Ron Paul on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions: 'Let Israel Deal With It'

The Iranians are building nuclear weapons, and over the weekend they threatened, again, to annihilate Israel. The Obama administration has responded to our ally’s existential threat with new sanctions. Ron Paul faults America for this.

Republican presidential contender Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) said Monday that the sanctions put in place against Iran are “terrible” for the United States and its allies.

“I voted against them and I think they’re terrible and I think it’s going to hurt the people who are trying to overthrow [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. People, when they’re attacked from the outside and made to hurt, become more nationalistic,” Paul said on Fox News’s “On the Record” Monday night.

What’s his solution to the growing problem with Iran?

“I think what we should do is let Israel deal with it. They have hundreds of nuclear missiles. They took care of Iraq’s nuclear power plant back in the ’80s. I defended them for it.”

Did Ron Paul just call on Israel to strike Iran with nuclear weapons? Or is he drawing a moral equivalence between a mullah-cratic dictatorship and one of the Middle East’s only free democracies?

Given the state of the world today, Israel can expect near universal public condemnation if it strikes Iran (while, behind the scenes, it may be applauded). A unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities also holds a low probability of working. Iran learned from Iraq’s experience at Osirak, and buried most of its facilities under ground. An Israeli strike will result in thousands of terrorist rockets raining down on Israeli towns, and more terrorist attacks in its cities.The Israelis know this. They know that striking Iran’s nuclear facilities holds the possibility of igniting a regional war, and that its peace with Egypt may among the very first casualties.

There aren’t any easy answers to the problems with Iran. Sanctions won’t solve it, and the “international community” hasn’t been able to do anything useful about it. But abandoning our ally in the face of a massive threat to its existence, is surely not the answer either.

We also don’t have the luxury of turning a blind eye to Iran’s actions. Its potential possession of nuclear weapons plus our porous border plus Hezbollah’s known and documented activity in Mexico add up to constitute a serious and direct threat to the United States itself. Iran’s nuclear weapons program isn’t just Israel’s problem to deal with. Ron Paul would do nothing about border security, and nothing about Iran’s nuclear program.