Hopeful Signs: Israel and Iran

The Iranian state is rushing headlong into disaster and I'm not referring to an iminent invasion by the United States. Iran is developing nuclear weapons and is attempting to filibuster international agencies which are attempting to monitor Iranian actions. For the security of the United States this situation is intolerable in the long term because the Iranians could use terrorists to attack the United States with nuclear weapons. However there is another country under an even more immediate threat from Iranian actions, a country that has not shown much reluctance in the past to take unilateral action to prevent its enemies from destroying it. The country is, of course, Israel.

Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke reported June 19 on their Fox News show "The Beltway Boys" that the United States has sold giant refueling tankers to the Israeli Air Force. The timing of this sale is very encouraging and it portends good things because the only real enemy Israel has that would require such equipment is Iran. The Israelis have done this kind of operation before against another of their arch-enemies, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The value of that hardly seems worth argueing and it seems more than likely at this point that the Israelis are about to do it again. It's unfortunate that we don't do this ourselves, but thank God that someone is going to pick up the ball on this issue. The question is, I believe, a matter of when and not if. Perhaps after the next round of meetings between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations, which is bound to achieve nothing, the Israelis will begin destroying the various sites that are believed to be the centers of the Iranian nuclear program. I think the true question is whether the Israelis will use nuclear weapons in their strikes.