Rick Santorum sounds alarm over Iranian ‘theocracy’

Rick Santorum loves to push back against those who call him a “warmonger,” but Sunday at the NBC News/Facebook Republican presidential debate in Concord. N.H., he showed exactly what has some voters concerned about his hard-line stance against Iran.

Moderator David Gregory noted that the United States has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear North Korea. “Why is it we cannot not live with a nuclear Iran?” he asked. “And if not, are you prepared to take the country to war to disarm that country?”

Iran, said Santorum “is a “theocracy that has deeply embedded beliefs that the afterlife is better than this life .… When your principal virtue is to die for Allah, then it’s not a deterrent to have a nuclear threat .… It is in fact an encouragement for them to use their nuclear weapon.”

Santorum did not address the question of whether he would take the country to war to prevent Iran from going nuclear.

“What about Pakistan?” said Gregory.

“They are not a theocracy and we are hopeful of maintaining a more secular state,” Santorum said. “But there is a serious threat and this administration has bungled it as badly as they can.”