This week, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria wrote of Iran, “The country does not yet have even one nuclear weapon, and if and when it gets one—something that is far from certain—the world will not end.”
But the danger that a nuclear Iran brings should not be downplayed. Since being elected in 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel’s death by wiping it “off the map.” Furthermore, according to former U.S. national security advisers Brent Snowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a nuclear Iran will most likely trigger an arms race in the Middle East.
A Pew Research Center survey released last Wednesday found that 61 percent of Americans support a military strike against Iran. As Ilan Berman highlighted in the Fall 2008 issue of inFOCUS, the Iranian leadership will not avoid nuclear conflict in the future, as it believes Iran is engaged in a “war against the West” in keeping with its interpretation of radical Shi’ite Islam.
