Newt Gingrich - Iran
Summary
In 2006, Congressman Gingrich wrote an article describing the war on terror and islamic fundamentalists as the third world war. He noted the numerous acts committed by Iran and terror organizations of other nations as an example that Iran was an active participant in the war. He urged people to decide which side of the war they were on and to then engage in the ideology arena to speak out against islamic jihad and tactics used by such groups.
Congressman Gingrich has consistently argued against allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. In 2008, Congressman Gingrich assailed a National Intelligence Estimate claiming that Iran no longer had or was pursuing nuclear weapons as a political move meant to take the legs out from under the Bush administration. In December of 2010, Congressman Gingrich argued that action needed to be taken to stop Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. He stated that every day action wasn't taken, Iran got closer to achieving a nuclear weapon.
Third World War
On July 17, 2006 Congressman Gingrich released a statement through the Human Events website discussing the third world war.
A Third World War
by Newt Gingrich
07/17/2006Like you, I spent the past week viewing the events in the Middle East with growing concern. In the 13 weeks that I have been bringing you my thoughts in Winning the Future, I have shared with you directly many challenges facing us. But no challenge confronting America is greater than the one I am writing about today. And no challenge requires us to be more candid and more direct about what victory will require.
Save 35%
As I talked about yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press," I am now firmly convinced that the world confronts a situation that is frighteningly similar to a Third World War, one every bit as serious and dangerous as the two great conflicts of the 20th Century.
The recent attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel -- with the active political, financial and military support of Iran and Syria -- are just the latest acts in this war. It is a war that pits civilization and the rule of law against the dictatorships of Iran and Syria and the terrorist groups of Hezbollah and Hamas that they support. It is also a war that pits civilized nations against Islamic terrorist groups around the world, including, most significantly (but not exclusively), the al Qaeda network.
In the United States, we refer to this struggle as the "Global War on Terror". Yet, I believe this label fails to capture the nature and scale of the threat faced by civilization.
The nature of the threat -- with Iran at the epicenter -- is at its core ideological. The threat to the United States is an ideological wing of Islam that is irreconcilable to modern civilization as we know it throughout most of the world. The United States and her allies face a long war with this irreconcilable wing of Islam.
While I have addressed the nature of this threat before, I believe the deadly attacks that have recently been carried out across the globe and the plots of mass murder that have been uncovered recently in our own country and abroad reflect a scale of challenge much larger than we currently recognize. So much so that I think an analogy to the two world wars of the last century more accurately explains where we find ourselves today.
The Iran-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas Terrorist Alliance
It is necessary to connect the dots to understand the scale of the challenge we face. These are not isolated events: Whether operationally connected or not, these attackers and plotters are connected in their ultimate aim to destroy the values of freedom, security and religious liberty that sustain civilization in the modern age.
Here's a list of the attacks, provocative acts and uncovered plots that have occurred in just the past seven weeks:
- An Iran-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas terrorist alliance is waging war against Israel in both southern Lebanon and Gaza. Hezbollah has launched more than 1,000 rockets into northern Israel in the past few days alone.
- Seven bombings in Mumbai, India, killed more than 200 people.
- North Korea, which is in public contact with Iran, launched seven missiles, including an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the West coast of the continental United States, in deliberate contempt of repeated warnings from the American and Japanese governments and the United Nations Security Council.
- Seven Americans were seen on video tape in Miami pledging allegiance to al Qaeda.
- A plot to bomb New York City subways and tunnels was discovered.
- Eighteen Canadians, plotting terror, were arrested with twice the explosive force used in the Oklahoma City bombing and a plan to blow up the Canadian parliament.
- The British government reported that it has uncovered more than 20 "major conspiracies" by Islamic terrorists, and as many as 1,200 potential terrorists now live in the United Kingdom.
This is only a recent list. It is in addition to the deadly bombings we witness on an almost daily basis in Baghdad, and previous attacks in New York, Washington, London, Madrid, Bali, Beslan, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Sharm-el-Sheikh, New Delhi, Amman and many other cities.
Are We For Civilization or Appeasement?
Some actions are clarifying because they force people -- and nations -- to choose sides. The increasing number of attacks, provocations, and plots of this Third World War similarly force us to make a decision. We must have a national debate -- indeed, a worldwide debate -- between those of us who believe we're in a war to defend civilization (and therefore must defeat terrorists and their state sponsors) and those who are made uncomfortable by the price of defeating terrorists and their state sponsors.
This is a fundamental choice upon which will hinge our future liberties and possibly our very lives. New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin described the war like this:
"While it is often a war of loose or no affiliation, and sometimes just amateur copycats, the similar goals of destruction add up to a threat against modern society. ... Islamic fascists are the driving force, but anti-American hatred is a global membership card for any and all who have a grievance and a gun."
So which are we for? Defending civilization and America? Or making excuses for those who threaten us and burying our heads in the sand?
What Can We Do?
I think the answer is clear. The duty of civilized, law-abiding nations is to win this war. Anything less than victory sends the message that our terrorist enemies and their state sponsors have the time to develop the strength to do us incalculable harm. Anything less than victory threatens the very survival of the rule of law and freedom as we have known it.
Winning four arguments are essential to winning this Third World War. I urge each of you to take the time to make these points to your friends and neighbors who may not yet recognize the nature and scale of this war, or who are tempted by the dangerous allure of appeasement.
- It's Us Versus Them: The American people and free people everywhere must come to recognize that we are in a world war that pits civilization against terrorists and their state sponsors who wish to impose a new dark age -- with them in charge. Everything our leaders do must be judged by whether it helps or hurts us in defeating terrorists and their state sponsors.
- Connect the Dots, Then Connect Them Again: We must consistently emphasize that the deadly attacks and threats of destruction we see worldwide are connected.
The bombings in India relate to attacks on Israel. Iran's erecting a statue of the favorite hero (Simon Bolivar) of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez -- in a gesture of alliance -- is linked to the Chavez-Castro efforts to weaken America. Suicide bombings in Iraq are linked to efforts to kill thousands of innocent civilians in Canada and New York City.
And on and on it goes.- Stand and Deliver: We must take every possible opportunity to engage in arguments and efforts that educate people about the nature of the war and the enormous challenge it will be to defeat terrorists and their state sponsors who are committed to our destruction.
- Be Honest About the Challenges Ahead: Many things in this Third World War will be very hard. When there have been more than 800 suicide bombers in Iraq alone and several thousand over the last decade worldwide, there is a serious crisis of civilization. We must convince the American people and our allies across the world that fighting this fight is hard but necessary and unavoidable. Losing to the murderous terrorists and their state sponsors who threaten us would be far harder.
In his magnificent book about Abraham Lincoln, The Eloquent President, Ronald White writes that Lincoln proved that "words are actions" -- that people cannot be led until they are first persuaded. Lincoln is an example for our leaders, and for all of us who care about the survival of American civilization. Like him, we must be clear in our thoughts, candid in our words, and rock solid in our resolve. It is up to us first to prove that in this Third World War "words are actions." And then it is up to us to win.
The American Eleven
In September of 2006, Congressman Gingrich released an article from Human Events declaring eleven points that he would pursue. One of those eleven dealt with the threats of North Korea and Iran.
Focus on Iran and North Korea. The American people are very prepared to believe we face extraordinary threats from a nuclear North Korea and an Iranian regime actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Any actions in Iraq need to be recast in terms of their impact on Iran. A weak America in Iraq will be unable to stop Iran. Stopping Iran is potentially literally a matter of life and death. Congress should hold hearings on the scale of the Iranian and North Korean threat, the statements of their key leaders and the requirements for action to replace these dictatorships before they succeed in killing millions of Americans. The Santorum Iranian democracy bill should be forced out of the Senate in the context of these threats. Everything about Iraq should be debated within this larger and much more dangerous context.
WNYC Interview
In November of 2007, Congressman Gingrich was interviewed by WNYC radio. When asked about Iran, Congressman Gingrich stated that allowing Iran to pursue nuclear weapons should not be an option.
Response to NIE
In December of 2007, Congressman Gingrich issued an article for the Human Events website that was in response to a National Intelligence Estimate that found credible evidence that Iran had halted it's nuclear program in 2003.
Iran NIE: Bureaucratic Coup D'etat
by Newt Gingrich
12/11/2007*The following is an excerpt from Newt Gingrich's weekly Winning the Future newsletter:
A handful of highly partisan State Department bureaucrats wrote a document that is so professionally unworthy, so intellectually indefensible and so fundamentally misleading that it is damaging to our national security.
The NIE appears to be a deliberate attempt to undermine the policies of President Bush by members of his own government by suggesting that Iran no longer poses a serious threat to U.S. national security because we apparently have credible reports that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
As a matter of fact, if you read it carefully, you see that the NIE's first sentence and subsequent headline around the world -- "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Teheran halted its nuclear weapons program." -- is rendered meaningless in its intended importance by much of the rest of the report.
Take, for example, the second sentence of the report, which says, "We also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Teheran, at a minimum, is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."
As I explained to an audience at the Institute of World Politics last week, the NIE authors also acknowledge that Iran has a massive domestic program to enrich uranium, which is a key step in the production of fuel for a nuclear weapon and for a civilian nuclear power plant. But the Iranians have no civilian need for such uranium enrichment. The Russians can provide access to all the fuel Iran needs for its nuclear power plant. Nowhere does the NIE analyze the reasons Iran is enriching uranium, how quickly Iran could convert this enriched uranium for nuclear weapons purposes, and why Iran is defying binding United Nations resolutions that call for a halt of its uranium enrichment.
Then there is this additional sentence from the NIE that is cold comfort for those who want to believe Iran is no longer a threat: "We also assess with high confidence that, since fall 2003, Iran has been conducting research-and-development projects with commercial and conventional military applications -- some of which would also be of limited use for nuclear weapons."
And if the Iranians did indeed halt their formal nuclear weapons program in 2003, is it still halted today? Has it restarted? Is it a permanent halt? The NIE addresses this question: "We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether [Iran] is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely while it weighs its options, or whether it will or already has set specific deadlines or criteria that will prompt it to restart the program."
In non-bureaucratic language: We don't know.
Lastly, what about long-term Iranian political intentions? If in fact the formal Iranian nuclear weapons program was halted in 2003, does it represent a change in heart and a fundamental policy shift away from nuclear weapons or simply a smart, temporary tactical shift? The NIE also considered that question, and its response hasn't been focused on by those who are ready to declare Iran a peaceful nation:
"We assess with moderate confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult given the linkage many within the leadership probably see between nuclear weapons development and Iran's key national security and foreign policy objectives, and given Iran's considerable effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such weapons. In our judgment, only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons -- and such a decision is inherently reversible."
For a realistic estimation of the Iranian threat, read Michael Ledeen's The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction.
The NIE Is the Tip of the Iceberg: A North Korean-Syrian Nuclear Site?
The individuals who wrote the NIE so that it would generate the headline that Iran has halted its secret nuclear weapons program did a fundamental disservice to the American people. Their actions are a sign that the U.S. intelligence community is wildly out of control and in need of fundamental reform.
Sen. John Ensign (R.-Nev.) has called for a commission comprised of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats to investigate the accuracy of the NIE and whether politics play a role in how it was written. I support this idea.
But the NIE is just the tip of the iceberg.
Last summer, you may recall, the Israelis bombed a site in Syria. Today, there is a public rumor that the site was a North Korean-Syrian nuclear site. But the thing is nobody is talking about this. No one in the administration will tell the American people if this is true and, if so, what this means to our national security.
It is a fundamental disservice to us as Americans to have such potentially threatening activity going on and not to be told the truth about it. We need an intelligence community that we can trust to tell us the truth.
Or we need leadership that will insist on this minimal standard from its intelligence bureaucracy.
In either case, we need more than we're getting.
Dark Cloud Over Iran
In April of 2008, Congressman Gingrich released an article for the website Human Events. That article cited Iran's involvement in the Iraq war and General Petraus's upcoming testimony.
A Dark Cloud on the Horizon: The Continuing Threat of the Iranian Dictatorship
Despite the progress being made in Iraq, Iran remains a major source of violence, terrorism, and instability.
Speaking to reporters last week, Major General Rick Lynch, a U.S. Commander in Baghdad, described facing three enemies in Iraq: Sunni extremists, Shia extremists and Iranian influence.
Here's what Lynch told reporters:
Last night I attended a memorial service for one of my soldiers; he was killed by an explosively-formed penetrator. Tonight I will do the same thing. These Iranian munitions, placed in the hands of the Shi'a extremists, are causing devastating affects on Iraqi security forces, on the coalition forces, and your innocent Iraqi people. And that just has to stop.
As you watch General Petraeus testify, note the details that are coming out about Iranian involvement in Iraq. And remember that Iran is a danger, not just to our troops in Iraq, but to our way of life. Here's how I put it in my AEI speech: "As long as the current dictatorship runs Iran and works every day to create nuclear weapons and to sustain terrorists groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the professional state-sponsored terrorists of the Iranian Guard units, our civilization will not be safe."
Iran Must Not Go Nuclear
In December of 2010, Congressman Gingrich wrote an article for Politico and the American Enterprise Institute discussing the possibility of a nuclear Iran.
President Obama and Congress Must Stop Iran's Nuclear Program
By Newt Gingrich | Politico
Wednesday, May 19, 2010Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Obama administration has pursued a foreign policy that ranges from feckless to reckless, from pursuing fantasies like a global nuclear summit to acts of genuine irresponsibility, like diminishing longstanding relationships with allies like Poland, Israel and Britain.
But of all the national security imperatives facing the administration, none is more critical than preventing Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, from developing nuclear weapons. Now President Barack Obama's actions have actually made the situation more dangerous, not less so.
Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential campaign to negotiate with Iran without preconditions, a naive and utopian promise that has yielded predictably disappointing results.
- Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential campaign to negotiate with Iran without preconditions, a naive and utopian promise that has yielded predictably disappointing results.
- On taking office, as part of a diplomatic offensive, Obama videotaped a greeting to the Iranian people for Nowruz, the 12-day holiday marking the New Year in Iran. Tough talk about Iran's nuclear program would wait.
Months passed. In June, the Iranian regime rigged an electoral victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shot protesters in cold blood and arrested others, sentencing them to the Iranian gulag in show trials.
Obama was slow to condemn the violence, apparently still hoping for Iran to voluntarily relinquish its nuclear program--even as Tehran boasted about its uranium enrichment progress. Obama finally set a deadline of Dec. 31, 2009, for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis. The deadline has come and gone with no response from the United States.
The time for delay is over.
Despite sitting atop some of the world's largest proven oil reserves, Iran's Islamic revolutionary government lacks sufficient refinery capacity to turn that oil into the gasoline, diesel and other fuels it needs.
The House and Senate have overwhelmingly passed, with bipartisan support, sanctions bills to curtail shipments of gasoline and other refined petroleum products into Iran. This could force the regime to focus on long-ignored conventional energy problems instead of pursuing nuclear capabilities. The bills passed unanimously in the Senate, and with only 12 "no" votes in the House.
In a shocking act of negligence, the Obama White House has signaled to lawmakers privately it does not want the legislation to reach the president's desk, as the administration chases a false chimera of U.N. sanctions. So sanctions with teeth languish in a conference committee while Iran gets ever closer to possessing a nuclear weapon.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) should move these two bills out of committee and send them to Obama for his signature by Memorial Day--if not sooner.
Congressional action is only the first step. The administration should also sanction those companies already in violation of the Iran Sanctions Act, which has been on the books for almost 15 years. Penalizing one energy company would send a clear signal that Washington has a policy of zero tolerance when it comes to enabling the Iranian nuclear program.
Second, the Treasury Department should build on its designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a supporter of terrorist by designating major IRGC entities that are dominant players in the Iranian energy sector--sending shockwaves through Iran's energy partners that they are doing business with blacklisted U.S. entities.
Finally, the administration should provide the same kind of tangible, material and moral support to the Green Movement in Iran that President Ronald Reagan gave to the Solidarity movement in Soviet-dominated Poland during the Cold War.
Releasing restrictions on the transfer of communications technology to the Green Movement would give its leadership the vital access it needs to satellite phones, satellite subscriptions and secure computer networks to evade Iranian censors.
We've now learned that as recently as January, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent a memo to the president's national security team warning that the administration has no effective policy for dealing with Iran achieving nuclear capability--which many experts predict could take place within a year.
For the president to be so ill prepared for what nearly everyone agrees to be the greatest threat facing the region--and the world--is unacceptable.
If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, and Washington does nothing to stop them, the other nations in the Middle East will be presented with a very clear and very real threat--and will have gotten the message that the United States will do nothing to help.
Their reaction might well be to develop their own nuclear-weapons capabilities, thrusting the world's most dangerous region into a full-blown nuclear arms race.
Putting the crisis off can only make things worse. Washington's options dwindle as Iran gets closer to making its first bomb.
Let's be clear. Every day Pelosi and Reid fail to act, Iran takes another step closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Congress needs to pass a strong sanctions bill and send it to the president's desk before they adjourn for the Memorial Day recess.
CBS Foreign Policy Debate
On November 11, 2011 Speaker Gingrich participated in the CBS foreign policy debate. He was asked there about Iran and he notes his support for sanctions and anything else to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon.
Major Garrett: Mr. Speaker, is this the right way to look at this question, war or not war? Or do you see other options, diplomatically, or other non-war means that the United States has in its possession to deal with Iran that it has not employed?
Newt Gingrich: Well, let me start and say that both the answers you just got are superior to the current administration. And-- you know, there are a number of ways to be smart about-- Iran and relatively few ways to be dumb. And the administration skipped all the ways to be smart.
Major Garrett: Could you tell us the smart ways, Mr. Speaker?
Newt Gingrich: Sure. First of all, as maximum covert operations-- to block and disrupt the Iranian program-- in-- including-- taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable. Second, maximum-- maximum coordination with the Israelis-- in a way which allows them to maximize their impact in Iran. Third, absolute strategic program comparable to what President Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher did in the Soviet Union, of every possible aspect short of war of breaking the regime and bringing it down. And I agree entirely with Governor Romney, if in the end, despite all of those things-- the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon.
CNN National Security Debate
Congressman Gingrich participated in the national security debate on CNN on November 22, 2011. When asked about Iran, Speaker Gingrich reasserts his view that allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon is not accetable. He also supports sanctions on Iran's gas imports and sanctions to their banks.
BLITZER: The argument, Speaker Gingrich -- and I know you've studied this, and I want you to weigh in -- on the sanctioning of the Iranian Central Bank, because if you do that, for all practical purposes, it cuts off Iranian oil exports, 4 million barrels a day.
The Europeans get a lot of that oil. They think their economy, if the price of gasoline skyrocketed, which it would, would be disastrous. That's why the pressure is on the U.S. to not impose those sanctions. What say you?
GINGRICH: Well, I say you -- the question you just asked is perfect, because the fact is we ought to have a massive all-sources energy program in the United States designed to, once again, create a surplus of energy here, so we could say to the Europeans pretty cheerfully, that all the various sources of oil we have in the United States, we could literally replace the Iranian oil.
Now that's how we won World War II.
(APPLAUSE)
GINGRICH: So, I think you put your finger, Wolf, on the -- on the -- you know, we all get sucked into these tactical discussions. We need a strategy of defeating and replacing the current Iranian regime with minimum use of force. We need a strategy, as Rick Santorum was saying, of being honest about radical Islam and designing a strategy to defeat it wherever it happens to exist.
We need a strategy in central Asia that recognizes that, frankly, if you're Pashtun, you don't care whether you're in Pakistan or Afghanistan, because you have the same tribal relationships. So we need to be much more strategic and less tactical in our discussion.
But if we were serious, we could break the Iranian regime, I think, within a year, starting candidly with cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran, and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have.
BLITZER: But sanctions on the Iranian Central Bank now, is that a good idea or a bad idea?
GINGRICH: I think it's a good idea if you're serious about stopping them having nuclear -- I mean, I think replacing the regime before they get a nuclear weapon without a war beats replacing the regime with war, which beats allowing them to have a nuclear weapon. Those are your three choices.
...
BLITZER: I'm going to bring Governor Huntsman in, but very quickly, Mr. Speaker, would you, if you were president of the United States, bomb Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power?
GINGRICH: Only as a last recourse and only as a step towards replacing the regime. No bombing campaign which leaves the regime in charge is going to accomplish very much in the long run. You have to seriously talk about regime replacement, not just attacking them.
But I will also say -- this is, I guess, where I disagree with my good friend Ron Paul. If my choice was to collaborate with the Israelis on a conventional campaign or force them to use their nuclear weapons, it will be an extraordinarily dangerous world if out of a sense of being abandoned they went nuclear and used multiple nuclear weapons in Iran. That would be a future none of us would want to live through.
Sponsored and Cosponsored Legislation
This representative has not been identified as sponsoring or cosponsoring significant legislation related to this title.