Realistic Approach Required

May 25, 2010
“Even assuming the degree and kind of ‘destabilization’ would be the same in both the cases of attack and appeasement (which I don't think would be so), one scenario—attack—leaves Iran without nuclear weapons, at least for now; the other—appeasement—means Iran would have nuclear weapons going forward. Which unstable outcome is less damaging to U.S. interests? I think the answer is pretty clear: An attacked Iran that does not have nukes.”
—William Kristol, editor, The Weekly Standard, “Mullen's Myth of Geostrategic Equivalence,” April 19, 2010
  • “Some people say, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, sanctions will never work.’ But after what we went through in Iraq, does anyone believe that the American public or anybody else will go for a military strike if they don’t see that the administration has tried other approaches? Clearly, then, we have to work through this. You know the administration is working hard when they say to you—or maybe they don’t say to you—that the president held fifteen different sets of bilaterals at the nuclear summit. And it was all about Iran. But that’s not made public.”
    —David Makovsky, director, Project on the Middle East Peace Process, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2010 Soref Symposium, April 22, 2010


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