From AFP:

Israel has “eight days” to launch a military strike against Iran’s Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said.

Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia’s help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant’s core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians…

The longer the world waits to genuinely confront Iran’s nuclear program, the narrower the options become while any action becomes increasingly dangerous. The time really is now – to strike now, before Iran has any functioning nuclear facilities. If we wait – if the world waits – then we’ll one day be confronted with a nuclear-armed Iran, with all that means in terms of terrorist and other threats.

Is the world listening? We’ll soon find out.

From Pajamas Media:

…On July 26, Reuters reported that only three cargoes of gasoline had arrived for the month — coming from Turkey and China — and a fourth was expected to arrive soon from Venezuela. Between 11 and 13 cargoes of gasoline normally arrive during this time of year, so this is a major drop.

Security forces have been deployed to major gas stations to prevent them from becoming scenes of discontent. On July 23, there were clashes in Tehran when those waiting in a long line at Roosevelt Gas Station greeted the security forces by shouting “Death to dictatorship.”…

The corrupt regime in Tehran is suffering the normal fate of such things – increasing inability to provide the basic needs of the people. Some last longer than others, but all regimes which are not at least to some extent free eventually have this problem. And this problem for Iran presents us with our best opportunity in at least a decade to bring the Iranian regime to heel – and perhaps even engineer its destruction.

This is the pressure point for Iran – they must import most of their gasoline. Plans have been set afoot by the Iranian regime to end this vulnerability (which plans may or may not work – corrupt regimes also have a problem in getting things done even in emergency situations), but for right now and for at least many months, we can exert huge pressure on the Iranian regime without having to engage in direct, military confrontation. We can hold up all gasoline shipments to Iran – we control the seas, absolutely – and no gas, no ability of the regime to continue suppressing the Iranian people.

We can force them to give up their nuclear program in return for allowing gasoline to arrive. We can force them to cease supporting the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. We can pretty much make the leadership of Iran dance to our tune – but only if we act swiftly and firmly.

And I’m afraid that “swift and firm” just doesn’t exist in our government right now – we could be blowing a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

So says this story:

As unconfirmed reports of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities pick up steam in the Middle Eastern media, a US-based strategic intelligence company has released a chart showing US naval carriers massing near Iranian waters.

The chart, published by Stratfor and obtained by the Zero Hedge financial blog, shows that over the last few weeks a naval carrier — the USS Harry S Truman — has been positioned in the north Indian Ocean, not far from the Strait of Hormuz, which leads into the Persian Gulf. The carrier joins the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was already located in the area. The chart is dated June 23, 2010…

I’m not so sure about this – Obama has proven so incredibly weak about Iran that I find it hard to believe he’s suddenly found the back bone to act. On the other hand, a successful military strike against Iran could repair some of his public image, thus helping him and his Democrats heading in to the fall (hate to think he’s use a strike for such political purposes…but we have precedent in the form of Clinton’s egregiously deflective military action in 1998 at the time of th Lewinsky/impeachment scandal).

An alternate view is that Obama has actually stationed assets in the area to discourage Israeli action – you know, make it look like we’re going to act so the IDF stands down, and then do nothing while Iran feverishly completes its first nuclear weapon.

Finally, I think that an outright military offensive, unless we’re convinced that Iran is literal days or weeks from an operational weapon (and “operational” doesn’t mean just having one – but having one, plus the swift ability to make more coupled with a proven delivery system) is not the way to go. If we’ve got any time, at all, we should first rather quietly impose a blockade against gasoline shipments to Iran – Iran imports a very large percentage of its gasoline. If that doesn’t get their attention, then we go for a full blockade, destruction of Iran’s limited refining capacity and only as a last resort bomb the known and suspected nuclear sites.

We’ll have to see how this comes out.

The news:

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert…

This is impossible to confirm, but it makes sense – no nation in the middle east wants a nuclear-armed Iran.

To be sure, if Israel were to attack Iran’s nuclear sites (or if we were to do so) the whole Moslem would would be free with condemnations…but also with quiet sighs of relief. Its good to keep in mind that there is a great deal of falsity in the middle eastern stew. Positions have been taken up which are stupid and/or laughably false – but once taken up it is felt they can’t be set down. Officially, the whole Moslem world has taken up hatred of Israel as a matter of policy – but in reality, many Moslem nations have the same interests as Israel…in other words, if “hate Israel” wasn’t something now carved in to Moslem stone, Israel and Saudi Arabia would long since have had a military alliance for mutual defense.

But such is not to be – reality is not allowed to be noted in public. And so we might well see Saudi Arabia temporarily turning off its air defense system to allow Israeli jets to fly alone on a mission vital to Saudi Arabia’s national security and which, indeed, the Saudi air force (equipped much as the Israeli air force is) could render great service in the mutually desired goal of a non-nuclear Iran.

Strange world. Back a few years ago, President Bush tried telling some truth about the whole mess over there – most notably when he broke with Arafat – but it wasn’t pressed forward given the number of other issues which came up. Obama has fallen all the way back to 1979 and is counting on the absurdity of a “peace process” to carry the day. Some day, hopefully, we will get a President who will just tell the whole truth and refuse to allow the other players to maintain their lies…a bit of truth would unravel the middle eastern knot pretty quickly, if someone would just have the courage to really try it.

Because hitting our friends is easier – and safer – than confronting our enemies:

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council said they support a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, according to a unanimous statement circulated during a conference aimed at strengthening nonproliferation.

Without mentioning Israel by name, the group voiced support for the “full implementation” of a 1995 resolution intended to free the Middle East from nuclear arms. “We are committed to a full implemented of the 1995 NPT resolution on the Middle East and we support all ongoing efforts to this end,” the statement read. “We are ready to consider all relevant proposals in the course of the Review Conference in order to come to an agreed decision aimed at taking concrete steps in this direction.”

Neville Chamberlain had this problem, too. When confronted with the choice of either restraining an insane dictator or helping the dictator out, the decision always came out in a “help the dictator” manner. Fighting evil is hard and risky – conniving at it is easy and bears no apparent risk.

But as Churchill warned Chamberlain and would warn Obama, if he could, this is just feeding the crocodile and hoping he eats you last. If we press Israeli nuclear disarmament as part of a move to convince Iran to not build nukes, all we’ll do is lend legitimacy to Iran’s government, demoralize the Israelis, encourage the Islamo-fascists and allow time for Iran’s nuclear program to bear fruit.

Nuclear weapons are the only way Israel can assure itself of survival. It is because the Moslem world knows that an all-out attack on Israel is suicidal that we haven’t had a major Moslem effort to wipe Israel out since 1973. Without those weapons, then it would become just a matter of attrition and Israel would eventually be crushed – the Moslem world could afford to exchange 10 lives for 1, they so vastly outnumber the Israelis. Nuclear weapons redress the balance.

We don’t need a nuclear-free Middle East – in fact, there would be a million nuclear weapons in the Middle East with no risk at all if the Moslem world becomes free and under democratic governance. Weapons are never the problem – who has them, is. Israelis holding nuclear weapons is a good thing because they are free people – Iranian mullahs holding them is a bad thing because they are insane tyrants.

Obama and Co can’t wrap their minds around this – mostly because liberals have no understanding of the way things work. Israel will find itself under increasing pressure from the United States while our failure to act decisively increasingly risks war between Israel and Iran. Its a bad situation, and we’re making it worse.

Just gets weaker all the time:

President Barack Obama’s national security advisers are considering a broad range of options to curb Iran’s nuclear program…

…In his statement, Gates said: “The memo was not intended as a ‘wake up call’ or received as such by the president’s national security team. Rather, it presented a number of questions and proposals intended to contribute to an orderly and timely decision-making process.”

Mullen said Gates was leading policy deliberations within the administration that have had “great focus for years, not months.”

“This is as complex a problem as there is in our country and we have expended extraordinary amounts of time and effort to figure that out, to try to get that right,” Mullen said.

They’re acting as if they’ve got all the time in the world – they are dithering over plans and proposals which may take months to even decide on. By the time we make up our mind on what to do, Iran may already have deployed nuclear weapons.

Patience is a virtue in foreign affairs only when you are awaiting the outcome of a policy decided upon. President Bush, for instance, was very patient regarding Iraq and this was ultimately rewarded with victory. But he wasn’t patient in making up his mind – and, indeed, in such things rapid decision-making is crucial to success. Delay means that whatever policy you decide upon might not reflect reality at the time of implementation.

Choose: do we want Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, or do we wish to prevent this?

Choose: if we wish to prevent this, do we go with talking, sanctions or armed action?

Pick one, and then stick with it. Even if we pick wrong, its better than not picking, at all. Quite honestly, we’d be better off saying we’re ok with an Iranian nuke and then make defense arrangements with Iran’s neighbors than making an asinine announcement that we’re still thinking things over. The Iranian leadership isn’t thinking things over – they’ve already decided and are now patiently waiting us out, figuring that even if we ever screw ourselves up to action, it will be too late.

My views are known – blockade of Iran’s gasoline imports followed by selected air strikes on nuclear and other defense targets if blockade doesn’t bring the Iranians to the negotiating table. Maybe I’m wrong but delay in decision is worse than being wrong.

Just got considerably stronger:

TALIBAN commanders have revealed that hundreds of insurgents have been trained in Iran to kill Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The commanders said they had learnt to mount complex ambushes and lay improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have been responsible for most of the deaths of British troops in Helmand province.

The accounts of two commanders, in interviews with The Sunday Times, are the first descriptions of training of the Taliban in Iran.

According to the commanders, Iranian officials paid them to attend three-month courses during the winter.

It is time for Obama to stop his asinine, counter-productive policy of engagement and resort to the firmest measures possible. The Iranian government is, once again, waging unjust, aggressive warfare against us and our allies. We are fully justified in taking whatever measures we deem necessary to compel Iranian compliance with our wishes.

Given that our primary wish, at the moment, would be a cessation of terrorist training and nuclear development, the best course of action would be blockade of gasoline imports/oil exports and selective bombing of Iranian military and nuclear targets if the blockade doesn’t force Iran to capitulate.

We must press the issue, even at the risk of a general war with Iran – they must not, under their current government, obtain nuclear weapons. And now we’ve got all the justification we need.

Which is news to the IAEA, but not to everyone with any sense at all:

A draft report from the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that Iran may currently be working on secret nuclear warhead. This is the strongest language the IAEA has yet used to describe Iran’s nuclear weapons program:

“The information available to the agency is extensive, … broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved,” the report said.

“Altogether this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Give the fact that Iran has no need to have nuclear power, at all, the only possible reason for it is weapons. And if you’re going to build nukes, you need a way to deliver them to the target. Other than smuggling a bomb, a missile or a bomber is the only way.

And so…

Just re-stating the obvious:

Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has directed enrichment of a portion of that country’s stockpile of uranium to 20 percent. Experts regard this as a significant step forward for Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The reaction of Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems significant:

At a news conference with French Defense Minister Herve Morin, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised President Barack Obama’s attempts to engage the Islamic Republic diplomatically and chided Tehran for not reciprocating.

“No U.S. president has reached out more sincerely, and frankly taken more political risk, in an effort to try to create an opening for engagement for Iran,” he said. “All these initiatives have been rejected.”

So Gates was, evidently, praising Obama for pursuing a policy that has been, by the Secretary’s own admission, a complete failure.

One has to feel sorry for Gates having to carry on with such levels of incompetence as we see in the Obama Administration. He’s doing the best he can and I’m grateful he’s there as at least it means we’ve got someone who will look after the troops. But one Gates cannot carry an entire Obama Administration – and while he’s loyal to his boss, it clear that our policy towards Iran has been a failure.

It is time to re-assess our goals and means of attaining them.

Are we really going to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? If so, then engagement and UN sanctions have to be set aside in favor of much stronger action – blockade backed by a threat of aerial bombardment of power, oil and nuclear sites.

Are we going to live with an Iranian nuclear force? If so, then we’d better start working out theater ballistic missile defense systems with Iraq, the Gulf States and others who will be under the Iranian gun. And then we’d better be prepared for a decades-long stand off punctuated by various flare ups of violence – and, of course, the prospect that the lunatics in Tehran will actually launch a nuclear war.

The one thing we can’t do is continue on as we are – Obama’s policy, as all liberal policies for dealing with rogue regimes, has been an utter failure. A failure, by the way, which everyone with any sense at all predicted. There never was a question that Iran’s government would respond to anything other than a mortal threat to its existence. Everyone knew this and knows this – except, of course, for President Obama and his Administration.

Time to start learning fast, Mr. President.

Seems our liberals in the Obama Administration have no clue about the current state of the world:

U.S. and Russian negotiators have reached an “agreement in principle” on a successor to the decades-old START treaty that expired last year, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The deal would reduce the number of actively-deployed nuclear warheads from 2,200 to between 1,500 and 1,675, and the number of possible delivery vehicles — from missiles to submarines and bombers — would fall to between 700 and 800 per side.

“There may be finessing and fine-tuning, but the issues, from our perspective, are all addressed,” said Rose Gottemoeller, the Obama administration’s lead negotiator on the treaty.

The basic structure of the deal was reportedly approved last week during a phone conversation between President Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. The final drafting could take two months, officials said.

Why are we even doing this? START had its place in history – as a means of dealing with the old USSR and the over large stockpile of nuclear weapons we had built to confront that dead entity. Now things are different, and entering in to nuclear weapons agreements with Russia is as absurd as reviving the naval limitations treaty between the US, UK and Japan from the 1920’s. Why are liberals this obtuse?

What we need to be doing, now, is building (and testing) a new generation of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles to confront the rising challenge of China – and the prospect of a series of Third World dictatorships obtaining nuclear arsenals. Our efforts should be geared towards the means of having a first-strike capability against such nuclear forces coupled with the ability to defend ourselves against any response. But here we are, negotiating treaties with Russia as if its still 1986!

As I noted in Developing a New American Foreign Policy, it is time for us to discard the failed foreign policy of the past and build a policy which actually serves American interests. Writing up pointless agreements with Russia about nuclear weapons is stupid, foolhardy – in short, just what we could expect from an Administration stocked with liberals.

Of course, it was an idiotic premise to think they ever had:

U.S. intelligence agencies now suspect that Iran never halted work on its nuclear arms program in 2003, as stated in a national intelligence estimate made public three years ago, U.S. officials said.

Differences among analysts now focus on whether the country’s supreme leader has given or will soon give orders for full-scale production of nuclear weapons.

The new consensus emerging among analysts in the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community on Iran’s nuclear arms program is expected to be the highlight of a classified national intelligence estimate nearing completion that will replace the estimate issued in 2007.

It was clear that the 2007 report was put together by liberal moles in the intelligence community who wanted to undermine President Bush – it was laughable to think that the Mullahs would ever give up their dream of nuclear weapons. To the mullahs, nukes are the way to ensure that no matter how badly they provoke us, we’ll never attack for fear of a nuclear exchange. And if you think it over carefully, for the Mullahs basic geopolitical strategy requires nuclear weapons – that they are insane and shouldn’t do it doesn’t matter. You have to think of it from the lunatic’s point of view.

The problem is that now we’ve got a President who has already shown himself unwilling to offend our enemies. The plain fact of the matter is that only by taking a calculated risk of war can we prevent an Iranian nuclear force from becoming a reality – and while I don’t think actual war would eventuate, it is something which may happen, and thus we need a President who can grimly look that fact in the face, and still do the right thing. Obama doesn’t impress me as a man who can do this.

And that means that Israel, if it wishes to survive, will have to strike…could be a very nasty couple years coming up.

We told you so, liberals:

Iran angrily refused Sunday to comply with a demand by the United Nations nuclear agency to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and escalated the confrontation by declaring it would construct 10 more such plants.

The response to the demand came as Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his cabinet would also order a study of what it would take for Iran to further enrich its existing stockpile of nuclear fuel for use in a medical reactor — rather than rely on Russia or another nation, as agreed to in an earlier tentative deal.

Cabals of corrupt lunatics are not amenable to logic and appeals to human decency. It wasn’t a guess that Iran’s government would take President Obama’s “engagement” and spit in his face; the only thing to guess was just how they would do it. Here’s how.

What you liberals fail to understand – quite amazingly as its common knowledge – is that when you want to “engage Iran”, you’re not engaging Iran. If we could get together with legitimate representatives of the Iranian people, we’d make great progress…but, then again, if the Iranian people had legitimate representatives, there would be no big issues to deal with (you’ll note that we don’t have a lot of war-threatening confrontations with Canada).

The problem is that there are no legitimate representatives of the Iranian people to deal with – we’re dealing with wicked men who do nasty things because they delight in being evil (and they know its evil – we are judged as we judge…and as the kooks running Iran don’t want an American to strap on a bomb and blow up their families in Tehran and as they don’t want America threatening to “wipe Iran off the map”; they know full well they shouldn’t be facilitating these things, and they do it any way).

Until we steel ourselves to the prospect (not the inevitability – the prospect) of war with Iran and take actions which use American power to force Iran to the negotiating table, this problem will just get worse. One day, perhaps soon, Iran will have built nuclear weapons unless we act to prevent them…and “act to prevent them” does not mean “engage them”. It means “confront them” and risk war in order to thwart their wicked designs. More than likely, it won’t come to war – but if we don’t have the threat of it at back of all we do with Iran, nothing we do will work.

I think we’ve all pretty much written off Obama’s asinine efforts to prevent Iranian nukes:

The West is “disappointed” over Iran’s failure to respond positively to a UN-brokered nuclear deal, diplomats said in a statement Friday following a meeting of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany. However, no new sanctions were discussed during the meeting, according to an EU source.

“We urge Iran to reconsider the opportunity offered by this agreement … and to engage seriously with us in dialogue and negotiations,” the statement said, noting that Teheran had not responded positively to the proposal of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Why should Iran re-consider? They are getting everything they want and there isn’t the slightest threat of action should Iran build and deploy nuclear weapons. Only Israel shows any willingness to fight Iran – and Israel is under intense US pressure to back down and back off.

So, Iran will get its nukes and become largely invulnerable to US pressure – and thus free to sponsor a new and stronger wave of terrorists attacks against Israel, the US and our other allies. With, of course, the continuing possibility that the lunatics in Tehran will launch a nuclear attack on Israel in a fit of messianic Islam-fascism.

Glad we got a cool, internationalist liberal in charge – imagine how much worse it would be if that cowboy Bush were still in office…

Excellent article in the WSJ about Israel’s increasing acceptance of the need for some sort of decisive action against Iran. Reading it, I got this question in my head: would Israel use nuclear weapons in a first strike?

Keep in mind that in 1967, Israel struck first at those who were gathering to strike Israel. It was a defensive war, but it opened with an Israeli offensive. And it was good that Israel took the step – the enemy wasn’t ready, got severely knocked off balance and the resultant Israeli land captures provided the tactical cushion Israel needed when the enemy tried again in 1973. The trouble is that with Iran, there is not much that conventional Israeli forces can do.

To be sure, the IDF can strike some mighty hard blows at both Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s ability to hit Israel. But it can’t eliminate the threat, not hit hard enough to convince the Iranian leadership to give up the quest for Israel’s destruction. But the stakes are just as high as they were in 1967 – what is gathering is an existential threat to Israel’s existence. What is gathering is the threat of a second Holocaust.

Two or three nuclear weapons exploded over Israel at the right altitude would pretty much destroy the whole nation (its a very tiny place) and leave the survivors defenseless against Islamist incursions from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. And don’t think that Israel can just settle down to a mini-Cold War of Mutually Assured Destruction…the leaders of Iran are not rational beings as the leaders of the old USSR were. We could rely upon the Soviets to want to survive – Israel can rely on no such thing from the Iranian leadership.

It could be decided that the only way to be sure is by the nuclear destruction of not just the nuke sites, but of Tehran and Qum as well – taking out the civil, religious and military leadership of Iran at a blow, while also destroying the nuclear program which is the ultimate threat.

Impossible? If our nation’s life was faced with utter destruction at the hands of an irrational, hate-filled enemy and our only means were nuclear, what would you do?

Round and round we go with Carter II’s foreign policy:

Frustrated by Iran’s continued defiance of demands to come clean on its nuclear program, the Obama administration is leaning toward imposing new sanctions, even if it must act alone.

Administration officials acknowledged growing concern that there may not be international consensus to expand the existing U.N. sanctions, despite Tehran’s apparent rejection of a confidence-building measure proposed by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog in hopes of making progress on the nuclear issue.

To that end, the administration is quietly supporting legislation in Congress that would give President Barack Obama a broad new array of authority to target Iran’s energy sector by penalizing foreign firms that sell and ship refined petroleum products to Iran. The regime is heavily dependent on gasoline, kerosene and propane imports.

Uh, Barry, old buddy – you don’t need to dither around waiting for Congress…you can just tell the Iranians that if they don’t cave by, say, November 10th, we’ll send the US Navy to intercept all gasoline tankers headed towards Iran. Trust me on this one: Iran will at least sit down for some serious discussions.

Now, to be sure, they will try to roll you – they’ve taken your measure and see you as a weak man. Threatening blockade will take them off guard, but they’ll also be thinking that they can get you to back down once they throw some sweet words your way. That is why your words will have to be backed up with major ship movements towards the area.

They don’t want to fight us directly – they are building a nuclear program so that they can hide behind nukes and fight us via proxies without a worry of direct retaliation. They will back down if they believe the choice is war or submission. Do keep in mind, of course, that even if they back down they’ll still be dishonest and keep as much of their nuke program as they can…but you can slow them down for years, and in years a lot of things might change, including a revolution (and it’d be nice if you’d say a kind word or two about the Iranian dissidents, ya know?).

But if you go this route of endless jawing and waiting for this, that and the other thing to happen, then you’ll have no credibility and the Iranians will eventually laugh at your threats…which might put us in the difficult position of either backing down, or going to war. Much better if we make them dance to our tune.

From Powerline:

Iran Double-Crosses Obama

Iran isn’t going to ship its uranium – it wants France to ship enriched uranium to Iran, while Iran holds on to its current uranium stockpile, presumptively so that Iran can have both a civil and military nuclear program. Meanwhile, Iran’s government is telling its people that the United States has agreed to Iran’s continuing nuclear program.

This is the most monumentally obtuse government, ever. Next to Obama, Chamberlain looks like a brilliant negotiator.

Not too well:

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has praised Russia for its diplomatic work with world powers over Iran’s nuclear program.

But she has failed to reach agreement with Russia on new sanctions against Iran.

A month ago in New York, Russia’s President Dmitri Medvedev appeared to suggest his country might support new sanctions against Iran.

In Moscow Ms Clinton was looking for a more solid commitment.

She did not get one.

And she won’t get one – because Russia wants a strong, nuclear-armed Iran to be a thorn in our strategic side; because Russia wants to rebuild some sort of Russian Empire; because we already gave away our best leverage – the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

We’re being governed by arguably the most foolish Administration in world history…

Regarding Iran:

President Obama appeared in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House Thursday afternoon to demand that leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran take concrete actions to defuse international tensions regarding its nuclear program, beginning with allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency “full access” to Iran’s nuclear facility at Qom within the next two weeks.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, with whom the president has been in close contact, will be arriving in Tehran in the next few days, the president said.

“Our patience is not unlimited,” the president said, alluding to tougher economic sanctions if Iran does not take the necessary steps. “The United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure.”

What’ll he do? Threaten to threaten again? Now, there is a story that Iran will send a large amount of its uranium to Russia for final processing as fuel-grade material. This is considered good news – how so, I can’t imagine. Iran doesn’t need a civil nuclear program – in fact, Iran is largely bankrupting itself with its nuclear program. Send that stuff to Russia for final processing as fuel-grade and all your doing is saving the Iranians some trouble – once back in Iran, it can then be further processed to weapons-grade. And this, of course, would presume that Iran would do it – and that Russia would tell us the truth if Iran didn’t perform. We’ll also have no way of telling, if Iran performs, that this is all the material they have.

The problem with negotiating with Iran is that there’s no real teeth behind it. Alluding to possible pressure at some future point if Iran doesn’t come through is utterly foolish – and Obama’s statement is just the mindless statement of someone who thinks that negotiating is an end, rather than a means. For liberals, as long as you’re talking, everything is going swell. Well, it will be for the Iranian mullahs – as long as we’re talking with no threat of force around, they can continue on their merry, nuclear way.

The only way to get Iran to the table – really to the table and willing to give up the nukes – is to make it clear to Iran that failure to comply means force will be used, in whatever measure proves necessary. Iran can bluster about fighting, but even the most kooky of Iranian mullahs know they can’t actually stop us – they can’t stop us from bombing the facilities, blockading the ports, blowing up Iran’s sole gasoline refinery. They can shoot back a bit, but that would only give us the excuse to entirely wreck Iran’s military power. Put the threat of force on the table, and the Iranians will back down – in addition, this will encourage the Iranian people in their simmering revolt; there is nothing better for oppressed people than to feel that the United States is on their side against their oppressors.

But, Obama will talk and talk and talk and the issue will just stumble along…until Iran has nukes, or Israel just decides to take care of the issue, with incalculable results for the world. The Giant is bound hand and foot – and Obama is the man tying him down.

And that is bad news, because his whole foreign policy concept was wrapped around diplomacy:

…when President Obama addressed the General Assembly and Security Council he already knew that Iran was ignoring international standards, and its latest violations endangered international peace and security more than ever before. And yet he deliberately refused to put Iran on the agenda of the Council summit — the same Council that he claimed bore responsibility for responding to such threats.

President Obama knew that if the magnitude of the Iranian threat were revealed yesterday, the emptiness of his resolution would have been embarrassingly obvious and his cover blown. In public, at the highest levels of the U.N, he heralded generalities as significant. In private, he was petitioning lower levels of the U.N. to act on startling specifics of the Iranian threat.

Why did the president not present this same evidence to the Security Council, the body with “the authority and the responsibility to respond”? Why did he not challenge world leaders to deal with the same Iranian threat that he privately was pressing upon U.N. bureaucrats?

There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Indeed – buy why doesn’t he have the political will?

1. Because liberals refuse to understand that tyrants are wicked people.
2. Because liberals think that diplomacy is a substitute for armed force, rather than each (diplomacy and military power) being indispensable to each other.
3. Because leaders, by and large, would rather not make a decision – make a decision and you might make the wrong one. It takes immense courage for any leader to make a choice…and this courage is rare in leaders (ie, note that in 1940 among all the various British and French leaders, only one had the courage to consistently demand that aggressive action be taken against Germany…Winston Churchill; everyone else was just hoping to get through the crisis with as little trouble as possible).

Naive world view, ignorance and cowardice..that is why Iran is set to build a bomb. More and more, its looking like the world will have to rely on Israel to do our duty, for us.

You expected something different?

President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain blasted Iran’s construction of a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility and demanded Friday that Tehran immediately fulfill its obligations under international law or risk the imposition of harsh new sanctions.

“Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow,” Obama said, detailing how the facility near Qom had been under construction for years without being disclosed, as required, to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “International law is not an empty promise.”

Yes, it is, Mr. President – international law is not just an empty promise, its a figment of liberal imagination unless it is backed up by a clear threat to use US military force. America – and America alone – has the combination of moral justification and military power necessary to be the enforcer of international law. If we won’t do it, then no one will. Period. End of story. Take Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, India and Brazil and roll them all together and you don’t have an equal amount of morality and force – none of these nations will actually enforce international law because they either can’t, or don’t even see the need. They will, if we lead, come along with us some times – but they won’t come along at all if we’re not willing to do so.

We are dealing in Iran with leaders who murder their own people in cold blood – people who are willing to do such criminal acts are not going to be deterred by lectures from an American President, nor tut-tutting from international do-gooders. People like the leaders in Iran do whatever they think they can get away with – right now, they think they can get away with building nuclear weapons and, truth be told, going back to the last two years of the Bush Administration there has been no indication that anyone would stop them.

Now it is crunch time – now we must decide: will we permit Iran to have nuclear weapons? If the answer is “yes”, then we might as well leave off the false rhetoric of condemnation as issuing such, and then doing nothing, not only makes us look cowardly, it also makes us look dishonest. If the answer is “no”, then we must steel ourselves to act – first against Iran’s gasoline supplies, finally against Iran’s military forces, if that proves necessary. Regardless of our choice, there will be wide repercussions around the world – there’s no way to ignore this and hope it will go away. An Iran armed with nukes will have an effect, an Iran prostrate under US force will have an effect – which effects do we want?

As for me, I prefer to take a calculated risk of war and deal with Iran, right now, before they can build nukes and put them on IRBM and ICBMs. My fear is that we’ll get nothing but waffling from Obama – statements of condemnations out of one side of his mouth, appeasement of Iran’s leaders out of the other…