Wolf D. Fuhrig

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Preemptive Strike On Iran?

“…the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West … a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and the Second Coming of Christ.” This is what Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in Houston, Texas, demanded at the inaugural convention of Christians United for Israel, the organization he founded. It happened in Washington D.C. in the presence of four U.S. Senators and Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. President Bush had sent his greetings.

Pastor Hagee claims to find the justification for a pre-emptive strike on Iran in Genesis 12, 2 where God tells the people of Israel: “I will bless those who bless you and him who curses you, I will curse.” Regrettably, Hagee forgot how much Jesus stressed the importance of nonviolence. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he said in the Sermon on the Mount, “for they shall be called sons of God.” Never did Jesus suggest that for whatever reason anybody ought to launch a unilateral attack upon anybody else.

It is difficult to see how an attack on Iran would make Israel more secure, reduce terrorism, or reduce U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. All published intelligence indicates that Iran does not currently have nuclear weapons and is not likely to have them in less than two years, if at all.

As a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970, Iran does have a right to enrich nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Iranian government, moreover, has repeatedly insisted that Israel is threatening Iran and the whole Middle East with its nuclear arsenal of an estimated 200 weapons and with its refusal to permit any kind of inspection of its nuclear production facilities by the IAEA.

To end the temptation of nuclear armaments for all countries of the Middle East, particularly Israel and Iran, the Bush Administration should at long last initiate the only way out: an enforceable treaty committing all countries of the region to renounce nuclear energy production for military use and submit to verification by the IAEA.

Ever since in 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah and had 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, the governments of the U.S. and Iran have had no official contacts with each other. For the past 28 years, Iran’s large assets in the U.S. have remained frozen. Iranians bitterly complain about American support for Saddam Hussein during his eight-year war of aggression against them, about American drones spying over Iranian territory, and about the damage caused to their economy by U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. contends that Iran has been backing organizations fighting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and Lebanese territory, specifically the Shi’ite-led Hezbollah. The U.S. therefore accuses Iran of having indirectly contributed to the bombing of the U.S. embassy and the U.S. Marines’ barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Most recently, Iranian-made weapons have been found in Iraq, even though it is not clear who took them there.

Nevertheless, Iran does not now vitally threaten either the U.S. or Israel to justify plunging into another war in the Middle East, particularly since the grievances of either side have never been aired in face-to-face talks between government representatives. The Baker-Hamilton Commission and several U.S. allies have urged the President to engage both Iran and Syria in direct dialogue and not to widen the hostilities and the chaos in the Middle East further.

The President and Congress would be well advised to base their policy decisions on the majority views among mainstream Americans rather than on advice from the prophets of Armageddon.