So, What Do They Mean By “Imminent?”

Critics of the US attack on Iran keep using that word, e.g.: “Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.” 

Well, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what they think it means — or want *us* to think it means. 

Those who deploy that word in their attempt to refute the grounds for our military assault on Iran should be forced to clarify and defend their actual position. 

First, they should be asked to define “imminent.” 

What, exactly, would an “imminent” threat consist of? What, exactly, would they be waiting for before they would feel compelled to strike Iran preemptively, in national self-defense?

Ask them that, and watch the stuttering and stammering begin.

Then, ask them how could that “imminent threat” level be determined and verified, if Iran refuses to admit international inspectors into its nuke facilities? 

Next, ask them if Iran would become an “imminent threat” if they develop effective means to shield their nuclear-bomb program from our attack — say, if they build their nukes and their delivery systems in hardened, possibly unassailable underground tunnels? Ask them: Do you wish to allow their nuke-development program to become *invulnerable*? Would it then become a sufficiently “imminent threat”? 

Or would an “imminent threat” occur only after they had been actually *permitted* to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and/or an effective delivery system? 

In short, by “imminent threat,” don’t you really mean an *unstoppable* threat? Don’t you mean, by “imminent threat,” Iran’s actual possession of atomic bombs?

Isn’t *that* the stage to which you have been prepared to let the situation degenerate?

I think you do. How do I know that? Because that very outcome was baked explicitly into the text of the JCPOA (aka “the Iran nuclear deal”) of 2015. By that agreement, *all* limitations on Iranian development of nuclear weapons would have expired between 2025 (last year) to 2030. (See the Wikipedia entry on the topic.) 

In other words, the JCPOA agreement would have merely kicked the can of the Iranian nuke threat down the road a few years from 2015 — emblematic of the cowardice that the entire world (including five decades of US administrations) has shown toward Iran. By explicit agreement, by now, Iranian nukes would not have become merely an “imminent threat,” but an officially, globally blessed *reality.*

Prior to Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, and his subsequent military strikes on Iran, every previous US administration, at every stage of Iran’s mounting menace and terroristic aggression, has preemptively capitulated. Every time. Their endless “negotiations” (with the negotiation *process* being an end in itself) and groveling acts of appeasement (including the JCPOA, plus multi-billion-dollar bribes to the Iranian regime) have only empowered and enriched the Islamist state, allowing them to fund terrorist proxies all over the world, such as the October 7, 2023 Hamas atrocities in Israel.

So, to sum up: Don’t give me this disingenuous argument about Iran not being “an imminent threat.” Those indulging in this transparent sophistry know full well that they *never* would have defined the Iranian threat as “imminent” — that they had already signed or applauded an agreement to allow the ayatollahs to inevitably acquire nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. 

All of their years of diplomatic mumbo-jumbo and interminable “negotiations” have been meant to do only one thing: to allow them to disguise their craven cowardice and preemptive capitulation, even to themselves. They had already surrendered to the mullahs and the IRGC 47 years ago. In the half-century since, they have been trying desperately to maintain the charade that their unwillingness to stand up to the theocratic bullies is really because they are civilized men — not simpering eunuchs.