Morning Note

If North Korea develops a nuclear weapon, our country could be as good as gone.

That was the dominant view among America’s political elite at this time two decades ago, as Kim Jong Il marched closer to obtaining his first nuke. 

“These bombs would threaten not just the United States, but South Korea and Japan and indirectly, China,” Clinton administration Defense Secretary William Perry said in 2003. 

“North Korea on the brink of launching a long-range ballistic missile that could strike the United States… could reach Alaska, and possibly as far as the northwest coast of the lower 48 states,” CNN reported in 2006.

There was also the idea that even if the North Koreans didn’t fire a weapon of mass destruction at Los Angeles, they would sell their new fissile material to terrorists who would. 

“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States,” President Bush told the public the day after the DPRK’s first nuclear test. 

“North Korea remains a daunting challenge… placing [nuclear] weapons on missiles that could reach the United States of America… this technology could end up in the hands of terrorists,” PBS reported two years prior. 

And perhaps most frighteningly, “the nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities… terrorists being able to purchase a North Korean nuclear device,” Perry also warned in 2003.

Those warnings sound pretty scary, but the past 20 years have proven them unwarranted. North Korea became a known nuclear nation in October 2006, and its proliferation has yielded a total of zero nuclear strikes on America, the West, or any other country. The fearmongering was for nothing. 

Fast forward to today, and Washington and its allies are singing an eerily similar tune about Iran. If the Islamic Republic gets its hands on a nuclear weapon, it will definitely open fire on the U.S., they say. But for real this time.

“I can guarantee you that if the Ayatollah gets a nuclear weapon, he will use it,” Lindsey Graham said on Fox News last year. “I believe that with all my heart and soul.”

“Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei… are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime," former DNI chief James Clapper testified to Congress during the Obama administration. 

Oh, and of course, there’s warmonger-in-chief Benjamin Netanyahu, who insists that “there is only one difference between Nazi Germany and the Islamic Republic of Iran… [Iran] is first seeking atomic weapons and, once it has them, will then start a world war.”

A world war? It’s hard to think of a way to make this story’s stakes seem higher. Before subscribing to Netanyahu’s theory, which conveniently justifies a U.S.-Iran regime change war, America’s leaders should consider the following questions. Free-thinking people are allowed to ask each.

What are the chances Iran would actually launch a nuclear attack? History suggests they’re zero, no matter what Senator Graham says. No country in the so-called “Axis of Evil” has ever deployed a nuke, because doing so would be an act of suicide. In fact, the United States is the only nation to unleash its nuclear might as an act of war. It’s strange how Washington considers that a point of pride. 

Could the Iranians obtaining The Bomb wind up being a good thing? Whether anyone in the foreign policy establishment admits it, North Korea’s nuclearization has undeniably stabilized the Korean Peninsula. The region has seen no wars, coups, or interventionist-forced regime changes since 2006. 

Would Iran becoming a nuclear power have the same effect on its region? Could it finally prompt America to leave the area alone, and incentivize Israel to drop its stated goal of controlling the Gaza Strip and the West Bank? Would it make the Iranian government less oppressive because it wouldn’t have to worry about the West’s constant decapitation ambitions?

Imagine the names neocons would call anyone who considered those perspectives. Nefarious media figures would brand them bloodthirsty jihadists, Congress would rush to issue formal condemnations, and Laura Loomer would commit the rest of her career to “exposing” their personal lives on X. All for raising questions that obviously deserve thought.

Pause for a moment and ask yourself why those character assassinations would occur. The answer is clear. The forces pushing for an American invasion of Iran need the public to believe that Ali Khamenei acquiring a nuke would create an Armageddon. It’s their only way to pretend the “threat” of a nuclear Iran, not their longing to install a puppet regime in Tehran, is what’s driving their lust for war. 

Defending the Iranian government is not the purpose of raising these points. All we want to do is introduce America’s national conversation to a different point of view. Maybe the premise of why the U.S. must bomb the Islamic Republic’s physics facilities is false. Maybe other parts of the official narrative on the Middle East aren’t true, either.