Children Playing With Nuclear Matches

Russian, American, and Israeli national security thinkers warn against launching a war on Iran: do the politicians care?

Former CIA acting director John McLaughlin: military action against Iran "would be a very bad option."

McLaughlin continued:

one of the big problems with Iran is if you get into an open confrontation, a military confrontation, you risk a cycle of retaliation and response with great difficulty seeing where the end point is

Foreign Minister Lavrov:

I have no doubt that it would pour fuel on a fire which is already smouldering, the hidden smouldering fire of Sunni-Shi'ite confrontation, and beyond that (it would cause) a chain reaction -- I don't know where it would stop

Lavrov's comments are noteworthy not only for essentially making the same warning as McLaughlin--that starting a war against Iran lights a fire no one knows how to put out--but because his reference to Sunii-Shi'ite confrontation is a very serious remark in a country that just lost a signficant percentage of its territory and population when the Muslim minority seceded. It is likely that such a reference indicates that Moscow takes the idea of U.S. war against Iran as a real threat to Russian national security. 

Recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan has pointed out repeatedly the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran to Israeli national security, most recently as follows:

The commotion surrounding the immediate alternative of an attack may lead the Iranians into a reality in which they are (pushed over the edge) and try to obtain nuclear capabilities as quickly as possible instead of treading rather carefully while taking the international community's demands into consideration….this situation could prove to be problematic because it may (affect the entire Middle East) in such a way that it would have security and economic-related repercussions for Israel…[Ynet News 12/19/11.]

When leading national security figures of the U.S., Russia, and Israel all concur publicly that the course being followed by U.S. and Israeli politicians is endangering U.S. and Russian and Israeli national security, then we must really start to wonder exactly whose agenda such politicians are pursuing. When politicians in the U.S. and Israel behave so aggressively that even their own national security establishment feels the need publicly to condemn their behavior, it is clearly time for Israeli and American voters to start asking themselves whose interests these politicians are trying to protect. Thus, the question becomes:

Why are the American and Israeli people allowing these children to play with nuclear matches?