'Point of No Return'
New York Sun Staff Editorial
October 6, 2004
The warning issued by Prime Minister Sharon on Monday - that Israel is taking measures to protect itself from Iran - is the best news to come over the wires in weeks. This followed a statement, quoted last month in Maariv, from the prime minister's national security adviser, Giora Eiland, who said that Iran will reach the "point of no return" in its nuclear program by November. Zev Chafets, a former aide to another prime minister, Menachem Begin, noted in a recent column that "point of no return" was the same phrase that Begin used when he decided to launch, in 1981, a pre-emptive strike that destroyed the reactor at the center of Saddam's a-bomb program, Osirak. Begin's daring defense minister then was the same Ariel Sharon who is premier today.
This all comes in the context of an American presidential election in which neither the incumbent nor the challenger is offering a practical strategy for confronting Iran's ambitions to own an Abomb. It is true that both President Bush and Senator Kerry agreed at last week's presidential debate that the biggest threat America faces is the potential of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Neither dealt in any convincing way with the fact that the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, is bent on building nuclear weapons. While both Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry say they oppose allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons, neither has been exactly forthright about their plan to prevent it.
Mr. Kerry's plan, such as he was able to articulate it, involves relying on the French and Germans, of all people, and then giving the Iranians some nuclear fuel. He takes Americans for fools. It's a wonder the senator didn't simply offer to make the mullahs a bomb. The mullahs themselves promptly reacted by mocking the senator, saying they don't want to have to rely on foreigners for their nuclear fuel. Mr. Bush's plan, as he was able to articulate it in an interview with Bill O'Reilly, involves saying, "All options are on the table, of course, in any situation. But diplomacy is the first option." The best that can be said about Mr. Bush is that he hasn't bought into the formal advice of appeasement being promulgated by the Council on Foreign Relations.
The fact that Mr. Bush is being pressured so publicly by the foreign policy establishment to warn Israel off its own defense may be why Mr. Sharon has begun to send the signals he's sending. He knows that the people will understand. The New York Times may have, back in 1981, reacted to Begin's heroism by issuing an editorial that began, "Israel's sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and shortsighted aggression." But Mr. Sharon knows that the Times's own editor, Max Frankel, eventually admitted that the editorial was a mistake. American public opinion, across a wide spectrum, always understood Begin's wisdom.
Today Senator Biden's rival for the job of secretary of state in the Kerry administration, Richard Holbrooke, is quoted by Mr. Chafets as saying, "In 1981, the Israelis attacked the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak. President Reagan personally criticized Israel. Today, we all recognize that Israel was 100% right to do it." Vice President Cheney famously sent a handwritten thank-you note to the Israeli commander of the raid, noting that the Israeli action had made the job easier for America in the 1991 Gulf War, during which Mr. Cheney served as secretary of defense.
These columns have long argued that the best outcome in Iran - and the one American policy would most wisely bend every effort to promote - would be a democratic revolution that would bring a government in Tehran that is free, peaceful, and friendly. Israel's warning time is running out. It would not be surprising to see, between now and November 2, Mr. Bush come under growing pressure to warn Israel against taking action. Whoever ends up as president, the question to consider is which is worse politically, that tumult might erupt after an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites - or Iran getting the nuclear bomb on your watch?
