Pope Leo should heed Rubio’s warning on Iran

OPINION:

It must be the highlight for any Roman Catholic to meet the head of his church, so it must have been last week for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a practicing Catholic.

Mr. Rubio was on more than a spiritual journey. His mission was to persuade Pope Leo XIV of the rightness — even the righteousness — of the Trump administration’s actions to destroy Iran’s goal of acquiring a nuclear weapon and likely using it as a means of intimidation or possibly launching it as a weapon of war.

The pope is committed to resolving disputes through diplomacy. That course would be worth pursuing if Iran’s leaders and the U.S. had even remotely similar goals.

Just as Catholics and Protestants differ in their theology, Islamists differ with just about everybody else, whether they be religious or secular. Tehran’s goals also differ from those of just about everybody else, whether religious or secular.

Islamic extremists have repeatedly made clear that their goal is world domination. They openly proclaim that Allah has commanded them to do so. History and current events show they are serious.

Winston Churchill understood this early in his life. In his 1899 book, “The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan,” he acknowledged that “individual Moslems may show splendid qualities” but called Islam a “retrograde force” and wrote, “Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”

Either Pope Leo does not fully understand this, or he believes his interpretation of good (diplomacy) can triumph over evil. History and common sense are full of examples to the contrary.

The usual diplomatic niceties were conveyed after Mr. Rubio’s meeting with the pope, who seemed to get the visual upper hand when he gave Mr. Rubio an olive branch and Mr. Rubio gave him a crystal paperweight in the shape of a football.

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You cannot win at card games or sporting contests if one side plays by the rules and the other cheats. How does diplomacy dissuade the ayatollah regime from murdering its own people who want change?

When President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire” before a 1983 gathering of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, the secular world was stunned.

Reportedly, Reagan’s speechwriters tried numerous times to get him to remove the label from his speech. Each time, Reagan refused. He knew he was right. When asked by a reporter what his goal was in dealing with the Soviets, Reagan responded, “We win, they lose.”

That is the kind of clearheaded thinking President Trump is demonstrating against Iran.

When confronting evil, the only successful approach is to make the evil side fear the good side. For decades, the ayatollahs have lied, murdered and cheated on agreements directly and through their proxies. The only way to eliminate their threat and to stop them from killing more innocents is not through diplomacy but rather through strength and not quitting before the goal is reached.

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If the pope does not get that, then he invites more evil from the ayatollah regime.

• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (Humanix Books).