Is It Time for the U.S. to Strike Iran?


Joel C. Rosenberg


(Washington, D.C., October 13, 2011) -- Has the time come for the U.S. to launch preemptive military strikes on Iran's terrorist infrastructure and nuclear facilities? The time has come for President Obama and each of the Republican presidential candidates to explain what concrete and decisive steps they will take to safeguard U.S. national security from the growing threat posed by the mullahs in Tehran.

Iran's monstrous plot to kill Americans, assassinate the Saudi ambassador in our nation's capital, and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies, was an act of war....Fortunately, U.S. federal agents foiled the real-life plot. Unfortunately, it's not clear Iran's leadership is going to pay a price for such evil. The evidence suggests the orders and money came from high-ranking officials in Iran.

Consider the latest headlines:

UPDATED: In a story that seems ripped from the pages of my forthcoming novel, The Tehran Initiative, the U.S. government has announced that an Iranian terrorist plot against the United States was foiled by federal agents.

“FBI and DEA agents have disrupted a plot to commit a ‘significant terrorist act in the United States’ tied to Iran, federal officials told ABC News today. The officials said the plot included the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, with a bomb and subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C. Bombings of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, were also discussed, according to the U.S. officials.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told reporters: “Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost.”

Thank God the FBI was able to thwart this Iranian plot to attack Americans, Arabs and Israelis in Washington, D.C. – but imagine how much more serious this scenario would have been if Iran had nuclear weapons. The Iranians are feverishly trying to build nuclear weapons. A new U.N. report suggests they are making serious progress. Yet the Obama administration isn’t taking decisive action to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat and now the White House is publicly pressuring Israel not to launch a preemptive military strike against Iran.

Latest headlines:

The GOP candidates should be pressed to answer the following questions:What would you do to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them? Would you seriously consider a U.S. preemptive strike against Iran, or support an Israeli first strike, if economic sanctions don’t work? The American people have a right to know how we will be protected from the growing Iranian threat. President Obama also needs to be pressed to give the American people more details on how he is going to stop the Iranian threat, but the dangers are growing.

A new bipartisan poll by Democrat Pat Caddell and Republican John McLaughlin released last month found that 63% of Americans regard Iran as the top threat facing the U.S. (ahead of China and North Korea), and 80% believe if Iran gets nuclear weapons they will give them to terrorists to attack the U.S. and Israel.