Let me finish with this: “I refuse to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.”
Those were the words of Winston Churchill. Let’s apply them to the nuclear deal just struck between the world powers and the government of Iran.
Who’s the fire brigade here: the people who struck this deal or those who are now out there whacking away at it?
The treaty opens up Iran to inspection and keeps it from getting near building a nuclear weapon for a decade.
What do the critics of the deal propose us doing: well, for one thing, not signing the deal. That means Iran has no restraints on heading toward a nuclear weapons arsenal and no way of us knowing how quickly it will get to having one. In other words, it would only be a question of how quickly we bomb them.
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Is there another way to look at this? Is there any other way we could enforce sanctions against Iran except through agreement with other world powers, including Russia and China? And if we can’t get them to go along with a tougher deal and can’t get Iran to accept one, isn’t it reasonable to assume that we got the best deal?
So it comes down to three options: Deal? No deal? And bomb? And that really comes down to two options: deal and delay the Iranians or don’t deal and get quickly around to bombing them, which will only have the ability of delaying them in building a bomb…what we get done by the deal we have now.
Isn’t it better to get what we want without going to all-out war?
Chris Matthews