Former House Speaker and possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, Newt Gingrich tells Newsmax that the worst case scenario for the Middle East is a nuclear-armed Iran that would attack Israel and lead to a second Holocaust — and an “utter and total disaster” for the entire region.Iran and Islamic radicals, unlike the Soviet Union, will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they obtain them.
Gingrich called Obama’s policy regarding the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East “very strange.”“The worst case scenario is a nuclear war. If the Iranians get nuclear weapons — well, people who are prepared to put on a body bomb to walk into a mall and kill themselves, and kill you, are probably prepared to use a nuclear weapon. This is not the Soviet Union. This is not détente.
“So the worst scenario in the Middle East is a substantial nuclear war that from the standpoint of Israel would be a second Holocaust, and from the standpoint of the whole region would be an utter and total disaster, and from the standpoint of the human race would be horrifying.
“The best outcome is that the forces of hatred are defeated, that moderates and reasonable people come to power and the region learns to live in peace and seek prosperity by cooperating with each other.”
“If you’re an American ally like Mubarak and you sided with the United States for 30 years, President Obama’s quick to publicly dump you. If you’re an American enemy like Colonel Gadhafi and have been our enemy for 40 years, and now have been publicly implicated as the person who ordered the bombing of the Pan American airplane, somehow the president can’t find a way to explain clearly that you ought to leave.
“I think the United States should be in favor of freedom. It’s who we are. We should be in favor of freedom in Libya, in Saudi Arabia, in Iran, in China, in North Korea. We have to say over and over again that we believe these dictatorships in the long run need to disappear and be replaced by the rule of law.”
Asked if the Obama administration is dropping the ball on this, Gingrich says: “I’m not even sure they know there is a ball.”