FLASHBACK: Ron Paul Warns of ‘War Propaganda’ About Iran That Could Lead to U.S. Bombing Campaign, Hormuz Closure

“Ron Paul is manifestly insane.”

That statement was made on Twitter some fourteen and a half years ago by Zionist political pundit Ben Shapiro, who added: “As in previous debates, he is now gripping the pen as he would the neck of a [Jew].”

When Shapiro wrote those words, Paul was on stage in Sioux City, Iowa participating in a Republican presidential primary debate, which Shapiro was “live-tweeting.” Paul was reportedly closing in on the state’s “front-runner” Newt Gingrich at the time, and was days away from taking the lead. The date was December 15, 2011.

Shapiro’s post was resurfaced by political commentator An0maly earlier this month, who summarized it by saying that Shapiro had falsely accused Paul of “violent thoughts” for “holding a pen calmly and speaking against neocon foreign policy.”

(Note: “Joo” is a common way that Shapiro, who is Jewish, spells “Jew” when attempting to mock or criticize people he wishes to portray as “antisemitic.”)

We went back and watched part of the debate in question and matched up some of Shapiro’s other time-stamped tweets that night with what the candidates were saying on stage in order to figure out what was going on when he wrote the one about Paul’s alleged “insanity.”

It turns out that the topic was Iran (and the supposed nuclear threat that it poses), and that Paul was pushing back against the “war propaganda” surrounding this subject and arguing for diplomacy. He even referenced Israel’s nukes.

Watch:

Fox News’ Bret Baier started out the segment by asking Paul a question which he prefaced by stating that “many Middle East experts now say that Iran may be less than a year away from getting a nuclear weapon.”

“There’s a lot more saying they don’t have it,” Paul replied in part. “There’s no U.N. evidence of that happening. Clapper in our National Security department — he says there is no evidence.”

“You know what I really fear about what’s happening here?” Paul continued a moment later. “It’s another Iraq coming. It’s war propaganda going on… To me the greatest danger is that we’ll have a president that will overreact. That we will soon bomb Iran…”

“If we lived through the Cold War, which we did, with 30,000 missiles pointed at us, we ought to really sit back and think, and not jump the gun and believe that we are going to be attacked. That’s how we got into that useless war in Iraq and lost so much in Iraq…”

“Nuclear weapons are loaded [in that region]. Pakistan. India. Israel has 300 of them. We have our ships over there. We gotta get it in a proper context. We don’t need another war!…”

“The plans are on the book. All they talk about is, ‘When are we, the West, going to bomb Iran?’… why wouldn’t [Iran] try to send out some information there and say, ‘If you come and bomb us, we might close the Strait of Hormuz down’?…”

“[The president] I think is wisely backing off on the sanctions, because it’s going to be an economic calamity if you take all of the oil out of Europe…”

“Sanctions are an act of war, when you prevent goods and services from going into a country… We have 12,000 diplomats in our services. We ought to use a little bit of diplomacy once in a while…”

“Why were we flying a drone over Iran? Why do we have to bomb so many countries? Why do we have 900 bases, 130 countries? And we’re totally bankrupt! How are you going to rebuild the military when we have no money? How are we gonna take care of the people!?…”

“This wild goal to have another war in the name of ‘defense’ is the dangerous thing. The danger is really us overreacting… we need to only go to war with a declaration of war [rather] than just carelessly flouting it and starting these wars so often…”

Again, these “manifestly insane” statements by Paul were made almost 15 years ago now.