What to do About Iran? Nothing!

By Sherwin Pomerantz

The IAEA has finally issued its long awaited report on what is really going on with Iran’s nuclear development. The report substantiates the world’s fear that Iran’s intentions are certainly not purely peaceful, that the country has been moving intentionally toward the development of nuclear weapons and in addition, they are working on being able to deliver a nuclear weapon at the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Is anyone surprised by the report? Israel has been saying exactly this for some time and now the international agency responsible for making such calls has verified this to be the case. Of course, the Iranians along with some of their Russian and Chinese friends claim that the report is biased and full of inaccuracies but that is also to be expected.

So what is the world to do now? Four days ago I wrote that I believe it would be national suicide for Israel to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. I posited that the casualties here as a result of a counter attack would be more than we could handle and survive. One of my readers who disagreed said that while it is true we could not survive a nuclear attack, it would be better to wipe out their capability and take the risk of a conventional weapon retaliation which would only cause 20,000-50,000 casualties here. Only?

But it also seems clear that the West will not take military action either. The logic goes that it would not be possible to knock out all of the nuclear capabilities in Iran and such an attack would certainly trigger a regional war and possibly even a world war.

That leaves the West with the option of enacting “crippling sanctions”. But that action would probably plunge the world into an economic malaise that would be difficult to recover from. If such sanctions were to be put in place, Iran would no doubt do whatever it could to block the Straits of Hormuz through which 40% of the world’s oil supplies must pass every day. Fuel prices would skyrocket out of control and the world’s economy would be thrown into chaos, as if we don’t already have enough problems. And, of course, the Russians have made it evident that they will use their Security Council veto to block such sanctions at the UN.

Frankly, no pun intended, but the Iranians have the world over a barrel and there are very few choices available to deal with the problem. That being the case, what is the best strategy? In my opinion it is to do nothing.

The first thing we need to realize is that we will not stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Conceivably their timetable can be lengthened but Israel by itself cannot stop them and it is becoming clearer every day that the rest of the world will not do so either. We may have had an opportunity to do something about this three years ago, but that is now history.

The second thing we need to admit is that Israel may be an expendable entity in the minds of the West if the leadership in the West gets to the point where they believe that the elimination of Israel from this part of the world will satisfy the radical Islamists. We all know that even eliminating Israel will not answer the demands of radical Islamists, any more than permitting Hitler to take over the Sudetenland mollified his insane desire for world domination. We dare not put ourselves in the position of becoming the pawn used by the West to satisfy the Iranian desire for regional hegemony.

So the only option that may be left to us and the West is simply to do nothing while stopping all reporting about Iran in the world press. That is, act as if Iran simply does not exist. Stop reporting Ahmadinejad’s rants, stop reporting on Iran’s threats against the world, and stop talking about Iran’s nuclear threat. After all, there are other countries such as Pakistan and North Korea who have nuclear weapons, which are somewhat unstable but about whom we hear very little said. So it should be with Iran as well.

Of course, our defenses against the launch of any weapons from Iran against Israel or any other country should be beefed up to the point where we have some level of advance warning and protection. The West should also have ships continuously patrolling the waters outside the territorial limits of Iran to monitor activities there. But don’t give this maniac any publicity and be ready to deal with him head on should he make good on any of his claims.

These options are open to us and if the more “moderate” Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are bothered by a nuclear Iran, then let them deal with it as they see fit. Sometimes isolationism is a good thing and when one is dealing with someone whose logic is totally motivated by some kind of religious zeal, lock him in the closet and throw away the key. We simply may have no other choice.