Yale Marienhoff, in his March 20 response (“Letter ignores Iran’s statements about Israel”) to my March 12 letter, frets about Iranian threats regarding Israel. He needn’t.

In 1956, many Americans panicked after Khruschev’s “We will bury you” speech. They built and stocked fallout shelters, waiting for the nuclear attack that never came. The USSR, like Iran today, realized that it had nothing to gain and everything to lose by starting a nuclear war.

Similarly, the specter of Iran furnishing nuclear weapons to organizations such as Hamas or Hezbollah is a pipe dream. Fearing its own destruction, no nuclear power would ever give up control of such weapons. The Soviet Union didn’t give the Viet Cong nukes to use against us; Pakistan won’t give them to Lashkar-e-Taiba for use against India.

Marienhoff seems to ignore the blatant hypocrisy of those arguing for war. Israel, the only Mideast country to actually possess nuclear weapons, and the United States, with the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons (and the only country that has used them to kill people) aren’t exactly in the best moral position to lecture Iran.

If we are truly concerned about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, why not ban all nuclear weapons from the region? Will Israel give up its nukes and submit to inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency?

Calls for an attack on Iran are being led by irresponsible American politicians whose appetite for war knows no bounds, since neither they nor their families plan to join the fighting. If those calls are heeded, a lot of money will be wasted, and spiking oil prices will sabotage our economy. Worst of all, many Americans, Israelis and Iranians will die or be maimed in yet another needless war.

Already forgotten Iraq?

John R. Merrill

Augusta