Dick Morris explains how to defeat Iran without firing a shot:
Deterrence won't work. You cannot deter a suicide bomber by threatening to kill him. The nihilistic and apocalyptic worldview echoed in Tehran does not make retaliation a serious deterrent.
Instead, Bush should continue and accelerate his efforts to destroy Iran's economy by cutting off investments to companies that invest there. Frank Gaffney's disinvestterrror.org campaign says that 87 state-administered pension funds in the United States have invested $188 billion in one of 500 publicly traded companies that "partner with terrorist-sponsoring states."
These 500 companies among them "have $73 billion invested in Iran, Syria, Libya, and North Korea." (This 2004 data includes investments in Saddam's Iraq).
Among these companies are: Alcatal SA, BNP Paribas, Hyundai, Linden Petroleum, Oil and Natural Gas Corp, Siemens AG, Statoil ASA, Stolt Nielsen, Technip Coflexip, and Total SA. UBS, which was once on the list, has divested itself of all such investments.
The economic weakness of Iran makes disinvestment its Achilles' heel. With its non-oil and gas economy falling apart and its oil exports dropping while domestic demand is rising, Tehran already totters atop a mountain of popular discontent, as evidenced by the trouncing the establishment took in the local elections a few weeks ago.
So President Bush should mobilize the American people to disinvest in Iran and other terrorist states. He should ratchet up his efforts to persuade states and unions to adopt terror-free investment policies and urge Wall Street mutual funds to do likewise. No public action is required, but massive private action, catalyzed by Bush, can have a huge effect.
Two decades ago the left was demanding that American universities and corporations disinvest from South Africa because they practiced apartheid. Iran is a threat to the entire world. We're waiting for the left to rouse themselves from their slumbering indifference and campaign as vigorously for the economic punishment of this enemy of the United States as they once did against an ally.
RLC
