Wendy Sherman: “I want to clarify of the backgrounds that we face with Iran. First, Iran has a large amount of natural gas. This natural…”

“I want to clarify of the backgrounds that we face with Iran. First, Iran has a large amount of natural gas. This natural gas is flared. They do not need to generate electricity with nuclear plants. In fact, they can without pollution and at very low costs generate electricity using the natural gas that goes to waste under the present system. Second, we talk here of the Iranian government. That is very different from the Iranian people who among all the peoples of the Middle East are among those who are most pro-American and, frankly, who are not terribly interested in seeing their country acquire nuclear weapons. We should remember that weapons of mass destruction is a rather vague term that encompasses mustard gas on the one hand and nuclear weapons on the other, and we should not be confused. Since World War I, I doubt more than a dozen Americans have been killed using chemical or biological weapons. And while Saddam killed many using mustard gas, he did so against highly unsophisticated civilians in a third world situation. In contrast, nuclear weapons if used in an American city would kill hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people. We can not put these in the same category. And let us not think that a missile defense system will save us.”