Views on military action against Iran
Kelsey Davenport, the Director of Nonproliferation Policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association is the biggest American restraint against Netanyahu and/or NATO's rulers launching and in May 2023, she warned that "a nightmare scenario" is occurring.
"[43] On December 22, 2018, British Security Minister Ben Wallace warned that groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State will work to place nefarious terror moles inside airports.
[45] The next day, President Macron released a communiqué in which he "repeated that firmness is necessary in the face of Iran's raising of the stakes - which, if continued, would inevitably have consequences - and of the country's lack of transparency towards the International Atomic Energy Agency.
[50] To date, Israel has already launched raids against Syrian and Iraqi nuclear reactors, and some point to the success of these attacks and the lack of retaliation as encouragement for a similar strike against Iran.
[53] Both Barack Obama[54] and Benjamin Netanyahu[55] have repeatedly said that a military option should not be taken out of consideration if other means of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon fail.
[59] Bill Roggio, Senior Fellow and Editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's (FDD) Long War Journal, said that "Numerous al-Qaeda leaders and operatives shelter inside Iran."
[60] Charles Lister, Senior Fellow, Director of Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism Programs at the Middle East Institute, warned that "a catastrophic ISIS resurgence is just a matter of time.
If managed carefully, Kroenig believes that a surgical military strike targeting Iran's nuclear facilities "could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States.
[63] In the midst of a global economic downturn, Kroenig believes that containing a nuclear-armed Iran would be a massive financial, political, and military burden for the United States.
To mitigate the global economic fallout from a military strike, Washington could "offset any disruption of oil supplies by opening its Strategic Petroleum Reserve and quietly encouraging some Gulf states to increase their production in the run-up to the attack.
[64] King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, stand opposed to nuking the Ayatollah's underground military facilities.
[70] In March 2005, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, British MP George Galloway, former UN Assistant Secretary-General Dennis Halliday, former First Lady of Greece Margarita Papandreou, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and others launched an international grassroots campaign called Stop War on Iran.
Beginning in early 2005, journalists, activists and academics such as Seymour Hersh,[85][86] Scott Ritter,[87] Joseph Cirincione and Jorge E. Hirsch[88] began publishing claims that United States' concerns over the alleged threat posed by the possibility that Iran may have a nuclear weapons program might lead the US government to take military action against that country.
Additionally, several individuals, grassroots organisations, and international government organisations, including the ex-Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei,[82] a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter,[87] Nobel Prize winners including Shirin Ebadi, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and Betty Williams, Harold Pinter and Jody Williams,[89] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,[89] Code Pink,[90] and the Non-Aligned Movement[81] of 118 states have publicly stated their opposition to such an attack.
[88] Starting in 2005, these analysts, including Seymour Hersh,[85] former UN weapons of mass destruction inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, Scott Ritter,[87] Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Professor at the University of San Francisco and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus, Stephen Zunes[92] claimed that the United States planned a military attack against Iran.
"[107] On May 8, United States Representative John Conyers, Jr. wrote a letter to President George W. Bush, threatening him with impeachment if he were to attack Iran without Congressional authorization.
[116] Early that month, Israel carried out a training exercise dubbed Glorious Spartan 08, for an attack, supposedly on Iran, with over 100 F-15s and F-16s along with refueling tankers and rescue helicopters.
[122] On June 25, Bahraini Major General Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani asked the United States to provide early warning to Bahrain before attacking Iran.
[150] On July 24, Associated Press distributed a report by journalist George Jahn which suggested that Iranian Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh had announced that Iran would end cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
[155] On August 4, Revolutionary Guards Commander General Mohammad Ali Jafari claimed that Iran had tested a new anti-ship missile with a range of 300 kilometres (190 mi).
[157] On August 7, the Kuwait Times reported the Kuwaiti government "is finalizing its emergency plan" and that two more United States aircraft carriers are en route to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.
[163] On August 6, 2007, the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, several Nobel Prize winners, Shirin Ebadi, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and Betty Williams, Harold Pinter and Jody Williams, along with several anti-war groups, including The Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, CASMII, Code Pink and many others, warned about what they believed was the imminent risk of a "war of an unprecedented scale, this time against Iran", especially expressing concern that an attack on Iran using nuclear weapons had "not been ruled out".
In a direct response to Kroenig, Colin Kahl, Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, argues that war with Iran should be a last resort.
In August 2012, Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, argued that the collective sabre rattling from Israel's politicians, and repeated assertions about "closing windows", "red lines", and "zones of immunity", with regard to an imminent Israeli attack against Iran, was bluff.
[170] In March 2012, a Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed that a majority of Americans, 56%, would support military action against Iran, even if it led to increased gas prices, if there was evidence demonstrating that Tehran was building nuclear weapons.
[172] In a TNS survey conducted in March 2007 among 17,443 people in 27 European Union member states, a majority of 52% agreed with the statement "We must stop countries like Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even if that means taking military action".
On September 23, 2006, one of the main slogans and themes of speakers at a demonstration of about 50,000 people criticising British prime minister Tony Blair at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Manchester was the call "Don't attack Iran".
[184] The political novel, The Writing on the Wall, an anti-war novel and roman à clef based on a possible John McCain presidency in 2008, warns against war with Iran by portraying a worst-case scenario of its outcomes.
In it, author Hannes Artens portrays a global depression as a result of the oil price shooting past $140 per barrel and depicts the falsity of thinking that limited aerial strikes on Iran will end the problem.
[185] On April 12, 2006, the political group MoveOn, which organises and informs an online community estimated at 3 million people, called on its supporters to lobby the United States Congress to prevent US president George W. Bush from attacking Iran with nuclear weapons.
