As Iran gets closer to obtaining a nuclear weapon, a weapon should be used against it.
At least that’s what John Bolton, a former U.S. diplomat who served as the ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006, thinks in a New York Times op-ed titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
“Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear weapons has long been evident. Now the arms race has begun: Neighboring countries are moving forward,” Bolton wrote, “driven by fears that Mr. Obama’s diplomacy is fostering a nuclear Iran.”
Israel’s nuclear weapons program has not triggered an arms race, Bolton argues, as other countries in the region understand that Israel’s “nukes were intended as a torrent, not as an offensive measure,” like Iran’s.
“The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program,” Bolton wrote, urging, “Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”
An attack would “not necessarily need to destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure,” according to Bolton, “but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years.”
This op-ed comes at a time where U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Switzerland to try and agree upon a framework for a nuclear deal.
There is a clear partisan difference over what to do with Iran, according to a new Pew Research poll. Seventy-five percent of Republicans believe preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons — even if it means military action — is important, and 57 percent of Democrats think the same.
