“If there was a singular exception to all the petty posturing and vapid mini-dramas of the debates leading up to the Iowa and New Hampshire ballots, it was surely Joe Biden’s response, in Philadelphia, to a question posed by Tim Russert about the Iranian nuclear program. “Would you pledge to the American people that Iran would not build a nuclear bomb on your watch?” Russert asked the assembled Democratic contenders. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards played the old survival game of running out the clock, and then came Biden. “We talk about this in isolation,” Biden said. “The fact of the matter is the Iranians may get 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. But the Pakistanis have hundreds, thousands of kilograms of highly enriched uranium.” Given that Pakistan already has missiles with nuclear warheads, capable of reaching India and Israel, Biden argued, it would be a “bad bargain” if an attack on Iran caused the government of Pakistan to fall. “What is the greatest threat to the United States of America: 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in Tehran or an out-of-control Pakistan?” he asked. “It’s not close.”
