Ask the Candidates:  "How Would You Stop Iran From Obtaining Nuclear Weapons?"

New poll shows support for preemptive strike.

Joel C. Rosenberg

(Washington, D.C., October 10, 2011) -- As tensions increase in the Middle East, each of the Republican candidates for President need to be pressed to clearly and directly answer the following questions:

1.) As President of the United States, what specific actions would you take to stop Iran from obtaining and deploying nuclear weapons?

2.) If you had intelligence that Iran was on the verge of building operational nuclear weapons, would your administration support an Israeli preemptive military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities?

3.) Would you as President seriously consider ordering a preemptive strike by U.S. military forces to neutralize the Iran nuclear threat?

It is increasingly likely that the next American President will have to face such an ominous geopolitical scenario, and the American people need to know where each of the candidates stand....

The Obama administration consistently refuses even to consider putting a serious military option on the table. In September 2009, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made clear the Obama administration wasn't seriously considering using force. "The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time," Gates said. In April 2010, the New York Times reported that Secretary Gates"has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability."

The Obama administration has also decided to apply pressure on Israel not to launch a preemptive strike against Iran, despite the growing threat of a Second Holocaust. “U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Israel [in October] with a clear message from his boss in Washington: The United States opposes any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “The United States, he said, is ‘very concerned, and we will work together to do whatever is necessary” to keep Iran from posing ‘a threat to this region.’ But doing so ‘depends on the countries working together,’ he added. He repeated the word ‘together’ several times in this context.”

The current administration policy is, however, out of synch with the American people. A new bi-partisan poll released in September by Democrat Pat Caddell and Republican John McLaughlin found that 63 percent of Americans approve military action against Iran if sanctions do not stop their nuclear program. What’s more, 77 percent of Americans think the Obama administration’s current polices towards stopping Iran’s nuclear program “will fail.”