Santorum favors force to stop Iran nuclear weapons program

By Shira Schoenberg, Globe Correspondent

NEW BOSTON, N.H. - The United States should be prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said today.

Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate and former member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was reacting to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency released this week, which said it had credible information that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency said it had “serious concerns” about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.

Speaking to around 50 voters at the Whipple Free Library, Santorum said if he were president, he would work closely with US allies with the understanding that “a country that is developing weapon of mass destruction who wants to use it to destroy another country has to be stopped in a preemptive strike.”

Santorum said he would support the pro-democracy movement in Iran and would support strikers who are trying to disrupt the Iranian economy. He would also work closely with Israel, the country Iran’s president has threatened to destroy, and would support covert actions against the Iranian nuclear program. “There was a virus that attacked their program. There are scientists who have had…accidental deaths, who are nuclear scientists working with Iran. I’d like to think the US had something to do with all of those things,” Santorum said.

Santorum warned that time is running out as Iran comes closer to developing a nuclear weapon. “Which leads us to one decision point, which we’ve seen from the press that Israel is in the process of making now, which is how do we stop them militarily because everything else has failed?” he said.

Santorum took the Obama and Bush administrations to task for not taking a hard enough line with Iran in the past, instead trying to appease them. He portrayed the threat of a nuclear Iran as an existential threat to Israel and a great danger to the United States. He said Iran is led by radical theologians willing to sacrifice the lives of their countrymen to harm Israel and the west.