opportunity to prove us wrong.

The risk for error in either case is real, regardless of which philosophy America pursues. Let’s look at the potential mistakes of each.

The Corsi theory is backed by the research and predictions set forth in Atomic Iran, where Corsi has correctly predicted the actions of the mullahs thus far. In the book, Corsi predicted that the mullahs would continue pretending to negotiate with the West as a means to buy themselves more time to fix technical problems at their facilities, at which time they would proceed with their atomic aspirations. Corsi’s case continues with the belief that Iran is not a decade away from nuclear capability and that America and Israel are quickly approaching what he refers to as ‘the point of no return.’

The downside of Corsi’s theory is similar to the downside of toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq on the belief that he had reconstituted his WMD program. We have not found WMD in Iraq, but we have rid the free world of one of freedom’s biggest enemies, freed the Iraqi people from a mass murderer, guided them through free elections, and eliminated Saddam’s Baathist regime as a future threat to the United States. Consequently, even though our primary reason for war has not been realized, the result of the military action has served to eliminate the Hussein regime as a future WMD threat and has effectively brought the war on terror to Baghdad and out of New York City.

With regard to Iran, if we move aggressively to destroy their nuclear program only to find that they were a decade away from being able to annihilate Israel or threaten America, we run the risk of making angry mullahs that want to kill us angrier, and they might want to kill us even more passionately.

But, they wouldn’t have nuclear weapons in their arsenal, and if the mullahs insisted on an all-out war with America, the world’s greatest military would oblige them. (Subliminal message to liberals: Plus, there’s all that oil!)

If, however, the United States follows Buchanan’s theory—that Iran is not a real threat to the U.S. and over a decade away from atomic capabilities—we run the risk of a different type of mistake. If Buchanan is wrong, and Iran completes a nuclear weapons program in the short term, then we will have allowed a militant regime and a state sponsor of terrorism to build an atomic arsenal, which the fanatical mullahs could then use to kill us.

Even if Buchanan is right, then ten years from now we will likely find ourselves looking at the same question we are today, only we won’t be nearly as certain that the mullah’s are nuclear missile free.

No disrespect intended to Mr. Buchanan, but it sounds a lot like the Clinton policy on North Korea. Someone please refresh my memory, how did that one work out?

Buchanan seems content with that potential future relationship, but an Atomic Iran would be quite different from a nuclear North Korea. Yes, North Korea hates us and is led by a depraved dictator (although Kim is one hell of a golfer, from what I hear)*.

The difference between North Korea and Iran is that a) Iran supports terrorism like liberals support abortion and b) North Korea already has nuclear weapons because we didn’t use Dr. Corsi’s approach with Pyongyang.

Therefore, we must handle Kim Jong Il differently out of necessity. We can’t prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons because they already have them (thanks again, Slick Willie!) Personally, I say we call Kim’s bluff and send Tiger Woods to play 18 holes with him, in a nuclear weapons-winner take all Skins game. But I’m a gambling man by nature.

The argument that we should not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, waiting instead to deal with them as we do with North Korea, seems beyond irresponsible. The whole purpose of the Bush Doctrine following 9/11 was to confront the three Axis of Evil regimes before they could pose larger threats to America’s interests, not after they’d already become nuclear powers.

In either philosophy, the danger of error is real. But clearly, the consequences of an “Atomic 9/11” are astronomically worse than the consequences of a military conflict between the United States and a non-nuclear Iran.

I hope Pat Buchanan is right. But until we are certain, we must act as though Dr. Corsi’s Atomic 9/11 nightmare is right around the corner.