Tom Cotton and the GOP's wimpy fear of Iran

When did the Republican Party become such a bastion of cowards?

That's what I wondered the moment I heard about the letter to the Iranian government, signed by 47 Republican senators, that aims to scuttle U.S.-led negotiations over the country's nuclear program.

Oh, of course the letter is meant to look like the opposite of cowardly. It's supposed to serve as the latest evidence of the GOP's singularly manly swagger, which the party has burnished non-stop since George W. Bush first promised to track down Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." (Or maybe it goes back to Ronald Reagan insinuating that Jimmy Carter lacked the resolve to stand up to Leonid Brezhnev. Or to Barry Goldwater indicating that he alone had the guts to use atomic weapons against the godless Commies of North Vietnam.)

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But it's actually a sign that the Republican Party's judgment has been grossly distorted by fear. That's why critics who are railing against the letter for its supposedly unconstitutional subversion of diplomatic protocol miss the point. The problem with the letter isn't that it broke the rules. The problem with the letter is that it's gutless.

The ringleader of the senatorial troublemakers, freshman Tom Cotton of Arkansas, wants us to believe he and his colleagues have seen through Barack Obama's dangerous willingness to capitulate to the mullahs in Tehran, and that they alone are tough enough to derail the bad deal the president is prepared, and even eager, to make.

But really, who's wimpier? A party so terrified by the prospect of normalizing relations with a vastly less formidable foreign power after 36 years of rancor and distrust that it engages in unprecedented acts of diplomatic sabotage, thereby crippling the president's ability to conduct foreign policy? Or that president himself, who believes that after those 36 years of rancor and distrust this vastly less formidable foreign power can be negotiated into delaying its nuclear ambitions for a decade?

I think the answer is obvious.

As The Week's Ryan Cooper has cogently argued, the GOP's position seems to be based on the assumption that if Iran produced one nuclear device or a handful of them, it would launch them at the United States. I'll admit, that's a scary thought. But it's also completely deranged. In the time it would take for an Iranian nuclear missile to reach its target, the United States could launch dozens if not hundreds of vastly more powerful and accurate retaliatory strikes that would leave Persian civilization in ruins.

Actually, that's not true. There would be no ruins. Just uninhabitable, radioactive dust.

And here's the thing: Iran's leaders know this.

It's one thing for a single terrorist to embrace suicide for what he takes to be a noble ideological goal and the promise of heavenly reward. It's quite another for the leaders of a nation of 77 million people to act in such a way that every last inhabitant of the country and every product of its culture would be instantly incinerated. That, quite simply, isn't going to happen.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fears about Iran's intentions aren't quite as pusillanimous as Tom Cotton's. Iran, for one thing, is much closer to Israel than the U.S., which means that it can be targeted with much less sophisticated rockets that would reach their destination much more quickly. Moreover, one or two nukes is all it would take to wipe out Israel's major population centers, making the country far more existentially vulnerable. And then there's the burden of Jewish history, which understandably inspires more than a little paranoia.

But just because something is understandable doesn't make it sensible. Paranoia, after all, is an irrational fear — and reason tells us that while Iran would very much like some day to succeed in building a single nuclear device, Israel already possesses dozens of nuclear warheads, as well as something even more valuable: its status as a staunch ally of the United States. Iran has every reason to believe we would respond to a nuclear strike on Israel just as severely as we would respond to an attack launched against us. That means that no such suicidal assault against Israel is going to happen either.

As usual, The Onion may have conveyed the absurdity of the situation more effectively than anyone, in a satirical headline from 2012 that's gotten renewed play in recent weeks: "Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon."

When leading politicians in the most militarily powerful nation on the planet believe they see a mortal threat in a country with a GDP roughly the size of Maryland's and lacking even a single bomb — well, that's a sign of world-historical spinelessness.

Democrats should be saying so. Loudly and repeatedly.