If We Lose Chicago

Newt Gingrich

Apr 09, 2026

What if in the next decade or two Iranian missiles armed with nuclear warheads destroy several American cities?

If we were to lose Chicago, Seattle, or New York, the scapegoating would begin.

“How could this have happened?” The television experts will ask.

“Who failed to do his or her job?” The congressional watchdogs will chant.

“Why weren’t we warned?” The liberal news media will whine.

Of course, the current mood is in exactly the opposite direction.

It is obliged to discount all threats from Iran, assume it would never threaten an American city and look for the supposedly moderate Iranian leaders with whom we could cut a reasonable deal based on good faith and a mutual willingness to stop the fighting.

Lots of analysts, commentators and so-called experts have explanations of why President Donald J. Trump should end the Iran War as rapidly as possible. Many of them even question whether taking steps to get Iran to give up its nuclear weapon and missile programs is necessary.

This is all part of the typical pattern among Western elites to find every possible excuse to avoid having to deal with determined ruthless adversaries.

I pose the opposite argument.

What if a nation which has been chanting “death to America” for 47 years actually means it? What if that nation — assisted by its allies, Communist China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia — was able to rebuild its missile and nuclear programs with remarkable speed?

If the Iranian dictatorship survives after all the threatening talk and weeks of bombing, it is going to consider itself the winner. Indeed, it is already doing so with the recent two-week ceasefire. Leading Iranian figures are describing how President Trump and Israel should pay reparations to Iran for its destroyed missile and nuclear programs — and accept its control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States faced another emerging threat in 1940. Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany had occupied much of Europe. The Nazis were focused on trying to starve Great Britain through submarine warfare cutting off supplies — including food.

There was real opposition to the United States getting too involved in a European war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was faced with the challenge of convincing Americans that the Nazi threat was real, so people would understand why we were responding aggressively.

Since the Nazis had been careful to focus on their European opponents and not America, Roosevelt needed an explanation that would make sense. In his Sept. 11, 1941 fireside chat, he said, “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.”

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We must remember that we are now confronting a potentially nuclear armed rattlesnake that can eventually reach American cities.

Most Americans have little understanding of how horrifying the threat of a nuclear attack is. John Hershey’s book “Hiroshima,” published in 1946, captured the excruciating pain for survivors. Philip Wylie’s remarkable 1961 novel “Tomorrow” captured the impact of a nuclear attack on two midwestern American cities. Both books are horrifying and should help people understand the scale of the threat a nuclear armed Iran would be.

None of these threats are new. In 1998, when I was Speaker of the House, President Bill Clinton agreed to establish the United States Commission on National Security chaired by Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman.

The commission engaged in the broadest ranging reassessment of American security policy since the National Security Act of 1947.

We warned that the greatest threat to America was a nuclear weapon going off in an American city. We were totally unprepared to deal with the scale of damage that would cause and the depth of human loss and suffering.

We still are vulnerable because the Department of Homeland Security (which bears no resemblance to the department we envisioned) has no design for surviving a nuclear war.

The next time someone opposes an all-out effort to defeat the Iranian dictatorship, ask them who they will blame in a decade if we have lost Chicago or another major city to the people who still chant “Death to America.”

I do not favor the war with Iran as an act of choice. I favor the defeat of the Iranian dictatorship, because I believe my grandchildren are in danger of losing their lives to a nuclear armed, fanatical theocratic regime. And I believe the threat will get worse every year it exists.