"Trump's decision yesterday brings us one step closer to that war you've dreamed about."  So wrote a leftist friend since college in an email he sent to me following President Trump's decision to abrogate former president Obama's nuclear surrender to Iran (called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).  Although he didn't use the exact word, the term "warmonger" just about jumps off the page.  It is an accusation frequently made by those on the left to attack those who believe that self-defense begins with recognizing real dangers and taking appropriate actions to neutralize them.

But is it true?  Are those who support the president's decision to assign the Obama surrender to the wastebasket of history really warmongers?

To answer that question, we need to look at the motives of those who support the termination of Obama's surrender.  Were they interested in militarily defeating Iran to replace it in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, then the motive, conquest, would certainly meet a common criterion of "warmonger."  Were they interested in selling weapons to either or both sides for personal gain, they could well be called warmongers.  But those who oppose Obama's surrender to Iran are not motivated by such concerns.

Those who oppose Obama's surrender to Iran know that Iran, inspired by religious extremism, intends to build a Shiite empire from its western border across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea.  With the Shiites (like the Iranians) having taken over Iraq and with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps troops fighting for Assad in Syria along with Hezb'allah, and Iran's terrorist army in Lebanon, the Iranian plan is close to complete.  Those who oppose Obama's surrender know that Iran's temporary suspension of nuclear weapons development will allow that country, the primary sponsor of Islamic terrorism in the world, to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon in merely eight more years.  Those who oppose Obama's surrender know that Iran's leaders have been calling for "death to America" for 39 years now, since their 1979 Islamic Revolution.  Their attacks on Americans, such as the 241 U.S. Marines and other personnel who died in a suicide truck bomb attack on the barracks of an American peacekeeping force in Lebanon in 1983 by Iran's Hezb'allah surrogate army, show that Iran means to accomplish what it threatens.  Thus, those who oppose Obama's surrender to Iran are motivated not by a desire for conquest or wealth, but by a desire to prevent a radical terrorist state from acquiring the nuclear weapons it wants to attack the U.S. (the "great Satan") and threaten the world.  Those are the motivations not of warmongers, but of those who see a serious threat to Western civilization on the horizon and understand the need to take action.

While it is hard to predict what will happen, it is far less hard to rule out what probably will not happen.  Iran is not going to agree to revise the deal and give away what its leaders see as a diplomatic victory.  Iran is not going to go away and leave America alone if America changes its policies to favor Iran.  To Iran, this conflict is about not policies, but religion.  And Iran will not leave America alone if America continues Obama's appeasement policies.  Iran will accept the benefits it can, but its leaders will not hate the U.S. any less.  Due to Islam's demand that true Muslims hate and kill or enslave and rule infidels, Iran can be deterred only by American military power.  If Iran cannot be deterred, then it must be resisted and defeated – not in the interest of Western wealth and power, but in the interest of saving the post-Enlightenment Western world from the cruel wrath of Islamic conquest and "sharia" law.  If this is not accomplished before Iran has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that can deliver them to the U.S., then an era of Iranian nuclear extortion will begin, and no Iranian excess will be amenable to resistance without risking a nuclear war.  

In other words, there is no choice about whether to fight Iran or not in the coming months and years.  The despotic rulers of Iran have already made the choice to go to war against infidel America.  The only choice is whether to fight Iran soon, before it acquires nuclear weapons, or later either tremble in fear of a mighty nuclear Iran or fight a nuclear war when Iran can deliver nukes to Lincoln, Nebraska and Kansas City, Missouri.  The choice should be clear.

If one favors a small, non-nuclear war sooner over a big nuclear war later, is one a warmonger?  Or is the one truly making war more likely who appeases his enemies, thus inviting further aggression?

Pete Cohon is a retired attorney living in Tel Aviv, Israel.