Should the U.S. Use Military Force Against Iran?

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It can be tempting to imagine ourselves in the shoes of Iran's leadership, and rattle off a laundry list of sensible-seeming reasons why Iran should neither desire nor pursue nuclear weapons. But to indulge such projections is a dangerous fantasy. It ignores the actual character and goals of the belligerent regime in Teheran.

This is not a regime that yearns for peace and friendship with other nations, nor seeks the welfare of its own people. It is an ideologically driven enemy of the West. Since its founding, the Islamist regime has sought to expand its power to subjugate people under absolute religious rule--by force.  

The founder of Iran's totalitarian regime, Ayatollah Khomeini, explained years ago that “The Iranian revolution is not exclusively that of Iran, because Islam does not belong to any particular people. . . . We will export our revolution throughout the world because it is an Islamic revolution. The struggle will continue until the calls ‘there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ are echoed all over the world.”  

Indeed, Iran’s constitution commits the regime to expanding “the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world.”  And for three decades Iran has sustained its jihad on America and other nations by means of a terrorist proxy war conducted by the likes of Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran has demonstrated a ruthless contempt for human life. Iran tramples on the rights of its people, leaves them destitute and instills in them a love of "martyrdom"--while it actively seeks to impose its totalitarian ideology beyond its own borders.

Given its ideological goals, we can see why Iran has been developing its nuclear capabilities since at least the 1990s: what the regime desires is a nuclear weapon--the better to threaten and annihilate the impious in the West and in Iran's neighborhood.

When Iran's Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami promises that the regime's "Islamic revival will sweep over the entire world," leaving not a single house on earth "unpenetrated by Islam," we must take such threats seriously.

A proper response to the mounting threat from Iran requires that we recognize its actual nature--rather than indulge in fanciful projections about what we wish its aims would be.