One of the most balanced political thinkers around:
I don't think I talked about the NATO summit, but on the question of Iran, just let me say first of all that I did a debate released on Wednesday with Konstantin Kisin and his partner, Francis, his co-host on the Triggernometry podcast that's quite popular. It's on YouTube, it's about an hour long and this was the question debated: Was President Trump right to bomb the nuclear facility? Should we consider Iran a threat? So, I don't necessarily want to give a long-detailed answer. I've talked many times about this before as well. We showed a video clip as well, on Monday night, of Noam Chomsky being asked this exact question: “How can you minimize so much the danger of Iran when they chant death to America, death to Israel? What about if they get a nuclear weapon?” We showed you his answer that I definitely associate myself with.
Let me just say a couple of things. First of all, when people chant death to America, death to Israel that's a chant. It's an expression of anger and, of course, Iran has anger toward the United States because we overthrew their democratic left government in 1953 and imposed on them a brutal savage dictator, the Shah of Iran, who was an Israeli and U.S. puppet, served Israel and the U.S.'s interests, and cracked down on religious freedom, all sorts of dissent and it didn't end until 1979. That's 25 years later.
And you can say, “Oh, that's a long time ago.” That's not a long time ago. A big portion of the population lived through that, lived through the Shah, lived under the Shah, understood it was the United States imposing a dictatorship on their country. A lot of anti-American sentiment comes from there. And then you obviously, even people who didn't live through it, studied that, understand that history. In Brazil, they did the same thing in 1964, so a decade later, they imposed a military junta on the country that was repressive and savage. Same thing, not quite as brutal as the Shah, but brutal enough. They toppled Brazilian democracy and propped up a dictator who ran the country the way the United States wanted. It basically lasted 24 years, depending on how you count. Obviously, a lot of people in Brazil remember that, live through it and have a lot of negativity toward the United States because of it. Who wouldn't?
So, it's one thing to chant. It's another thing to have the capability or the willingness. What does that mean, “Death to America, death to Israel?” Iran didn't start that war. Israel started the war with the United States. It's not Iran that has bombed six different places, four different sovereign countries in the region in the last two years. That's Israel and the United States that have done that. Iran hasn't started a war in like two hundred years, that's what Professor Mearsheimer was saying. The United States has started many – many – and so has Israel in that time.
Israel, which is a major nuclear state, has had nuclear weapons for several decades, has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons has second-strike capability – to say nothing of the United States, which after Russia is the second largest nuclear power in the world, but probably with a more sophisticated second-strike capability – that means that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, which again, even the U.S. intelligence community said no evidence that they were (I've gone over all these things so I don't want to repeat the in-depth point) but I think the bigger issue is, even if they got nuclear weapons – and in general, I think it's better to have fewer countries with nuclear weapons than more in general as a principle – I'm way more worried about Israel's nuclear weapons than I am about Iran's, because Israel actually has them. Israel has proven that it acts with no limits.
Israel is operating through a fanaticism that's partly religious and partly nationalistic and I could see Israel using nuclear weapons before I could see Iran using nuclear weapons. If you believe Iran is going to use nuclear weapons against Israel and the United States, you believe then that the leaders of Iran are willing to commit instant suicide, not just for themselves, not for only the 92 million people who live in their country – if Ted Cruz is watching, it's 92 million people – but for the extermination of Iran as an entity, as a place, as nation. I don't see anything that Iranian leaders have ever done that suggests they're suicidal in that manner. That's why nuclear weapon proliferation has not resulted in a nuclear war.
I do not believe that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, they would use it to commit suicide and destroy their entire country. They have just proven it over and over. They entered a deal where they gave up nuclear weapons voluntarily in 2015. They had inspectors all over the place, they allowed surveillance, monitoring and cameras all on site to prove to the world they didn't want nuclear weapons. They weren't going to get nuclear weapons; they wanted to be reintegrated into the international community, to have sanctions lifted. How can you say that the Iranians are some fanatical, unhinged, insane country hellbent on not just getting nuclear weapons but using them, even though it means their complete destruction, when they just proved this decade that they would enter into an agreement, they were ready to again? It wasn't Iran that withdrew from that deal. It was the United States under Donald Trump. And nobody thinks the Iranians were violating that deal. Trump just promised to do it in 2016 as a campaign promise to attract pro-Israel voters and money and he won, and he felt the need to make good on that plan. His argument, from the beginning, was not that Iran is violating it and enriching to try to get nukes; the argument was that the deal is somehow not good enough, and he wanted to get a better deal. But Iran proved they'll enter into a deal.
Even if they got nuclear weapons, what makes anyone think that they would attack Israel in the United States, knowing it would mean their instant annihilation? I know where the propaganda is: “Oh, this is an apocalyptic end-time religion.” Nothing they've done remotely substantiates that, including what they just did in this war, to say nothing of the last two years, when they offered a very, very restrained response to Israel after Israel blew up their consulate, they launched symbolic retaliation that they knew would be intercepted. And whenever I used to say that, people would say, “Oh, you think they did less than they really could do? That's all they could do.” And they just proved, no, they can do a lot more. President Trump himself said Israel got battered, hit very hard.
There was military censorship in Iran and Israel. Journalists explained that they were not allowed to show any damage done to military or government installations, even though it was extensive. The only things that journalists were allowed to show were damage when a civilian building got hit, to create the false impression that Iran was targeting civilian structures and that no defense bases, no intelligence bases, no government buildings in Israel got hit very hard, as President Trump said.
Iran always had the capability to inflict more damage than they did last year in that retaliation. They just proved it, and I believe they could have inflicted a lot more, too, but they were pragmatic and careful, restrained and rational, as they always are, not to spiral up the escalatory ladder, precisely because they're not suicidal. And even though I say, in general, I think it's better for fewer countries to have nuclear weapons than more because of how destructive and reckless and dangerous those are, not just to a particular group of people, but to humanity, I am receptive to the argument I've heard Professor Mearsheimer make, that perhaps Iran having a nuclear weapon would actually create more stability in the region, because right now Israel just goes around doing whatever it wants, taking whatever land it wants, bombing whoever it wants, killing whoever it wants, because their nuclear weapons make them the bully of the neighborhood.
If there was a balance of power, a kind of forced respect, the way we saw with India and Pakistan, given that both of them have nuclear weapons. Everyone's very careful with North Korea and China and the United States and Russia. If there were that kind of fear on the part of the Israelis rather than this belief that we can just fight whoever they want, there's a good likelihood, a very good argument to make that there'd actually be fewer wars, less conflict, and more stability in that region.
