President Trump is off to Saudi Arabia and Israel later this month, with stops at the Vatican and at a NATO summit. Since the election, a once-critical Trump has flip-flopped on Saudi Arabia, now he’s expected to provide further US assistance to the ongoing Saudi war on Yemen. But much of the Saudi visit will no-doubt focus on something Trump shares with the Saudi leadership: violent antipathy toward Iran. We preview the President’s trip in today’s Liberty Report:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
In nearly every case when a state decided to get a nuclear arsenal it was triggered by the fear that an enemy might be developing or already have one. The trigger for the US and British programs was the fear that the Germans were developing a nuclear weapon. After all nuclear fission had been discovered in Germany in 1939 and in Heisenberg the Germans had an eminent nuclear physicist and theoretician. When the US Alsos group reached Paris their research in Paris demonstrated that the Germans had no viable nuclear bomb program. There never existed a fear that Japan might be working on nuclear explosions.
When Stalin learned about the US Manhattan Project he did not hesitate to order the development of a Soviet arsenal.
Likewise the Chinese when the Soviet Union and our governments could use the nuclear blackmail (“everything is on the table” which means nukes if you have them).
Pakistan-India: a textbook case.
North Korea fears that the US will sooner or later use a nuclear weapon against it and China will not retaliate. It is the French approach.
The possible exceptions are France and Israel. DeGaulle ordered the development of the French bomb in part because of his megalomania and in part because he did not believe that the US would go into a nuclear war with Stalin to save “la douce France”.
Israel probably fears serious non-nuclear invasions from neighboring countries more than a nuclear Iran.
Does Iran have legitimate fears? Absolutely. Number one: Israel. Number two: the US. Number three: Pakistan. Yet Iran has agreed not to be stampeded into developing a nuclear arsenal which is truly exceptional even though Iran was threatened with total destruction by Secretary Clinton if it ever got its bomb and use it.
The continuation of this sterile if not stupid US policy is continued by the current administration.