WarSclerotic

Lebanon news – NOW Lebanon -Iran Rules.

No one on our team seems the least bit embarrassed, nor do any of the pundits who predicted that some sort of nuke deal would be agreed on.  Indeed, most of the coverage that I’ve seen has to do with Israel:  will they attack or not?

On the basis of my mother’s dictum that repetition is the basis of all learning, let’s go through the basic principles again:

· Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not interested in a deal with the West unless it is clearly and unequivocally a total Western surrender that ends sanctions, confirms our retreat from the Middle East, and acknowledges Iran as the regional hegemon;

· The current game–call it “around the world in 180 days”–provides the diplomats with good food, luxurious accommodations, and pictures in the papers, and it leaves the Iranians free to enrich uranium, build missiles and warheads, and kill us and anyone inclined to work with us. That is the Real War and no Western leader ever talks about it;

· Sanctions will neither stop the Iranian nuclear program nor stop the Real War. Only a change in regime can accomplish that.  To that end, sanctions could be a positive force if they were combined with support for the Iranian opposition.  Just ask the Revolutionary Guards how serious the resistance is:  the RG just deployed an additional eight thousand soldiers—some in uniform, others in plain clothes–in the streets of Tehran.But no Western leader cares to help the Iranian opposition, even verbally.  When  those leaders say “no option is off the table,” they mean some day there might be a  military attack against Iran.  But  financial and tactical assistance to the Iranian people willing to actively fight for freedom is totally off any Western  strategic table;

Dr. Michael Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

This entry was posted on May 29, 2012 at 5:09 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.