Alan Dershowitz and Andrew Stein
Gatestone Institute, May 20, 2025
“Ignorance of the hypothetical future is often the reason for failure to act in the present. That is the dilemma of failing to take preventive military action.”
Dear Mr. President,
You are about to make a decision for which you will be remembered by history. Your legacy will either be as a world leader who saved, or failed to save, many lives. The decision concerns Iran’s intention to develop a nuclear arsenal. There can be no reasonable doubt that Iran’s mullahs are determined to obtain nuclear weapons, despite their assurances to the contrary. Nor can Israel, which is the intended target of an Iranian bomb, be expected to rely on deterrence or containment. Iran must be prevented from achieving their dangerous goal.
Obviously it would be better if the mullahs could be stopped by negotiation rather than military action. Previous negotiations resulted in a terrible deal under President Barack Obama. You yourself understood that under the Obama deal, Iran would almost certainly have obtained a nuclear arsenal, and so you quite correctly withdrew from the agreement. Now there are rumors that your administration is working on a “better” deal – longer and stronger.
But unless your deal includes the complete and total destruction of all Iranian nuclear facilities, there will be no guarantee that its scientists could not surreptitiously use civilian nuclear infrastructure to build military weaponry. The only deal that would prevent this catastrophe would be one modeled on the agreement made with Libya made back in 2003. That deal completely dismantled Libya’s nuclear facilities and made it impossible for them to weaponize nuclear energy infrastructure. Anything short of that will create an unacceptable risk.
We urge you to use your incredible negotiating skills to achieve the goal that you have set out: namely a 100% certainty that Iran will never get a nuclear bomb. You should give the mullahs a short period of time to dismantle and destroy, subject to American inspection, their entire nuclear program. If they refuse or fail to do so, the military option should be deployed.
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