A Strange Turn of History: The ‘Risk of a Nuclear Attack has gone up’ by Michael Devolin

“In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.” –President Barack Obama, 2009

While reading Philip Taubman’s book The Partnership, a story about “five Cold Warriors and their quest to ban the bomb,” I was amazed by how he mentions President Obama in glowing terms—as a politician concerned and speaking out about the dangers nuclear weapons pose to the world at large—but refers to Iran as a one of those countries whose “nuclear program” the same world should regard as suspect and a veritable kindle stick to what has always been a volatile and preponderantly Muslim Middle East. He quotes President Obama who, during a visit to Prague in 2009, remarked, “In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.”

Surprisingly, in light of the “Iran deal” recently orchestrated by Obama’s shamelessly sycophantic John Kerry, Taubman tells that it was the view of William Perry (one of the Cold Warriors) way back when that, “the intersection of terrorism and the weapons programs in North Korea and Iran will push nuclear threats out of control. ‘If Iran and North Korea cannot be stopped from building nuclear arsenals,’ he said, ‘I believe that we will cross that tipping point, with consequences that will be dangerous beyond most people’s imagination.’ ” He recounts that in 2008, during a presidential debate, Obama said that “…the biggest threat to the United States is a terrorist getting their hands on nuclear weapons.” So, I am not so perplexed by Philip Taubman’s blind and salivating support of Barack Obama as I am by President Obama’s complete repudiation of his professed convictions then about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the absence of what should have been, to date, a corresponding foreign policy as regards Iran. His recent imbecility, or, as it has become known, “the Iran deal,” has not only evoked the choler of his Republican opponents but also that of some of his fellow Democrats, including Robert Menendez and Chuck Schumer.

What kind of leader wilfully enables a professed enemy of the USA to produce nuclear weapons? Certainly not a leader known for patriotic rhetoric, and certainly not a leader known for telling the truth. This is the same Barack Obama who, during his first term as President, condemned Iran unreservedly, as though there was never any doubt that Iran was a rogue nation and a danger to the security of the entire world, let alone the Middle East: “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” But now he’s given the green light to Iran to continue its “nuclear program,” as though Iran were a trusted friend and not a sworn enemy of the United States of America—as though the Republic of Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons. “I’m not naïve,” said President Obama back in 2009. Oh, but yes you are, Mr. President.

In his book World War IV, Norman Podhoretz pointed out back in 2007 that many members of the “foreign-policy elites” were coming to the conclusion that making compromises with the Republic of Iran was not a viable option simply because of the fact that this regime, even then, showed nothing but contempt for Western diplomacy and goodwill. “You can’t piss through an Ironwood tree,” as they say up here in Canada, and you can’t expect an Islamist regime like Iran to give up its enthralling dream of hegemony over all other nations in the Middle East when that same dream can only be realized by means of nuclear weapons capability. And you can’t expect Iran’s religious madmen to give up their lust for killing Jews when they’ve proudly ingeminated their public support of terrorists bent on the annihilation of the State of Israel for so many years now that it’s become an Islamic custom. Think Al Quds Day. Podhoretz recounts that even his unflattering political opponents eventually had to acknowledge his astute ascertainment about the religious madmen of Iran: “As one who had long since rejected the faith in diplomacy and sanctions, and who had been excoriated for my heretical views by more than one member of the foreign-policy elites, I never thought I would live to see the day when these very elites would come to admit that the carrot-and-stick approach would not and could not succeed in preventing Iran from getting the bomb.”

Mr. Podhoretz goes on to tell that, even though his opponents acknowledged his wisdom and foresight regarding Iran, “the lesson they drew from this new revelation was, however, a different matter.” Instead of “drawing the logical conclusion—namely that military action had now become necessary,” they opted for the “complacent idea that we could live with an Iranian bomb.” Promoting military action against Iran, Podhoretz argued that “deterrence could not be relied upon with a regime ruled by Islamofascist revolutionaries who not only were ready to die for their beliefs but cared less about protecting their people than about the spread of their ideology and their power. If the mullahs got the bomb, I said, it is not them who would be deterred, but us.”

And this, alas, this reversal of roles, from having some measure of control over our destiny to placing our destiny into the hands of our sworn enemies—is the irremissible fate foisted on us (and our children) by President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry. I am very distressed by the fact that the present government of the greatest superpower in the world (USA) has now given legitimacy (cheap though it may be) to a vicious regime whose mullahs have had ties to what Neil Kressel referred to as “worldwide holy war network,” to such Islamist savages as Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, and all because President Barack Obama obdurately insists that the West can “live with an Iranian bomb.”

This certainly is a strange turn of history, President Obama, but not because the “threat of global nuclear war has gone down,” nor because “the risk of nuclear attack has gone up,” but because you, in every grandiloquent speech you gave back in 2009, promised you would work toward creating a world free of the threat of nuclear war. Instead, because of your underhanded dealings with Iran, beyond the gaze of those who actually love and cherish the freedoms and security we enjoy here in the Western hemisphere, have made the world a much more dangerous place.

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