(Times-UK) Gerard Baker - Those who say war with Iran is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted, and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. There are many fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power. If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in history, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler. We can reasonably assume that the refusal of the current Iranian leadership to accept the Holocaust as historical fact is simply a recognition of their own plans to redefine the notion as soon as they get a chance ("Now this is what we call a holocaust"). But this threat is only, incredibly, a relatively small part of the problem. No country in the region will be confident that the U.S. will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the U.S. will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. Iran, secure behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian terror training camps will become impregnable.
2006-01-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive