Israel Can’t Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Program Because Of John Kasich’s Ego

By Chuck Warren

Talks with Iran are ongoing, but if they fail, the United States and Israel will need to coordinate a military plan to stop Iran from going nuclear. The plan that would emerge will be handicapped because of the ego and self-interest of one man: John Kasich, the retired Ohio politician.

If you’ve ever paid attention to national politics, you know by now that John Kasich has a special talent for making everything about himself. The best example is the video in which he endorsed Biden in 2020. The only people mentioned in the video were Abraham Lincoln and John Kasich—not Trump or Biden—and the video concluded with what a good American Kasich is for not voting Republican.

Kasich’s addiction to being the most important person in the world is a gift that keeps giving. Years after his greatest act of public service—retirement—his egocentrism is complicating Iran policy.

Kasich loved to boast about how he killed the B-2 program. B-2s are the most advanced bombers the United States has. They have a bunch of capabilities. The most important one is stealth, meaning that enemy air defenses cannot detect and shoot them down. They are practically invisible. They also carry a package of missiles and bombs, as well as an integrated network system for situational awareness, which enables them to attack air defense systems before bombing the target. Previously, bombers had to be accompanied by other aircraft to provide these functions. B-2s do them all at once. A B-2 is several aircraft in one.

In the 1980s, Kasich teamed up with a far-left Democrat from California—the first person since World War II to be elected to Congress while calling himself a socialist who believed that America was the bad guy in the world—to prevent the bomber’s production. He failed, but he didn’t give up. Finally, they succeeded in adding an amendment to a national defense bill that stopped their production in the 1990s. Today, we only have 21 of them.

This is a problem.

The next generation of bombers, the B-21, will not become operational for another few years. So if we enter a war with China before that, we are in a very bad position. Instead of using one single bomber to attack Chinese production sites, we will have to use several aircraft, risking losing our pilots, each time.

This is also a problem now with Iran. Iran’s nuclear sites are buried underground. There are two ways of attacking them. Ideally, we would destroy the entire program and call it a day. This requires dropping 30,000-pound MOP bombs, which only B-2s carry. Alternatively, Israel would have to do this, but they don’t have bombers that can carry MOPs. So they’ll have to destroy the sites’ entrances, which are on the ground, and the water and air ventilation systems, which are necessary for the program. But the problem is that the underground infrastructure will remain intact, and Iran can just rebuild access and resume its program.

If Israel decides to attack Iran, it will require some American involvement—at least, we will need to refuel their fighters in the air. With a B-2, Israel could have taken out the entire program without any American help. But of course, a single B-2 is 5% of our entire fleet, and we can’t afford to give it to someone else.

Israel doesn’t have B-2s because we would never sell one to them when we only have 21 ourselves. It’s not just Israel. Australia and Japan would love to have them too—and increasingly, Taiwan. All the countries threatened by China need them but can’t have them because Kasich needed to feel important.

His argument in the 1980s was that the bombers cost too much—and they did, they just were cheaper than losing the Cold War. But that cost would have been mitigated if the program had continued because we could be selling them today to our friends who need them, like Israel.

There were two other reasons that actually drove Kasich to end the program and jeopardize national security.

First, he was in favor of continuing the B-1 program. It was another bomber that the Pentagon decided to stop producing because it lacked certain capabilities and had failed some flight tests. But B-1 was produced in Ohio, and Kasich cared more about bringing money into his state than about what was good for national security.

The second reason is even worse. After he lost the fight, B-1 production stopped and was never going to restart—in Ohio or anywhere else. But his ego was bruised. He couldn’t let it go. He had to win that fight. And eventually he did, and I’m sure he felt very good about himself. He had made his point to himself that he was a powerful legislator and an important person. The only problem is that it came at the cost of our security and the security of our allies.

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.