`Israel’s Existence Is in Danger’ If It Attacks Nuclear Plant, Iran Says – Bloomberg.

Iran will respond if Israel attacks its first nuclear power plant, which will begin loading fuel Aug. 21, according to the Persian Gulf country’s defense minister.

“In that case we will lose a power plant, but Israel’s existence will be in danger,” Ahmad Vahidi was cited as saying today by the state-run Mehr news agency, in response to questions about the possibility of an attack by Israel on the Russian-built atomic facility at Bushehr.

The Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said today he “doubts” that Israel would “make such a dangerous move.” In comments on state television, he said, “Any aggression against this power plant will result in a serious reaction.”

Israeli leaders have said that all options are on the table in dealing with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Iran is under four sets of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program, which the U.S. and many of its allies say is aimed at creating a weapon. Iran, the second-largest oil producer in the Middle East, denies the allegation, saying it needs nuclear energy for civilian purposes, such as generating electricity.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment when asked about the Iranian defense minister’s remarks.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday announced the enactment of a law that obliges Iran to produce nuclear fuel for its Tehran medical-research reactor, on the day the country said it will build its third uranium-enrichment plant as part of a program to add 10 such facilities. Iran’s first uranium- enrichment plant is at Natanz and a second plant is under construction at Qom.

Iran has defied UN demands to cease production of enriched uranium, which can fuel a reactor or, at higher concentrations, form the core of a bomb.

The Bushehr power station will begin producing electricity in several months, Sergei Novikov, spokesman for Rosatom Corp., the Russian state nuclear holding company that built the plant, said Aug. 13.

FrontPage Magazine » Israel’s Crunch Time » Print.

The Obama administration gave ^[1] Russia permission to deliver the fuel rods for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor in return for their support for U.N. sanctions. The Russians have announced ^[2] they will begin the process on August 21 and Iran will begin operating ^[3] the reactor in mid-September. In making this concession to Russia, the U.S. is forcing Israel to decide within one week if they will bomb the site before it is impossible to do so because of the radioactive fallout it would cause.

Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton is warning ^[4] that Israel must immediately decide between accepting a nuclear weapons-capable Iran or a military strike. He noted that in Israel’s previous strikes on Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors, action was taken before the insertion of the fuel rods. Bolton’s statement comes as Jeffrey Goldberg writes ^[5] in The Atlantic that most officials he spoke to felt there was a better than 50 percent chance that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear sites by next July. This follows claims ^[6] by an anonymous senior Egyptian security official that his country had taken measures with the expectation that Israel could attack Iran as early as July.

The Israelis began deploying ^[7] three nuclear-armed submarines to the Gulf as summer began. They have also unveiled ^[8] a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles that can fly for an entire day, permitting them to reach Iran. It was not said whether the aircraft can carry the ordinance necessary to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites but they were clearly shown with Iran in mind.

Sunni Arab regimes traditionally hostile to Israel have embraced ^[9] the Jewish state as the only one able and willing to save them from a nuclear Iran and are silently supporting a potential campaign. The blunt statement ^[10] by the ambassador from the United Arab Emirates that his country would support military action against Iran if necessary is an indication that the anti-Iran Arab bloc feels the window is closing. The Saudis, who have reportedly offered Israel its airspace to carry out a strike, have simulated ^[11] the turning down of its defenses in such an event.

The Iranians are claiming ^[12] that they have acquired four S-300 air defense systems that would complicate an Israeli strike, a move obviously meant to coincide with the announcement about Bushehr. At the same time, Russia has installed the S-300 in the Abkhazia region it has controlled since going to war with Georgia in 2008. The Israeli intelligence website Debkafile says ^[13] the system was set up to block a potential northern route for a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran. Russia, China and Turkey ^[14] have also decided to sell gasoline to Iran just as the regime began seriously suffering ^[15] from a shortage and the effects of international sanctions.

Israel has numerous considerations as it decides whether it must take out the Bushehr reactor. The attack could ignite a two-front war. The Israelis may decide that they can wait as long as the reactor’s activity is monitored by the IAEA. The fuel for the reactor is being provided ^[1] by Russia, who will also be responsible for taking it out of the reactor and taking it outside the country. The Obama Administration is apparently confident that these measures will prevent the site from being used to make weapons-grade plutonium.

Fox News analyst General Thomas McInerney, the former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff for the U.S. Air Force and former Director of the Defense Performance Review, told FrontPage that Israel must not allow the fuel rods to be delivered to the reactor. Once that happens, any bombing raid would spread radiation throughout the region including Gulf countries that oppose Iran. Russian personnel at the plant would also be killed.

“The danger is that 40 to 60 plutonium bombs could be manufactured once the Bushehr plant is online so the IDF must strike Iran now,” he said. “Iran may have crossed the nuclear threshold, which is unacceptable.”

General McInerney said that Israel should use submarine-launched cruise missiles and special forces to target the underground sites and should try to spark an uprising by the Iranian people.

“I believe an air campaign without attacking Bushehr does not make it complete which is why I believe they must do it now,” he said.

About a dozen other nuclear sites must be targeted, according to General McInerney. Surface-to-air missile sites, air bases, and Shahab ballistic missile sites would also have to be struck to minimize Iran’s retaliatory capabilities. Despite the mammoth undertaking such a campaign would be, he felt there was a “high probability” of Israel attacking Iran.

The Israelis may believe that covert measures can be taken to delay the time when a strike becomes necessary. The Mossad is suspected ^[16] of being involved in the deaths of important Iranian nuclear scientists and has used ^[17] cyber warfare against the nuclear program. The Israelis are likely the ones responsible for greatly damaging ^[18] the uranium enrichment efforts at Natanz by providing Iran with faulty equipment. The Iranians are running short ^[19] on raw uranium and it is unknown ^[20] if they have the ability to reprocess plutonium for a bomb. The Israelis may believe they can tolerate the operating of such facilities if their performance is hindered enough to prevent a bomb from being made and delivery capability from being achieved.

The Israelis must also consider whether the regime actually wants them to strike their facilities. The regime may believe it would bring them stability as their people continue to challenge them. They may even believe that such a strike would commence the final days when the Hidden Imam will arise during a final great war to bring victory for Islam. According to one cleric, Ayatollah Khamenei is telling ^[21] his inner circle that he has met with the Hidden Imam and was promised that he’d appear before his time as Supreme Leader ends.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty permits Iran to build the infrastructure it needs to quickly build a nuclear arsenal before actually constructing a bomb. According to the treaty, Iran can cite a security threat and announce its withdrawal from the treaty to build nuclear weapons as long as it is done with 90 days notice. Iran may actually be hoping ^[22] to use an Israeli strike to justify the creation of nuclear weapons and attribute the subsequent crisis to Israeli aggression. The sites are dispersed and underground, potentially allowing the regime to believe they can rejuvenate their program relatively quickly.

A remark by Ahmadinejad last September indicates that Iran is planning to point to some threat to declare that its “peaceful” program must become a weapons program. When pressed by reporter Ann Curry as to whether Iran was seeking nukes, he said “We don’t need nuclear weapons. Without such weapons we are able to defend ourselves.” She then said to him that he didn’t rule out building them in the future if he saw the need and he replied, “You can take from this whatever you want, madam.”

The Israelis have much to consider as they decide whether it’s worth attacking the Bushehr reactor. They currently have less than one week before the fuel rods are sent in, removing the option of a bombing raid on the site in the future. Israel must now decide whether to destroy the reactor or allow Iran to have a critical piece for a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.

Six more reasons why we can’t let Iran get nukes. – By Christopher Hitchens – Slate Magazine.

Six more reasons why we can’t let Iran get nukes.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Aug. 16, 2010, at 11:41 AM ET

ON THE BRINK – Grendel Report.

ON THE BRINK
By Jan Markell
August 16, 2010

Something major is in the works and it is very likely not good. So many
have said Iran will be “ready to go” within days as it concerns her
nuclear capability that it has become a bit like crying wolf. Few pay
attention anymore.

Well, you’d better listen up.

The Jerusalem Post ( Iran reactor to be fueled Aug. 21 ) reports that
Russia will start loading uranium fuel into the nuclear reactor of the
Bushehr nuclear power station in Iran on August 21. This is the crucial
step in outfitting Iran with nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

Russia says the latest U.N. sanctions against Iran will not affect the
Bushehr project. This project was slated to happen in late September but
now we are just days away from the point of no return. Israel must
decide what she will do, and quickly.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton told Fox News that, “Once the fuel
rods are loaded it makes it essentially immune from attack by Israel.
Because once the rods are in the reactor, an attack on the reactor risks
spreading radiation in the air, and perhaps into the water of the
Persian Gulf.”

The story immediately became front-page news in Israel, which has laid
precise plans to carry out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Bolton made it clear that it is widely assumed that any Israeli attack
on the Bushehr reactor must take place before the reactor is loaded with
fuel rods. If that is the case, Israel must act before August 21.

I often hear Yoni the Israeli blogger on the Hugh Hewitt program. In a
recent blog, he suggested war is imminent for the following reasons:

1) Hizbullah has dug tunnels into northern Israel. Hizbullah also has
60,000 rockets, many with chemical warheads. Israel has delivered
letters to the U.N., Lebanon, and USA, showing where Hizbullah has
hidden rockets in civilian areas.

2) Israeli satellite has captured photos of submarines off-loading
weapons to Hizbullah in northern Lebanon. Intelligence later showed
these weapons were special chemical weapons engineered to eat through
protective equipment. This agent may now be loaded onto Hizbullah rockets.

3) The Israel Air Force (IAF) is training in long- range missions, jets,
and helicopters, which would suggest commando raids a long way from
home. Additionally, Israeli Defense Force (IDF) reserves have been
called up and are being trained at an abnormal pace.

4) Israeli subs are sitting off Iran and the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has
an airbase in Saudi Arabia.

5) Israeli intelligence has captured data showing that Hizullah will
preemptively attack Israel at month’s end.  The objective is to take out
IAF bases so Israeli planes cannot hit Iran.

While at first glance Americans think this will not affect them all that
much, I am taking some thoughts from my frequent radio guest, Bill
Salus, who has written the book Israelestine. Salus states, “Iran’s
apocalyptic-minded president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has publicly
threatened the closing of Hormuz in retaliation for an Israeli or
American strike upon his country.

“Additionally, two significant correlating events made the news in May,
2010. First, the Islamic Republic of Iran warned that it would launch
terrorist attacks and suicide strikes inside of America in the event of
a strike upon Iranian soil. Second, the Iranian Navy conducted a massive
war exercise in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, called
‘Judgment Day.’ This drill reportedly demonstrated Iran’s sole and
sovereign ability to control those strategic bodies of water.”

Salus continues, “Regarding the possibility of Iran playing the ‘oil
card’ against America, on September 15, 2009 The Wall Street Journal
published a Bret Stephens article entitled Obama Is Pushing Israel
Towards War. In the article Stephens suggested that a Middle East War
could push the price of oil up to $300 per barrel. Lately, on average,
that precious black gold has been closing between $70 to $80 per barrel.
Stephen’s estimate suggests an oil-dependent world could be about to
experience a spike at the pump of about four times the present amount.
Iran still ranks number two behind Saudi Arabia in the OPEC oil cartel,
which is responsible for two-thirds of the world’s oil supply.”

Are Americans, Chinese, Europeans, and others ready for such a steep
increase? Americans could expect to feel pain in the waiting lines at
the pump and in their pocket books, as increased transportation costs
would certainly be reflected in the price of goods sold over the retail
counters across the country.

When this strike actually happens, tomorrow or next year, the world will
react — as it did after Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak facility in 1981 —
with universal condemnation. Israel can do nothing right — including
take out a major de-stablizer of the world — Iran’s nuclear capability.

And just where will America be in this scenario? Would she participate
with Israel? Even Saudi Arabia is participating, by allowing Israel to
use a Saudi air base.  But don’t count on our current White House or
State Department to do anything but join the condemning chorus.   As
George Will says, “Will Israel do what the world won’t? If it attacks
Iran, the world was warned. If not, the world may regret it.”

The Greenroom » Bushehr: And So It Begins, Part I.

Danged if I didn’t write about the reactor at Bushehr just a few days ago.  It looked like maybe Iran was practicing her defensive measures for a reactor start-up – local air defense, trying to get Israel preoccupied with attacks from multiple axes – because the start-up could be imminent.  I hoped, writing that earlier piece, that Russia still had doubts about the wisdom of defying US policy and UN sanctions to this extent.  But apparently the Russians are satisfied that we’re not going to do anything.

That’s no surprise at this point. Indeed, there are few real surprises lurking out there anywhere, at this point.  Someone, somewhere, has predicted almost everything that’s going to happen, and a lot of people are aware of most of the predictions.  If we were to put things in terms of a familiar analogy, the main question is probably how long it will take, from 2010, to get from the modern version of 1936 to the modern version of 1939.

March 1936 was when Hitler’s Germany, in defiance of the Versailles and Locarno treaties, remilitarized the Rhineland.  For military-technological reasons, that action didn’t necessarily have the same meaning in 1936 that it had had to the armistice negotiators of 1918-19.  European politicians looking for good excuses in ‘36 leveraged that fact for all it was worth.  But it was a watershed political event: it signaled Nazi Germany’s determination and direction, and it signaled the unwillingness of England and France to do anything about it.  Most importantly, it signaled Hitler’s assurance that England and France would take no action.

Lighting off the Bushehr reactor stands the test of this analogy pretty well.  The Bushehr reactor itself is not, technically, the key to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  It will have a subordinate role at best, partly because of the limitations of light-water reactors for producing weapons-grade material, and partly because Iran has agreed to send the reactor’s spent fuel rods back to Russia anyway.  Flouting this agreement with Russia would constitute a significant political break on Iran’s part, one that’s not unthinkable but is unlikely.  Russian collusion in diverting uranium from the reactor to weapons production is more likely, in my view, than Iran making an abrupt political break.  And neither is on the horizon at this moment.

But Russia enabling Iran’s nuclear program at all is directly opposed to the substance of the UN’s demands to Iran, the sanctions on Iran, and US and EU policy.  There is no question that Russia has chosen to take this step in the belief that the US and Europe will do nothing about it.  What matters here is what mattered in 1936:  the absolute clarity of the political decision point, and the expectations about who will do what.

Earlier this week, Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic wrote an extensive piece about US and Israeli decision factors for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program.  I wanted to post a piece of my own in response to it, but found myself stumped as to how to say anything fresh on the topic.  It seemed that the most efficient approach would be to link to the number of pieces I’ve written before, which have treated all the points raised by Goldberg’s very comprehensive summary.  Yes, Israel’s is a one-shot option.  Yes, the Israelis would have to prioritize and hit far fewer targets than an American force could.  Yes, Iran will have Hezbollah attack Israel from the north and Hamas from the south.  Yes, the Iranian regional backlash will be hard to contain.  Yes, these things are all dangerous to mess with and hard to predict, even though the Arab nations don’t want to be under nuclear-armed Iranian hegemony either, and would be allies of convenience for Israel – for a few hours, at least – in a pinch.

Caroline Glick this week makes a profound point that I made here last year:  that a nuclear-armed Iran can and will squeeze the US out of the Middle East.  She is right.  An Iran empowered with a nuclear arsenal will upend the status quo irreversibly.  Nuclear power deters us a lot better than it deters autocratic predators, and everyone knows that.  Our nuclear power didn’t deter the Soviet Union from waging proxy wars abroad, but the Soviets’ nuclear power deterred us from fighting back in those wars with the goal of actually winning.  It was the Soviet nuclear arsenal that enabled the USSR to set expanding lines of confrontation and have them respected by the West.

And the point, for those who found themselves on the Soviet-influenced side of the line, was not that nukes were never used against the United States, it was that they themselves were subject to brutal totalitarian rule.  A nuclear arsenal empowered the Soviets to make it seem too costly to the US to guard the freedom of vulnerable peoples.  We constrained ourselves instead merely to fight – and only sometimes; not always – in bloody and protracted symmetrical conflicts, and on their territory.

That, right there, is exactly what Iran intends to achieve with a nuclear arsenal:  the hobbling of American will and options.  The mullahs don’t want to attack their neighbors with nukes, they want to make us pull our punches and then leave the region entirely.  They will do that by harassing the neighbors who host us, with terrorism and insurrection, while carrying in the background the threat of nuclear retaliation.  Ultimately, in a US-free Middle East, cowed neighbors who do Iran’s bidding will function to isolate Israel.

Of course, this vision would be achieved only through time, lurches, and false starts.  The Arab nations won’t just sit still for it.  They will try to realign, defend themselves, and wrest regional leadership from Tehran.  Saudi Arabia doesn’t have the population to make herself a serious rival to Iran, but Egypt does.  Egypt is a prize that Iran is trying to leverage today, but I predict the Muslim Brotherhood and its various Salafist tentacles will confront Iran’s proxies there in the very near future.

And that point expands outward to become the most important of all, which is that an Iran mobilized and empowered, and unchecked by the United States, will force on the whole Eastern hemisphere confrontations and decision points that are only latent today.  Caroline Glick focuses, quite naturally, on the fate of Israel under these conditions – and Americans, as Israel’s allies, must do so as well.

“An Iran mobilized and empowered, and unchecked by the United States, will force on the whole Eastern hemisphere confrontations and decision points that are only latent today.”

***************************

But there’s another point that is almost never discussed, and it can be summarized thus:  geopolitics abhors a vacuum.  Iran is not a great enough power, even with nuclear weapons, to step into America’s shoes in the region.  Someone else will try to, and we don’t have to guess who.  It will be a competition between Russia and China, with Russia holding the lead at the starting line.  Turkey, seeing herself under Erdogan’s leadership as a resurgent regional hegemon, will seek to broker it.  Those four nations – Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey – will offer all the patronage they can to line up the other nations in their corner and block the advances of the other three.  They’ll cultivate each other as necessary to establish advantage.  They will have far less compunction than the US in their dealings with smaller nations and vulnerable peoples, as we have seen with Russia in the Caucasus, China in Tibet, and Turkey with the Kurds.  But the nations of the region will have no choice but to seek accommodation and alignment with them.  US power will be increasingly inert.

And borders will be breached at some point.  Can Iraq’s fledgling democracy survive in these circumstances?  Do Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen stand a chance?  Whom will Libya and Algeria throw in with?  How will all this affect Europe, and the tradeways snaking through its junction with Asia and Africa?  And what will happen to Israel?

With the reactor being fueled at Bushehr, and assuming – with Moscow and Tehran – that Obama does nothing about it, we are moving beyond the static assumptions on which Jeff Goldberg’s piece was based.  The symbolism of Obama not stopping this event is far more important, politically, than the reactor itself.  Casting the issue as an Iran-Israel dyad is already outdated, but so is thinking only in terms of Iran acting against US interests in the context of current conditions.  Everything is about to change.

Sadly, it’s in this kind of situation that the cavalier approach of America’s leftists to using national power can be the most dangerous.  Obama’s apparent tendency to do “something, but not quite enough” – so much like Lyndon Johnson’s and Jimmy Carter’s – could put the US in painful, untenable, and bloody positions, if he seeks to take military action on the 1960s-era, limited-war principle of “demonstrating our determination.”

From the US perspective, it has always been the case that merely hitting Iran’s nuclear sites would provoke such a backlash that it wasn’t worth hitting only the nuke sites.  If the hornet’s nest was to be stirred up anyway, the cost demanded a higher payoff:  hitting the whole Revolutionary Guard infrastructure and crippling the national leadership.  The political hurdle that objective represents has been an enduring show-stopper – as, frankly, it should be, at least up to a point.

Obama and his senior advisors, however, are fond of taking clever intermediate actions, which they characterize, regardless of their likely effectiveness, as “using all the tools of smart power.”  If any president is going to use not-enough military force against Iran – if any president is going to decide to pursue a “calibrated” payoff that’s not worth the cost – it will be Obama.  I’m not as convinced as Caroline Glick is that Obama won’t do anything about Iran.  What I do predict, however, is that he won’t wield force in a way that justifies its use with a sufficiently decisive political outcome.  I suspect that whatever he does will accelerate the deterioration of security conditions in the region.

If he were to slow down Iran’s pursuit of a bomb for a few months or a year, that would not, as they say, be nothing.  Certainly it would be meaningful to Israel, as well as to many of the other nations of the region.  But the Middle East, and perhaps most of the world, is headed for the chaos of a major realignment – and our president, who poses no obstacle to the politically-freighted light-off of the Bushehr reactor, is the same one who will decide America’s responses as the drama intensifies.  If you’re a praying citizen, now would be a really good time.

Articles & Commentary.

President Obama says Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is “unacceptable,” but he appears resigned to the eventuality that the Islamic Republic will build a bomb. Iranian leaders are defiant in the face of sanctions. On Aug. 8, for example, the Kayhan newspaper, mouthpiece for the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared, “Iran does not consider any cost higher than the loss of prestige of capitulating to the West and does not consider any benefit higher than the benefit of becoming nuclear.”

Arab and Israeli newspapers both report that visiting U.S. officials suggest they could extend a nuclear umbrella should Iran develop a bomb, de facto acknowledgment that Obama favors containment over military force.

Today, strategic debate revolves around how a nuclear Iran would behave: Would it bomb Israel? Would it supply terrorist groups? Would Iran become more aggressive in the region? Seldom discussed, however, is how nuclear weapons might change Iran itself. That could be the most profound transformation of all.

When Iran develops nuclear weapons, determining their command-and-control will become America’s overriding intelligence objective. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s genocidal rhetoric shocks the West. Would he control the bomb? Not likely. In the Islamic Republic, the president is subordinate to the supreme leader. Khamenei may be the ultimate political authority in Iran, but will an aide carrying launch codes generated daily shadow him day and night? Equally unlikely; the ayatollah allows no aide so close.

Possession is 90% of the law. And in that sense, on a day-to-day basis, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–which will “own” the arsenal–will control it. This is no comfort: Not only do the Revolutionary Guards contain Iran’s most radical ideologues, but they also remain effectively a big, black box to Western analysts.

While professors speak knowingly of hardliners, reformers and pragmatists along the Islamic republic’s political spectrum, no one knows much about factions within Iran’s ideological army. No American official knows with certainty whether the Iranian general controlling the bomb is a pragmatist who seeks only to defend Iran, or whether he believes the key to the Hidden Imam’s return is just one button away.

Most critical is this question: What happens when the 71-year-old Khamenei, who many times before has been rumored to be gravely ill, dies? In theory, the Assembly of Experts, a deliberative body of 86 religious scholars, chooses the new supreme leader. But when the Islamic republic has a nuclear arsenal, these elderly men will no longer be kingmakers; whoever controls Iran’s nuclear weapons will be. This means the Assembly will not elect any leader to whom the arsenal keeper’s loyalty is uncertain, for that would risk exposing the emperor as having no clothes.

A nuclear bomb, therefore, cements the Revolutionary Guards as kingmakers. The second the first Iranian nuclear bomb rolls off the assembly line, power shifts fundamentally, unleashing an endless cycle with the most radical elements in Iranian society determining leadership and appointing men in their image to determine the next generation of leadership.

Finally, there’s this profound concern: What happens to the democracy and youth movement within Iran? Last summer, Iranians flooding the streets to protest election fraud sparked Western imagination. While some in the Green Movement might embrace nuclear weapons as tightly as the current regime, chants cursing the supreme leader hinted at fundamental change.

What the American public cheered, however, might turn into a nightmare if Iranians rise up after their regime possesses nuclear weapons.

In such a situation–if a newly nuclear Revolutionary Guard suddenly feels its existence threatened from within the country–three scenarios are possible. The idea that the regime is not suicidal, the mantra of those who embrace deterrence, transforms into a force for fear: The Revolutionary Guards could blackmail the world to ensure its own survival. It might also flee, selling the weapons to finance their exile.

The worst case scenario, however, is that with regime survival a moot point, true believers might use their last moments to launch the bomb to fulfill objectives of destroying Israel or wounding America. After all, they know the world will not retaliate against a new Iran if the culpable regime is already destroyed.

Denying Iran nuclear capability requires tough choices. The Obama administration appears willing to embrace containment and deterrence in order to avoid them. Avoiding decisions is not leadership, however, and may prove deadly.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

None of the Israeli newspaper websites have anything  except foreign reports currently online regarding the August 21 loading of fuel by the Russians into the Bushehr reactor in Iran.  Given the heavy attention to the story by the world press, it is highly unlikely that Israeli journalists would ignore the issue unless they were under a government blackout order.  Not one article written in Israel on the subject has been published for three days.

The “Galant affair” has been the focus of a media frenzy in Israel.  Tonight, London and Kirshenbaum on Israeli television made the point that this sort of inside political maneuvering  is standard operating procedure for the IDF, and that the press’ reaction has been completely blown out off all proportion.

My read is that this is potentially a disinformation campaign to lull the Iranians into thinking that Israel is too busy dealing with internal problems to take action on Bushehr.

There has also been no official response of the Israeli government to this highly important announcement.  This may be the occasion for the Tehran Times story saying that Imminent nuclear plant startup has shocked enemies.

Not a word from the government or the press in Israel?  That’s what has happened so far.

John Bolton has been wrong as often as I have been on the issue of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear program.  If the silence coming out of Jerusalem is any indication, this time he might be right.  I cannot imagine Netanyahu allowing the reactor to go online unless Israel has some way to neutralize it without causing a Chernobyl-like result.  The only way to do that would be through the use of EMP.

My opinion is that either Israel will launch an all-out conventional attack on the entire nuclear infrastructure in Iran prior to the 21st, or it will bide its time until the last possible minute before launching an EMP attack.

Joseph Wouk

August 18, 2010

Bushehr blues.

Iranian technicians walk outside the building housing the reactor of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, in the Iranian port town of Bushehr, 1200 kms south of Tehran, on February 25, 2009.

Surprise, surprise: the Russians will fuel the Iranian nuclear reactor which they have built at Bushehr, next Saturday, and it will begin the months-long process of firing up. This despite pleas from the West to stop this project; and what the Obama administration in Washington may or may not believe to have been an undertaking by the Russians to delay it — at least until Iran had come to some plausible inspection agreement on nuclear weapons.