Daniel Davis Thinks Iran is Not a Threat to the United States

It is good thing that Daniel Davis is not the Deputy Director of Intelligence for Mission Integration, as he was reportedly about to get the job when suddenly the whole thing was called off: “Anti-Israel commentator tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence,” by Marc Rod, Jewish Insider, March 12, 2025:

“Iran is not a threat to the United States,” Davis said. “The only way that Iran can be a real problem for the U.S. is if we get stupider and push them beyond a point to where they feel like their only hope of self-defense from being the next victim of a regime change war …  is to get a nuclear weapon.”

“Iran is not a threat to the United States”? Iran is right now the greatest threat in the Middle East to American interests. It hopes to be able, with nuclear weapons, to destroy America’s closest ally, Israel, and to force Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Sunni Arab states that are American allies, to bend to its will. Before October 7, 2023, Iran had been trying to build a “Shi’a crescent,” extending from the Houthis in Yemen, to the Shia’ militias in Iraq, to Alawite-controlled Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Now Israel has singlehandedly destroyed the those plans. The Houthis are being held in check by Israeli and American airstrikes. The Shi’a militias in Iraq have been unable to mount a successful missile campaign against Israel and American bases in the Middle East. Assad’s Alawites — the Alawites are a branch of Shi’a Islam — have been defeated in Syria, and the country has now been taken over by Sunni jihadists who have been massacring Alawite civilians. Iran has protested bitterly, but there is nothing it can do to rescue the Alawites of Latakia. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been crushed by the IDF and forced to accept a ceasefire that requires it to withdraw all of its men and weapons from the south, to north of the Litani River. And this time, the Israelis are enforcing those conditions by bombing Hezbollah outposts, and hideouts for weapons, that were supposed to have been moved. There will be no repetition of what happened with UNSC Resolution 1701, which Hezbollah officially adhered to but, in the end, refused to move out of southern Lebanon as that resolution required.

He claimed that U.S. and Israeli policy “continues to shove them headlong into a direction where the only thing they can do to defend themselves is to have a nuclear weapon. If we want to prevent that outcome, all we have to do is stop shoving them in that direction. Give them any reason at all to think they don’t have to fear a regime-change operation from us.”…

Davis absurdly claims that Iran is being “shoved” by America and Israel into developing nuclear weapons. Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons as a response to any threat from either America and Israel; it is doing so in order to become the dominant power in the Middle East, to be able to destroy Israel, and to make Shia Iran, despite the Shi’a constituting only 15% of the world’s Muslims, the leader of the Muslim world.

Davis ignores the blood-curdling threats that are constantly made by Iran’s Supreme Leader and other high officials, including the commander of the IRGC, against both America and Israel. He ignores Iran’s role in terrorism against Israelis, and Jewish targets too, worldwide, as with the bombings of the Israeli Embassy, and of a Jewish center, both in Buenos Aires. No one “shoved Iran” into doing these things. Iran is the aggressor, not the victim of aggression.

He appeared to be particularly angered by, and posted repeatedly about, the Israeli attack on an Iranian facility in Syria in 2024, killing members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He also criticized Israel’s alleged assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Davis argued that the Iranian regime’s subsequent missile attack on Israel in April 2024 cannot “b[e] described as ‘unjustified,’” and suggested that the U.S. should not come to Israel’s aid if war broke out with Iran.

“It was reckless and put the US at risk,” Davis said. “We dare not get drawn into a war of Israel’s choice [with] Iran. That’s their sovereign decision to make, but it is not America’s to wage for them.”

Actually, it is Israel that has been doing the heavy lifting for itself and for America, not the other way round. Israel is responsible for slowing down Iran’s nuclear program by introducing the computer worm Stuxnet into Iranian computers used to enrich uranium, causing them to whirl so fast they destroyed themselves. It was the Mossad that managed to kill, seriatim, five of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. It was again the Mossad that managed to locate and bring back to Israel Iran’s complete nuclear archive. It was Israel that destroyed the secret nuclear facility at Parchin. America, the “Great Satan” (think of the seizure of America’s embassy and its personnel taken hostage, and the endless mass demonstrations in Iran against the Great Satan) owes a great debt to Israel for the way it has managed to slow down Iran’s nuclear program.