Since returning to government service to take up his current position, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been a sober skeptic about the wisdom of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets—under President Obama as well as under President George W. Bush, and regardless of whether such strikes would be carried out by the United States or by Israel. To the extent that he has addressed the issue publicly, he has generally offered sound reasons for his skepticism—e.g., strikes would expose other U.S. positions in the region (such as military deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq) to additional and undesirable stress and would not “solve” the nuclear problem. As far as these arguments go, we agree with them.
