War With Iran? The 4 Dumbest Warmongering Quotes About Iran

Given the almighty power of the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities, one would think that if Iran were developing a weapons capability, it would have been made public by now. But in spite of this, “experts” continue to spit fire and brimstone about an existing Iranian nuclear weapons program as opposed to what we actually know exists, which is simply a civilian nuclear program.

So without further ado, here are some of the stupidest things ever said about Iran’s nuclear program…

1. "Unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future." - John Bolton

That’s right; ol’ walrus face is at it again. Bolton is quite possibly the most rabid warmonger in the entire lot. In a speech before students at the University of Chicago and sponsored by the Chicago Friends of Israel, Bolton suggested that Israel may need to launch a nuclear first strike against Iran.

This is a man who under the Bush administration served the as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — an organization he despises — accused Hillary Clinton of faking her recent illness, and currently fouls the halls of one of Washington’s most conservative think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute. Luckily, it seems that many are distancing themselves from Bolton, and for good reason.

2. "You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs." - Benjamin Netanyahu

Bibi shows his complete lack of knowledge of Iranian culture and Islam in one blindingly stupid statement. I won’t get into specifics, but anyone who wants to understand Shia Islam and its connections as well as differences between Sunni Islam should read this book by acclaimed Iran expert Vali Nasr. In short, Shiites are not cultists, but simply interpret certain parts of the faith differently than their Sunni counterparts. This makes them different — not insane — and if Iranian Shiites really are trying to hasten the return of the Twelfth Imam, they’re going out of their way to take as long as possible to do so.

3. "Regime change in Tehran is the best nonproliferation policy." - Robert Kagan

Kagan certainly isn’t the only one chanting “Ayatollah Assaholah” in Washington, but he’s certainly one of the more annoying ones doing so. In this op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post, Kagan goes on and on brown-nosing the Iranian people in a transparent slop of rhetoric that even Josef Goebbels would shrug off as amateur at best. Kagan seems to know exactly what Iranians think, feel, and need, which of course is Western-style democracy.

Apparently Kagan has had his head buried in the sands of the Iraqi desert, since he clearly missed the failed attempt at regime change and nation-building there due to a lack of knowledge on sectarian conflict, culture, and foreign policy theory all together. Iran is infinitesimally more complicated than Iraq, and regime change there is an utter impossibility unless Iranians do it themselves.

4. "I believe that faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down…this will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program altogether." - Benjamin Netanyahu

Bibi makes the list twice, making this bellicose statement before the UN General Assembly, complete with a cartoon drawing of a bomb with different enrichment levels written across it. Netanyahu’s own intelligence houses have made it clear that they do not believe Iran has a current weapons program, and it seems increasingly likely that Netanyahu is clinging to this rhetoric for self-motivated political purposes.