WarSclerotic

Greenberg: Iran’s scary nuclear threat.

Published: November 20, 2011 9:34 PM
By PAUL GREENBERG

Photo credit: AP | Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, shakes hand with an army colonel as he arrives at the Shahr-e-Kord, during his provincial tour, in central Iran. His nation won’t retreat “one iota” from its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad says. (Nov. 9, 2011)

Gosh, what a surprise: According to the United Nations, Iran seems to be at work on developing a nuclear weapon. I am shocked — shocked. Goodness, what target do you think the mullahs and their nutcase president, the all too imitable Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, might have in mind?

Speaking at the G-20 Summit, French President Nicholas Sarkozy made a pretty good guess. He warned the nuke-rattlers in Tehran, “If Israel’s existence were threatened, France would not stand idly by.” Free translation from the French: If Israel’s existence were threatened, France would stand idly by. It’s the first lesson in diplomacy: Some words are for public consumption only. Indeed, they may be taken to mean the opposite of what they say. Some people use language to communicate their intentions; diplomats use it to conceal theirs. All it takes to interpret Sarkozy’s words is a little familiarity with the games of French diplomacy — and with the history of successive French republics, now up to five excluding Vichy. Not to mention the late unpleasantness known as the Dreyfus Affair. If Israel’s existence were threatened, as it regularly is, France would surely not be the only country the world could depend on to stand idly by. The French would doubtless be joined by the rest of the West, as in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973. Moral support might have been plentiful when war erupted in the Middle East, even military aid, but the world was not about to intervene. At least not on Israel’s side. And there is no reason to think the next crisis in the Middle East would be any different from those that have gone before. Inescapable conclusion: The only people who’ll go to war to defend Israel are the Israelis. Maybe that’s why they’ve emerged victorious from every threat (so far). They’ve learned to depend on themselves. Or should have by now. It’s also why they’re considering a strike against the existential threat posed to their state by Iran’s fast-developing nuclear program. The mullahs’ dream of a nuke of their own becomes closer to reality with every turn of those centrifuges in the vicinity of Teheran. The Iranians have just about completed dispersing and hardening the sites of their nuclear facilities. A little computerized virus like the Stuxnet worm, whether Israeli or American in origin, has been able to delay the threat, not end it. Soon enough it will be too late to end it. Once the fanatics in Tehran have a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it, does anyone think they will hesitate to use it against Israel, which they’re fond of referring to as a “one-bomb state“? Time grows short. It’s passing as quickly as Iran’s centrifuges are whirling. It wouldn’t even be necessary for Tehran to use its new nuke to dominate its neighbors. For it would then have a nuclear umbrella, much like Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, under which to carry out its mischief without fear of reprisal. It might even pass a nuclear device to one of its favorite terrorist outfits — Hezbollah in Syria, or Hamas in Gaza or some new bunch of crazies organized for just such a purpose. The possibilities are as numerous as they are scary. The Israelis have acted against such a developing threat before. Saddam Hussein‘s in 1981, when they took out his nuclear reactor at Osirak. Then there was Syria‘s al-Kibar reactor, which met with a similar “accident” in 2007. But to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would be an even more ambitious and dangerous mission, one fraught with consequences of the unintended kind. If the usual international sanctions, resolutions and general blather prove as ineffectual as they usually do, the Israelis may decide they have little choice but a pre-emptive strike. Or as they put it, nothing has been taken off the table. Including the possibility of military action. And the clock is ticking. Like a time bomb. Think about the repercussions of making such a decision, or of not making it, and either way visions of mushroom clouds begin to form in the mind.
. . .
Quick, a little comic relief. This grim scenario could use it. Sure enough, this just in from Paris: A little off-the-record gossip between the American and French presidents during a light moment at the G-20 made it into the record after all. It seems a French website that analyzes the media (like a patient on a couch) has released some snippets of a conversation between Sarkozy, snide as ever, and Obama, obliging as ever when it comes to standing idly by. These two leaders of the Free World could have been two girls badmouthing a third during a visit to the powder room. “Netanyahu,” said the French president, “I can’t stand him. He’s a liar.” The American president didn’t object to that less than flattering description, but neither did he explicitly agree with it. Instead, he appealed for sympathy himself: “You are sick of him, but I have to work with him every day!” Which would seem fair enough. Since the Israelis have to put up with Obama every day. Much as Americans have to. It’s good to know heads of state can trade gossip like the rest of us around the office water cooler. And that nobody takes it too seriously. It’s a funny world. When it’s not terrifying.

‘US, UK, Canada to announce new … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    The United States, Britain and Canada are set to announce a set of sanctions on Iran on Monday, according to ABC News.

US officials told ABC that the State Department will impose sanctions in areas which Iran currently uses “to work around existing sanctions on its energy and financial sectors.”

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Sources familiar with the matter said Friday that the US plans to sanction Iran’s petrochemical industry, seeking to raise pressure on Tehran after fresh allegations it may be pursuing nuclear weapons.

The sources said Washington wanted to send a strong signal after the UN nuclear watchdog issued a November 8 report saying Iran appeared to have worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be secretly carrying out related research.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, speaking to reporters traveling with him to Canada last week, said the United States believed the most effective way to confront Iran still was to use diplomatic pressure and sanctions to try to curb the Islamic state’s nuclear program.

“Obviously to go beyond that raises our concerns about the unintended consequences that could result,” Panetta said.

He pointed to a US analysis that a strike on Iran would set back its nuclear program, which Iran says is only for peaceful purposes, by one or two years at most. It would also have implications for US forces in the region.

“And I have to tell you, thirdly, there are going to be economic consequences to that, that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy,” Panetta said.

“So those things all need to be considered.”

The six powers involved in diplomacy on Iran – the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – hammered out a joint resolution in intense negotiations and submitted it to the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based UN body, which is expected to debate and vote on it on Friday.

It aims to increase pressure on Iran to address fears about its atomic ambitions. But it is not expected to satisfy those in the West and in Israel, who had hoped IAEA document would trigger concrete international action, such as an IAEA referral of its case to the UN Security Council.