How Adam Lowther learned to stop worrying and love the (Iranian) bomb

Fresnozionism.org
09 February '10

The most frightening thing about this mind-numbingly wrongheaded op-ed in the NY Times (“Iran’s Two-Edged Bomb“) is the line at the end that describes the author:

Adam B. Lowther is a defense analyst at the Air Force Research Institute.

Let’s hope that he wrote this as a result of a bar-room bet on the gullibility of the Times, because we really don’t want anyone basing policy on this. In that spirit, let’s look at the five reasons that Dr. Lowther thinks the Iranian nuclear bomb has an upside:

Reason 1:

Iran’s development of nuclear weapons would give the United States an opportunity to finally defeat violent Sunni-Arab terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Here’s why: a nuclear Iran is primarily a threat to its neighbors, not the United States. Thus Washington could offer regional security — primarily, a Middle East nuclear umbrella — in exchange for economic, political and social reforms in the autocratic Arab regimes responsible for breeding the discontent that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The US cannot provide ‘regional security’ when all it can offer is nuclear retaliation. So when Iran, which already controls Syria and Lebanon and will soon control Iraq, pushes to raise oil prices and threatens to unleash Hizballah, for example, what do we do? Nuke them? Iran knows that the US cannot afford to get bogged down in another conventional war.

Even if we could provide security, the ‘deal’ Lowther proposes will not help defeat Sunni terrorism, for the following reasons:

(Read full post)
.