CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER IN CONVERSATION WITH HANNAH SUNG

HANNAH SUNG: For this particular Munk Debate the question is about Iran and nuclear capabilities. You were saying that the world cannot and should not tolerate a nuclear-powered Iran. Why?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: You have to look at it from three perspectives. From the global perspective, if Iran — the greatest exporter of terror in the world — gets nuclear weapons, the idea of non-proliferation, preventing it from going to other countries, is dead. The entire Gulf region, all of the Arab states, are going to go nuclear. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, a non-Arab Turkey, Syria — can you imagine Syria with nuclear weapons? We don’t even know who’s going to be in charge of Syria. That’s what the world will be like the morning after Iran goes nuclear.

Second, we need to look at it from a regional perspective. If Iran goes nuclear, it becomes the dominant power in the Middle East. It controls world oil; it controls and dominates the Arab world. Once they have nukes, any state that doesn’t have nukes is going to be a client and supplicate to Iran. It will be in control of the world economy. Imagine what would have happened if Saddam Hussein had not been disarmed by Israel, which attacked Iraq’s nuclear reactor ten years earlier? Imagine if Saddam had possessed nuclear weapons when he invaded Kuwait? He’d still be in charge of Kuwait, and be in control of the world oil in the Middle East.

The last of my three reasons has to do with Israel. Iran is dedicated to the utter eradication and annihilation of Israel, and all it needs is a half-dozen bombs and it can do to the Jewish people in Israel what Hitler needed six years to do — to kill six million of them. There are six million Jews in Israel. It would take an afternoon to do it, with half a dozen bombs.