By Dr. Harold Pease

Three of the four remaining Republican presidential candidates and the present occupant of the White House appear to be, or are favorable to, provoking Iran for a response worthy of a preemptive strike. Only Ron Paul, of our options for president, is decidedly against.

Forgive me for not believing that the world is flat, as did virtually everyone before Columbus and that Iraq had something to do with 9 /11, or that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction as President George W. Bush told us. Once again, I feel drawn into another Middle East black hole of lies, no end wars, death of our young men and women, loss of our treasure, and yet another Patriot Act which only limits the liberties of American citizens. History repeats itself, but why so soon?

It seems to hinge on whether Iran is that close to getting a deployable nuclear weapon and if it really matters if it does? In a compelling article by Charles Scaliger, “Is it Nuts to Let Iran Go Nuclear?” recently published in The New American, Scaliger argues that our interests in the Middle East “boil down to oil and Israel.”

Oil should not be a major concern to us as we have a plentiful supply on “Alaska’s North Slope and the east and west coasts of the United States.” Presently, and strangely, these resources are made off-limits to drilling by our own government resulting in prices at the pump soaring to $4.40 per gallon; so inept are we in utilizing our natural resources. The price of gasoline per gallon when Barack Obama took office was $1.87. Moreover, we have access to the “Athabasca tar sands of northern Alberta (the world’s second largest oil reserves)” but instead our president vetoes the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would relieve our price pain by bringing crude oil into the United States. Instead, we prefer the “added costs (political and military as well as economic) of continuing to ship in our oil from hostile countries on the other side of the world.” All this brings meaning to the old adage, “We looked and the enemy was us.”

The second reason for caring about the Middle East is Israel. But Israel has demonstrated for over 40 years that it is quite capable of defending herself. As a young boy, I remember well when six nations in 1967, each larger than Israel, attacked this tiny nation and she defeated them all in just six days. It was called the Six Day War. I was envious of her strength and valor as the U.S. at the time was mired down in Vietnam, fighting an enemy equal to the population of New York State and geographically the size of Missouri. We lost that war. They met similar odds against Israel with similar results in 1948 and in 1973. Scaliger reminds us that in 1981 the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Iraq and in 2007 a nuclear facility in Syria. If Iran attacked Israel, there is little doubt who would win. Israel does not need our onsite protection.

But what if Iran did get a nuclear weapon as feared? Scaliger reminds us that China had one in 1964 but did not have the delivery system to put it on American soil for thirty years. India took 25 years “to go from its first nuclear test to the actual production of nuclear weapons….” and it took their Pakistani neighbors 26 years. Why the long delay? “Developing nuclear weapons requires mastery of a number of intricate technologies, among them engineering centrifuge cascades….” Scaliger notes, “There is a very big difference between having a nuclear ‘device’ and having nuclear weapons.” Iran is “many years away from creating a deliverable nuclear weapon that could threaten Saudi Arabia or Israel and probably decades away from creating an ICBM or submarine-launched missile that could menace the American mainland.”

Don’t forget that all Middle Eastern countries know that a nuke on Israel means nukes on them from us, and we do not need to be present to deliver. Mutual Assure Destruction (MAD) kept the peace during the “Cold War,” it will in the Middle East for the same reason.

So why is there all the hype? I cannot answer fully but suggest that we look to who benefits from perpetual war—The Council on Foreign Relations in its bid for world dominance and the industries that make the weapons of war. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first to warn us of the military industrial complex; perhaps it is time to take his warning seriously.

Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org