Mitt Romney’s Team Is Stupid and Warmongering Enough to Try Military Action in Iran

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Numerous conservative and neoconservative  think tanks pump out reports, op-eds, and  journal articles suggesting or simply  stating that "Iran has a nuclear weapons program" that must be stopped -- and that it’ll probably take force to do the job.  Just check out the flow of words from mainstream Republican think tanks  like the Heritage Foundation and  AEI. (“It has long been clear that, absent regime change in Tehran, peaceful means will never persuade or prevent Iran from reaching its nuclear objective, to which it is perilously close.”)  Or take  the Claremont Institute (“A mortal threat when Iran is not yet in possession of a nuclear arsenal? Yes…”) or neoconservatives who sit in perches in nonpartisan institutes  like Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations (“Air Strikes Against Iran Are Justifiable”).

You can see this at even more hawkish shops like the  Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, with  its “campaign to ensure that Iran’s vow to destroy Israel and create ‘a world without America’ remains neither ‘obtainable’ nor ‘achievable.’”  (According to  one of its distinguished advisors, a Fox News host, Iran has “nuclear weapons programs” --  plural).  At the old Cold War group the  Committee on the Present Danger, Iran is “marching toward nuclearization.”  Retired general and  Christian crusader Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council even  told Glenn Beck, “I believe that Iran has a nuclear warhead now.”

There are also two organizations, much attended to on the right, whose sole goal is regime change.  There’s the Emergency Committee for Israel, a militantly pro-Israel group founded by Bill Kristol and Gary Bauer that links the Christian right with the neocons and the Israel lobby.  It  insists that “Iran continues its pursuit of a nuclear weapon,” and it’s  pushing hard for bombing and regime change.

No less important is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident cult group that was recently, amid much  controversy, removed from the official U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations.  The MEK brought Israeli intelligence about Iran’s then-active nuclear weapons program into the public eye at a Washington press conference in 2002.  Since then, it has peppered the public with tales of Iranian nuclear chicanery, and it ran a major lobbying campaign,  paying dozens of former U.S. anti-terrorism officials --  several of whom are now in the defense industry -- to sing its praises.

It wants regime change because it hopes that the U.S. will install its “president-elect” and “parliament-in-exile” in power in Tehran.  (Think of  Ahmed Chalabiand his Iraqi National Congress, who played a similar role with the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.  They even have some of the  same boosters.)

And then there are the groups who want war with Iran for religious reasons.  Take Christians United For Israel (CUFI), an End-Times politico-religious organization run by John Hagee, pastor of the Cornerstone megachurch in San Antonio.  As scholar Nicholas Guyatt shows in his book  Have a Nice Doomsday, Hagee’s organization promotes the belief, common among fundamentalist Christians, that a war between Israel and Iran will trigger the Rapture.

Hagee’s own book,  Countdown Jerusalem, suggests that Iran already has nuclear weapons and the ability to use them, and he aggressively advocates an attack on that country.  To many mainstream Americans, Hagee, his followers, and others with similar religious views may seem a bit nutty, but he is not to be discounted: his book was a bestseller.

The Supporting Cast

Republican-friendly media have joined the game, running blustery TV segments on the subject and cooking the books to assure survey majorities that favor military action.  Take this question from a March  poll commissioned by Fox News: “Do you think Iran can be  stopped from continuing to work on a nuclear weapons program through diplomacy and sanctions alone, or will it take military force to stop Iran from working on nuclear weapons?”  Absent priming like this, a majority of Americans actually  prefer diplomacy, 81%supporting direct talks between Washington and Tehran.