Because if President Obama is determined not to fight, then he’d better figure out how to surrender on the Iranian nuclear issue with the least damage possible:
Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.
In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.
Given the nature of the beast here – ie, the delay between actual event and non-Iranian agencies getting into the know – we can probably assume that Iran is within a year of a nuclear device. Remember, this isn’t the work of the world’s greatest geniuses, anymore – pretty much anyone who has the materials can build the device. There is more to a nuke than the uranium, of course, but we can’t count on Iran still being far from the rest of the materials necessary for nuclear weapons.
Now, as to what I mean:
We can fight – we can work out the best plan possible for attacking in an aerial campaign the identified Iranian nuclear sites coupled with a naval blockade preventing the export of oil and the import of gasoline. This is fraught with risk, but we do have a first class army in Iraq and a first class army is being built up in Afghanistan, so we have the ground forces east and west to keep any Iranian attempt to widen a conflict under wraps. Our air and naval forces are so vastly superior to the Iranian that even if the Iranians are capable of landing a Sunday punch, we can rely that very swiftly we’ll have absolute control of Iranian airspace and a tight blockade on Iran’s coastline.
Fighting won’t solve the problem – it will delay Iran’s nuclear program, perhaps by many years, but it won’t stop it, unless the Iranians voluntarily pull the plug. That is what the blockade is for – bombing to wreck the program, blockade to be the bargaining chip to get Iran to dismantle its nuke program under US supervision. Blockade and careful bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites is my preferred option.
We can surrender – we can decide that we can live with an Iranian nuclear force and thus work out some sort of deal where we guarantee Iran against any future American attack in return for some sort of concrete Iranian agreement to some course of action we desire (such as, to keep the IDF out of the picture, an engagement to not supply any more weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah). This sort of deal doesn’t commend itself to me, but if we are to engage in such a surrender to Iranian pretensions, its better to do it now, before Iran has a nuke and while we hold the strategic upper hand. This way we can gain maximum advantage, if any is able to be gained (something I doubt, because tyrannical regimes like Iran tend to be inherently dishonest).
Fight or quit – and lets pray we don’t have President Obama making empty threats and quasi-surrendering, because that would have us held in contempt and would do more to energize the mullahs than anything else we could do.
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