Before They Go Nuclear…

CONSPICUOUSLY absent from the West’s diplomatic strategy in the Iran nuclear crisis is any mention of preemption. Avoiding this now-vulgar term may help alleviate the administration’s image problem, but the U.S. is starting to give the impression that it has given up on a vital element of its national defense. Iran has taken this as an invitation to speed up its nuclear program.

The Security Council debate before the Iraq War and the subsequent debate over pre-war intelligence are the key to understanding what has gone wrong. After David Kay famously reported in January 2004 that “we were almost all wrong” about WMD in Iraq, columnist George F. Will proclaimed the end of preemption: “The doctrine of preemptive war . . . presupposes a certain [amount of] certainty about what you’re preempting.”

About the Author

Mario Loyola

Mario Loyola is a professor of environment at Florida International University and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

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CONSPICUOUSLY absent from the West’s diplomatic strategy in the Iran nuclear crisis is any mention of preemption. Avoiding this now-vulgar term may help alleviate the administration’s image problem, but the U.S. is starting to give the impression that it has given up on a vital element of its national defense. Iran has taken this as an invitation to speed up its nuclear program.

The Security Council debate before the Iraq War and the subsequent debate over pre-war intelligence are the key to understanding what has gone wrong. After David Kay famously reported in January 2004 that “we were almost all wrong” about WMD in Iraq, columnist George F. Will proclaimed the end of preemption: “The doctrine of preemptive war . . . presupposes a certain [amount of] certainty about what you’re preempting.”