All Bad News On Iran

(National Review Online)  Where to begin with the "surprise" announcement of a second, previously undisclosed "nuclear facility?" Some thoughts:

(1) This is Iran's answer to the Obama video peace offensive. This summer we kept quiet while thousands went into the streets of Tehran to protest brutality and a rigged election - just so that Obama's much-heralded peace offensive, planned for October, could showcase his transnational diplomatic charisma. I think all that brilliance has just been preempted by the theocracy, which quite understandably concluded that Obama not only would not support democratic dissidents in the new "reset button" era, but was increasingly desperate, as the new anti-Bush, to obtain some sort of agreement with Iran by any means necessary.

(2) The IAEA under Mohamed ElBaradei is a disgraced, politicized organization whose first mission is to resonate with anti-American Western elites (note the Nobel Prize given ElBaradei and his failed agency in 2005), and whose second is to appease Muslim countries, on the theory that years ago democratic Israel got a bomb, so what's the big deal if an autocratic Muslim country does the same? This is no exaggeration; it comes out of the mouth of ElBaradei himself and is often echoed by his supporters in the West.

(3) We have no reliable intelligence agencies - none at all. For partisan purposes, they have leaked false information about both Iran and Iraq for years. During the political wars of the Bush era, they claimed that Iran was "years away" from obtaining the bomb - and anyone who doubted that dubious assessment was either unhinged or of questionable character. Do we remember the much-welcomed 2007 conclusion from the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program"?

That bombshell was cited for months as "proof" of neoconservative paranoia and warmongering over Iraq. In fact, over the last decade, we have seen a long series of politicized leaks from the CIA and politicized memoirs from former operatives designed to undermine the case against Iran. The result is that after endless assurances that there was no Iranian effort to get a bomb, it turns out that there has been one all the time, and it is now on the eve of coming to fruition. We should have an investigation to determine what, if anything, the authors of the 2007 assessment knew about the recently disclosed "second" facility.

4) Despite the president's praise of the UN, trashing of the previous administration, and grandiose proclamations that we are back on the Human Rights Council, there is little international concern over Iran. A few nations walked out during Ahmadinejad's rant, but most delegates stayed glued to their seats. Russia and China - the former recently appeased by the missile deal, the latter recently rebuffed with the tire tariff - are flush with cash and enjoy the notion that Iran bothers us more than it does them; they have not yet been hope-and-changed into helping Obama with his grand vision on the grounds that he is not Bush. Some look at our president and see a messiah; these two see a rookie in charge of a now-bankrupt country with $2-trillion-a-year deficits that is unsure what to do in two wars and in dire need of both imported oil and trillions in cash.

We can imagine that Europeans' "concern" will translate into something analogous to their effort in Afghanistan. Britain's past appeasement of the sailor-kidnapping Iranians, and its recent oil-prompted release to Libya of the Lockerbie murderer, will not create much worry in Tehran about British sanctions.

In short, there is nothing the international community can or will do about Iran's road to a small arsenal of nukes. What would work - an ironclad international boycott and embargo of Iran's oil exports and gasoline imports - is beyond Western statecraft. In this new Obama era of morally equivalent multiculturalism, we have no desire to stand for human rights and support the Iranian opposition in any meaningful way; and as for trying to appease either the Muslim world or Russia and China in hopes of getting help from them - well, no comment on that.

(5) We are no longer really an ally of Israel. Most of this administration's efforts in the Mideast have consisted of pressuring Israel in unilateral fashion. We are reaching out to Syria, the West Bank, and the Muslim world in general, while warning democratic Israel not to do a litany of things. The only mystery now is how far the estrangement extends. In that regard, Zbigniew Brzezinski's recent suggestion that we might shoot down Israeli planes on the way to Iran as they passed over Iraq is not as lunatic as it would have seemed last year.

I think the script is pretty clear: The world is either terrified or intrigued by the Iranian bomb program but will do nothing to stop it. The Western powers privately hope that Israel will do something, and if it does, the intervention may prove to be a military and diplomatic disaster (which is the bad choice, as opposed to the worse one of allowing a nuclear Iran) that will allow the U.S. and the West at last to decouple from this "rogue" nation.


By Victor Davis Hanson
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online

[tomindie]

I think every one has a right to think about themselves; its not that only US policy makers are smartest ones; if Nukes are bad for world why US is not destryoing whatever it has got. US simply wants to sell its ammunition to all over the world which it self is going to push world to WWIII sometime.

Allow every one to have nuclear capabilities for civilian usage; why it should be restricted only to few nations. Another funny thing is people think capitalism has improved lifes of human beings; yes to some extent but at large even before modernization people were living and prospering all over the world; todays prosperity means you become slave to machines and funny technologies and mind it you live to make drug companies rich as your natural capabilities are taken over by those tons of gobbled pills.

Obama need to push peace and harmony policies than sanction ones; because
Death can cause only more Deaths.
where as
Peace leads to Prosperity.

Give Peace a Chance for everyones benifit

[noloyalisti]

Well, the United States and Israel both have nuclear weapons and their countries are run by militant religious extremists.

Also, the United States is the only country ever to actually use nuclear weapons on people. The US is also the most prolific purveyor of state sponsored terror in the world, running or funding the bombing of four countries as we spreak.

Should not the entire world consider sanctions on the US and Israel instead of Iran?

[billpl-2009]

that's a great idea!

start with the Arab nations.

they can stop selling us oil.

then they can go back to picking up camel dung for a living.

let the terrorists fight over who gets the biggest chunks

[noloyalisti]

What do these simpleton Neo CONS expect when their dumb boy Bushoccio threatened Iran and lied his way into invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? Sovereign countries, like Iran, have a right to protect themselves from terrorist countries like the US and Israel.

[maistir]

Please explain how trying to acquire a nuclear weapon protects Iran.

Isn't such an effort more likely to bring heavier economic sanctions or a pre-emptive military strike on Iran? How does keeping the IAEA in the dark about its nuclear facilities benefit Iran?

Your bad temper seems to have gotten the better of your logic, "nolo".