MEF Chief Editor Jim Hanson discusses with FOX the President’s statement after yesterday’s meeting at the White House. Trump said he will give Iran one or two weeks to negotiate a surrender of their nuclear programs before any bombing by the US.
Transcript:
FOX: And for that, we bring in Jim Hanson, Chief Editor for the Middle East Forum and Army Special Forces veteran.
Jim, I want to start here. This is a Democratic congressman on the Intelligence Committee. Here’s what he said about the efficacy of bunker bombs.
CONGRESSMAN: Not only would a military strike potentially be ineffective, remember those bunker-busting weapons, though very potent, may not be able to destroy the Fordo nuclear facility, um, and there might be duplicative facilities throughout the country, and you can’t bomb their know-how out of existence. They might reconstitute the program.
FOX: So a White House official told Fox News, Jim, this, that they have no doubt about the efficacy of bunker busters, that massive ordinance penetrator. Do you have doubts, or do you think it can get the job done?
HANSON: No one should have any doubts that if President Trump makes the decision to destroy the Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow, it will turn into nuclear dust. So whether it takes multiple massive ordnance penetrators, whatever it requires, we’re prepared to do and capable of doing.
So I don’t think that congressman is doing anything other than stirring the pot.
FOX: Yeah, the Commander in Chief, as you said, if he makes a choice, he’s going to know that it’s going to work.
Another interesting line that was told to our Fox News team here was that nothing has been taken off the table and that would include tactical nukes. Can you explain what the difference is between a tactical nuke option and this bunker buster massive ordnance penetrator?
What would those operations look like? And in your mind, what’s the better choice?
HANSON: I don’t think there’s any question that conventional munitions far exceed any kind of nuclear action. I don’t believe we would be the first ones to use a nuclear weapon.
So I think that’s one of those situations where the rhetoric is being used to kind of put the fear of God into the Iranians.
And I think President Trump right now is doing a very smart thing. He’s stated that he wants a negotiated settlement to this. He wants the Iranians to recognize that we can destroy them, even as the Israelis are doing it more slowly.
But he wants to go ahead and have them surrender and do this the right way. And he realizes he can always bomb their nuclear facilities. He can never unbomb them.
So I think a lot of this right now is designed to remind them of that fact and get them to accept the inevitable. They’re done.
FOX: And you’ve served, so you understand the personal cost to this, the sacrifice, the human cost of war. No one wants to see endless war. And there’s been some talk about, you know, no regime change, but yes, precision strike on Fordow.
And I want to hear from you about how you disentangle the two, because we obviously saw the perils of regime change with Saddam Hussein. We saw what happened in Afghanistan. The Taliban now rules Afghanistan again. Is there a way to disentangle those in your mind?
HANSON: President Trump is not going to be the architect of another attempt at regime change. He is going to be the architect of the undoing of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
And those two things are not entangled. They don’t have to be. There are people rhetorically entangling them. But there is a huge difference between destroying a nuclear facility and then trying to get the people who built it to see reality and sending troops on the ground and trying to build a nation and some sort of Jeffersonian democracy.
If the Iranian people, and they do want to build a democracy and a better system, they should do it themselves. And I hope this is encouraging them. They should hear from all the world that we want them to have a better government because we’re sick of the one they’ve got.
FOX: You know, Jim, as someone who’s studied international affairs for many years, you know, one of the things we’re taught, a cornerstone of nuclear weapons, and of course, we don’t want to see nuclear proliferation, is mutually assured destruction.
And that relies on rational actors. And someone like Vladimir Putin, while he is very evil, is rational in the sense of he cares about self-preservation.
Do you have any worry that in Iran, where you have fanaticism, you have religious radicalism, that that idea of a rational actor is in question, should they get nuclear weapons?
HANSON: It’s absolutely in question. The people who run Iran right now are from a sect of Shia Islam, the Twelver sect, that believes they need an Armageddon-like event to bring their Mahdi who will help them rule the world.
Now, I can’t think of a more Armageddon-like event than a nuclear explosion.
So President Trump rightly sees that as the red line, as an intolerable situation, and he’s said that won’t happen. So we can’t deal with them, as you said, with treaties or even with mutually assured destruction.
We need to deal with them by stopping any chance they have to put together a weapon they might use to cause that to happen.
FOX: Jim, very well said, and President Trump has made it crystal clear Iran will never have a nuclear weapon on his watch. Thank you very much.
