Republicans often rely on a handy set of allegations: Democrats want open borders; Democrats want to defund the police; Democrats want men to compete in women’s sports.

But these are just vague assertions: Democrats don’t really want men to compete in women’s sports. The disingenuous assertion that they do only obscures a complicated issue, but it still manages to generate considerable political leverage.

Here’s a new misleading assertion: Democrats—or anyone who has reservations about our war against Iran—are agreeable to Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons.

An example: Recently Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said—overstating only slightly—that Iran is humiliating the U.S. in the current war. His ire provoked, President Donald Trump removed 5,000 American troops stationed in Germany and said that Merz thinks “it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

This is certainly not true. Few people outside of Iran think that it’s OK for the mullahs to have an atomic bomb. It’s not OK in the same way that it’s not OK for Russia, North Korea or China to have nuclear weapons.

In fact, it’s probably not such a great idea that the U.S. has them, either.

But the question is not whether it’s OK for Iran to have nuclear weapons; the question is whether it’s possible to use force to prevent the mullahs from obtaining them.

It’s actually more complicated than that. The Trump administration has been vague about the goals of its war against Iran, but last week, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suggested another goal of the war even more ambitious than preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

He said that Iran “had not given up its nuclear ambitions.” If the war cannot come to an end until Iran gives up its nuclear ambitions, then the war is counterproductive: The mullahs and many Iranians have good reason to believe that nuclear weapons are the only thing that will prevent Iran from becoming a submissive vassal state to the U.S. and Israel.

What do experts say? Scott Sagan, a professor of political science and an expert on nuclear proliferation, writes: “The ongoing crisis with Tehran is not the first time Washington has had to face a hostile government attempting to develop nuclear weapons. Nor is it likely to be the last.”

Source: Korea Times News