News Item:
Moscow — Russia made clear Saturday that it opposes a Western push for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Russia spoke out against a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Tehran at a meeting of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany in Washington on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said.
Russia stressed the need to draw Tehran into “constructive dialogue,” the ministry statement said. “In this context we spoke out against the development at this time of new measures along U.N. Security Council lines.” — IHT (AP)
The ‘sanctions option’ is apparently not an option. Only military action can stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. It seems to me that the opinion of the world’s leaders — except in Israel, for obvious reasons — is that a way will have to be found to get used to a nuclear Iran.
There are rumors that the US will step in at some point. Although it is not impossible, I doubt it. It is certainly in our national interest to not have a nuclear Iran, but the political and economic consequences of an attack now would be great, and the forces in Washington which seem to have the upper hand in our foreign policy today lean in the direction of making accommodations rather than confrontation. This was the message of the National Intelligence Estimate (see: “The significance of the NIE“) released last December.
Caroline Glick thinks that, from an Israeli point of view, time is short.
Iran is just a heartbeat away from the A-bomb. Last Friday the Daily Telegraph reported Teheran has surreptitiously removed a sufficient amount of uranium from its nuclear production facility in Isfahan to produce six nuclear bombs. Given Iran’s already acknowledged uranium enrichment capabilities, the Telegraph’s report indicates that the Islamic Republic is now in the late stages of assembling nuclear bombs.
It would be a simple matter for Iran to assemble those bombs without anyone noticing. US spy satellites recently discovered what the US believes are covert nuclear facilities in Iran. The mullocracy has not disclosed these sites to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites.
As to the IAEA, this week it presented its latest report on Teheran’s nuclear program to its board members in Vienna. The IAEA’s report claimed that Iran has taken steps to enable its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads. With their range of 1,300 kilometers, Shihab-3 missiles are capable of reaching Israel and other countries throughout the region.
It’s unfortunate that the world has chosen to believe that these developments can be lived with. Today a large part of the world’s oil supplies is in the hands of the reactionary Arab leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. This is bad enough, but these leaders are not trying to export a radical Islamic fundamentalist revolution which directly confronts the West, as Iran is.
Iran has already made Syria into a satellite and is fast gaining control of Lebanon by means of Hezbollah. Iran has even gone so far as to make an alliance of convenience with the Sunni Hamas organization, which will soon dominate the Palestinian movement.
A nuclear Iran will control the region, from the gulf states through Iraq, even as far as Egypt. Iranian influence will determine policy even in those states which do not become satellites. The US will no longer be a player in the Middle East. It may be that some in the State Department are already beginning to plan for this state of affairs, planning to contract US influence around the world the way Britain did in the years following WWII.
If they think this adjustment can be made comfortably for Americans, they are wrong. Iran will have the ability to deliver huge shocks to the already tottering economies of the US and Western Europe at will. We will all be, in effect, Iranian hostages.
Of course, Israel will be long gone in this scenario, unable to survive in an environment even more toxic than that of today, with help from the US even less likely.
It may be that the only way to prevent this will be for Israel, out of existential necessity, to take the action required to at least delay the Iranian nuclear capability long enough for the US to regain its footing. Then, in the best case, our leaders will understand what is at stake and do whatever is necessary on a long term basis to keep the bomb out of the hands of the Islamic revolutionaries of Iran.
It’s ironic to think that Israel might be instrumental in saving the US, rather than the other way around.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran, Nuclear weapons
I believe the situation is worse than is being reported in the media, even the Israeli media. This is because no one knows what Iran’s hidden work is. And they have had a long time to do this work. And no one has really inspected the whole of their vast territory.
I also believe the situation has worsened in terms of stopping Iran. One reason for this is that the Bush Administration simply has not kept to its committment to prevent Iran from going nuclear. All the diplomatic and sanctions dance has hurt Iran economically to a degree. But Iran has the petro-revenue boon to its favor.
Israel now has a no- government preoccupied with a phony peace- process.
It is also really a question whether a strike against Iran would not be counter- productive and even disastrous. I can’t begin to answer this. But I also do not see any real Israeli thought which addresses the complexities involved here.
As the U.S. reels economically and shifts the great burden of attention to the domestic front, Ahmadinejad and Co. are getting away with it.
Awful, but true.