I am an American. I am a Jew. But I am not writing primarily as an advocate for Israel or the US-Israel relationship, nor am I asking Americans to see this moment through Jewish eyes.

I am writing as a citizen, a parent, and a member of a generation forced to ask what kind of world we are willing to leave our children and grandchildren.

Like many Americans, I do not want another Middle East war. I do not want American troops sent into Iran. I do not want conflict for its own sake. And I do not want America acting casually, impulsively, or without regard for the costs borne by service members, families, taxpayers, and future generations.

Those concerns are not signs of weakness. They are the instincts of a serious democracy.

Americans are right to ask hard questions

Americans have learned through painful experience that military power must be used with clarity, discipline, and humility.

The cost of war is never paid only in the moment. It is carried home by veterans, endured by families, absorbed by grieving communities, and inherited by children who grow up in the shadow of decisions made before they were old enough to understand them.

So when Americans express unease about US involvement in Iran, I understand it. I share the instinct to ask difficult questions:

What is the objective?

Those questions should always be asked.

But there is another question we must confront with equal seriousness:

What happens if the Iranian regime becomes a nuclear power?

Not what happens to one administration or another. Not what happens to one political party. Not even what happens to Israel first.

What happens to America? What happens to our children? What kind of world do they inherit?

That is the question we cannot afford to avoid.

A nuclear Iran would not stay in the Middle East

A nuclear Iran would not remain a distant regional problem contained by geography.

It would reshape the 21st-century world. It would affect American troops, American allies, global energy markets, US credibility, and the calculations of every hostile regime watching to see whether democracies still mean what they say.

The danger is not only that Iran might someday use a nuclear weapon. The greater danger is that nuclear capability would give the Iranian regime a shield behind which it could intensify the behavior it already embraces.

This concern is not theoretical. Iran has long been designated by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism, a designation reserved for governments determined to have repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism. Iran has been on that list since 1984.

For decades, Iran has armed, funded, trained, and directed proxy groups across the Middle East. The State Department’s 2024 terrorism report said Iran continued providing funding, training, weapons, and equipment to several US-designated terrorist groups, including the Houthis, Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, and Hezbollah. It also cited continued Iranian financial support that allowed Hamas to continue operations.

These groups do not need Iran to launch a nuclear missile to make the world more dangerous.

They only need Iran to feel untouchable enough to take greater risks.

A nuclear Iran would not simply be today’s Iran with a more powerful weapon.

It would be today’s Iran operating beneath a nuclear umbrella.

Iran has shown a willingness to act against America

Iran’s willingness to act against Americans is not theoretical either.

In 1983, Hezbollah carried out the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American military personnel: 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three soldiers. The State Department has described the attack as a Hezbollah terrorist bombing, and it remains the deadliest day for the US Marine Corps since Iwo Jima.

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group that carried out the attack, became the model for the proxy warfare Iran has used across the region.

During the Iraq War, Iran did not merely chant “Death to America” from a distance. Through the IRGC-Quds Force, it armed, trained, and supported militias that killed American troops. The Pentagon later estimated that Iranian-backed militias and Iranian-supplied weapons were responsible for at least 603 US service member deaths in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 — roughly one in six American combat fatalities.

The threat has not been limited to battlefields in the Middle East.

The Justice Department has announced charges involving an Iranian-regime........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)