A Terrible Iran Question and Two Terrible Answers

The vice presidential candidates had little to say about foreign policy last night, and what they did say was hardly reassuring.

The vice presidential candidates had little to say about foreign policy last night, and what they did say was hardly reassuring. Vance played the part of the reliable Trump yes-man, and Walz mostly just echoed the same stale talking points that Harris has been using. In order to defend Trump’s foreign policy record, Vance chose to lie frequently to make it seem as if the former president’s tenure wasn’t a series of failures and reckless decisions.

The debate opened with a terrible question about whether they would support a “preemptive” Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The moderator framed the question in a very misleading way and wrongly suggested that Iran was a couple weeks away from developing nuclear weapons. If Iran decided to pursue nuclear weapons, which it hasn’t done, it would take them at least a year to build a device. The moderator could have opened with a serious question, but it was easier to indulge in some irresponsible fearmongering instead.

Walz gave a bizarre, irrelevant answer that touched on almost everything but the question of an Israeli attack on Iran. Vance eventually gave a ridiculous answer of endorsing whatever Israel wants to do and pledging to support whatever that might be. Nothing says America first like blindly supporting the actions of a foreign government, right?

Vance said, “we should support our allies wherever they are when they're fighting the bad guys. I think that's the right approach to take with the Israel question.” Leaving aside for the moment that Israeli isn’t really an ally of the United States, this is a laughable answer. The U.S. should always support these other states “wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys”? Suppose that they are the ones that start or escalate the war. Is the U.S. obliged to support them then? What if the interests of the “ally” and the U.S. diverge? How does mindlessly supporting the wars of another country make the United States more secure? My guess is that Vance has no good answers to those questions.

The wording of the question was also bad. An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities wouldn’t be “preemptive.” Preemption implies that there is an imminent threat that requires immediate action, and there is no such threat stemming from Iran’s nuclear program. Iran is not building nuclear weapons, and it currently doesn’t have a program intended for their production. If Israel or the U.S. attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, it would be a so-called preventive strike, but the likely consequence of such a strike would be to convince the Iranian government to build nuclear weapons. It wouldn’t just be an illegal and aggressive use of force, but it would also very likely make the problem worse by driving Iran to seek the bomb.

Walz had a pretty good antiwar record during his time in Congress, so it would have been interesting to hear what he thought about Israel attacking Iran. Unfortunately, the Walz we got was the heavily scripted candidate who began robotically repeating the attack lines he had been coached to say. Vance’s automatic blank check support for backing Israel no matter what they choose to do should have been an easy target for Walz to attack, but he can’t really fault Vance for mindless unconditional support when the Biden administration does the same thing.

The right answer to the moderator’s terrible question is that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could trigger a major war and an Iranian dash for the bomb, and therefore the U.S. should not support that action. A better answer would be to say that the U.S. shouldn’t support any futher Israeli escalation in the region and that the U.S. should be trying to rein their government in. The best answer would be to acknowledge that the Iranian government is interested in resuming nuclear negotiations and that there is an opportunity to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully. Military action against Iran’s nuclear program will backfire, and it isn’t needed. That is what we should have heard from the candidates, but we didn’t.