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Rubio’s Iran Hyperbole

Jennifer Rubin asked Marco Rubio about Iran before he spoke at CPAC: Rubio replied, “Iran is an existential threat not only to Israel but to the region….” It’s remarkable how Iran hawks keep building up the Iran threat with increasingly preposterous claims at the same time that some high-ranking Israeli officials are trying to use […]

Jennifer Rubin asked Marco Rubio about Iran before he spoke at CPAC:

Rubio replied, “Iran is an existential threat not only to Israel but to the region….”

It’s remarkable how Iran hawks keep building up the Iran threat with increasingly preposterous claims at the same time that some high-ranking Israeli officials are trying to use less alarmist language. As Haaretz reported late last year:

“What is the significance of the term existential threat?” the ambassadors quoted [Mossad chief] Pardo as asking. “Does Iran pose a threat to Israel? Absolutely. But if one said a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands was an existential threat, that would mean that we would have to close up shop and go home. That’s not the situation. The term existential threat is used too freely.”

A nuclear-armed Iran isn’t an existential threat to Israel, but I can at least understand why someone might claim to believe that. An Iran without nuclear weapons isn’t an existential threat to any other state, much less the entire region. An existential threat to “the region”? What does that even mean? I suspect Rubio doesn’t know. He knows he is supposed to refer to Iran as an existential threat to Israel to satisfy hawks in his party, but maybe he thinks that doesn’t go far enough to express how fantastically threatening he thinks Iran is.

Update: Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan recently agreed with Pardo’s position:

At the launch of an electoral reform movement he chairs, he observed, “I don’t think there is an existential threat.” He did not specifically mention Iran, but the use of the phrase “existential threat” in Israel generally refers to Iran.

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