President Obama — Please explain how you will prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East?

President Obama, please explain to me how you will prevent a nuclear arms race among the various Muslim countries in the Middle East and elsewhere as your nuclear agreement with Iran will surely cause it?

Hopefully you and your close advisers understand that Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East including Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are already preparing their own nuclear programs as depicted in the below graphic. What do you think will happen if Iran has a “clear path to the bomb”?

A “Good Deal” Needs to Bolt the Door on the Iranians Getting a Nuclear Weapon – Ronen Bergman interviews Gen. David Petraeus (Ynet News)

• “To accept that Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the years have been exclusively peaceful would require a willing suspension of disbelief….The International Atomic Energy Agency has extensively documented the so-called ‘possible military dimensions’ of the Iranian program, which clearly indicate that – at least until a few years ago – the Iranians were conducting activities whose only rational explanation is that they wanted a nuclear weapons capability.”
• “History suggests, however, that countries that get to that [nuclear] threshold do not stay there. And regardless, based on everything we know and see about the Iranian government, we cannot allow them to be on the brink of having a nuclear weapon.”
• “To my mind, a ‘good deal’ needs to bolt the door on the Iranians getting a nuclear weapon. In this respect, certainly large swaths of the program need to be dismantled or at least altered. I don’t know that this requires an end to enrichment, but certainly it would seem to me that there need to be substantial limitations on how much enriched material Iran can possess and the percentage to which they can enrich, as well as restrictions on the research, development, and deployment of new, more sophisticated models of centrifuges.”
• “An extremely robust inspections program is also necessary – going beyond the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In fact, the inspections regime is, in my mind, the most critical component of a deal.”Gen. (ret.) David Petraeus served as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, and head of the CIA.

Why Did Ayatollah Khamenei Come to the Table? – Ben Cohen interviews Michael Ledeen

Ladeen: It’s conventional wisdom that Iran came to the negotiating table because of sanctions. I’m not sure that’s correct. It may well be that Iran came to the negotiating table because President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif convinced the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, that if they went to the table, they would get everything they wanted from President Obama. Because, they said, America’s will has been broken, and the Americans are prepared to make endless concessions just to keep talking.

I’m not convinced that there’s going to be a deal with Iran. Khamenei doesn’t want to deal with U.S., he wants to destroy us. He says that every week – sometimes every day. So why should he make a deal when he’s getting everything from us now without a deal?

You have the moderate Arab countries who are, all of a sudden, talking to Israel, working out joint plans and contingencies with Israel. What can they do? If Iran is going nuclear – and there’s not a leader in the Middle East who doesn’t believe that Iran is going nuclear – then they have to defend themselves. And if America isn’t available, who is?

Dr. Michael Ledeen, a former consultant to the U.S. National Security Council, Department of State, and Department of Defense, is a Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (Fathom-BICOM)