to be the toughest and least compromising commander-in-chief.
The full text of the Iran segment of the debate last Tuesday is published below.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich advocated “sabotaging the only refinery they have.” Iran has had seven refineries for decades and has eight now under construction, some of them partly operating.
Former Godfather’s pizza CEO Herman Cain said he would want to be sure that any campaign to bomb Iranian nuclear sites would work before he would support air raids. He said he thought it was “highly unlikely” that an air attack would work “given the terrain, the mountainous terrain, in Iran.” No one asked him why he thought mountains interfered with attack aircraft.
Rep. Michele Bachmann cited threats from President Ahmadi-nejad. “He has said that, if he has a nuclear weapon, he will use it to wipe Israel off the face of the earth; he will use it against the United States of America.” Ahmadi-nejad has never said anything even approaching that.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said, “When you sanction the Iranian Central Bank, that will shut down that economy.” But he was talking about unilateral American sanctions and did not seem concerned if other countries failed to join in.
At the same time new sanctions are imposed on Iran, Perry said the United States should declare a no-fly zone over Syria. “And in that moment, they will understand that America is serious. This president refuses to do that, and it’s another show of lack of leadership from the president of the United States.”
Gingrich said, “We could break the Iranian regime, I think, within a year, starting candidly with cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran.” The US Congress voted to sanction gasoline suppliers more than a year ago and all major international gasoline marketers quickly dropped Iran, but Iran is not yet “broken.”
Former Utah Gov. John Huntsman went against the grain of the enthusiasm for sanctions and still more sanctions. “Sanctions aren’t going to work,” Huntsman said. “I hate to break it to you. They’re not going to work because the Chinese aren’t going to play ball and the Russians aren’t going to play ball.”