Paul had an exchange last week in a radio interview about his views on Iran and the bomb.
He said of Iran, “I don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon, I don’t want Pakistan to have them. I don’t want India to have them. And I wish we [Americans] had a lot less of them.”
But, he went on, “If Iran gets one nuclear weapon, why are they more dangerous to us than the Soviet system was when they had 30,000 and we were able to live with that?”
His interviewer than came back with the standard reasoning among American conservatives. “The argument is that Iran is nuttier and that Ahmadi-nejad might be very intent on destroying a lot of Iranians for the sake of killing a lot of Americans.”
Paul shot back, “I think that’s a wrong assessment.”
The interviewer suggested that Iran might be different from the Soviet Union because its “past and its history suggests it does have aberrant behavior.”
Paul said flatly, “No…. How could they have been any worse than [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev telling us he would bury us? And he had the capacity to do that! I would say we ought to be more cautious about this glib acceptance that we can go to war in another country, because, if you want to stop him [from getting the bomb], you have to go to war with Iran.
“That to me is careless war-mongering-very very dangerous-much more dangerous than another country having a nuclear weapon that is not on the verge of committing suicide. And, besides, they [Iran] wouldn’t dare attack with one weapon-and Israel has 30. We have to put this in proper perspective and get back to common sense.”
The common assumption on the right of the Republican Party is that the Islamic Republic is truly a religious state that could happily launch a war to end the world and bring about judgment day.