Time for an Israeli Strike?
Posted on 02. Jul, 2009 by Xander in Headlines
John R. Bolton
The Washington Post
July 2, 2009
With Iran’s hard-line mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unmistakably back in control, Israel’s decision of whether to use military force against Tehran’s nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever.
Iran’s nuclear threat was never in doubt during its presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.
Accordingly, with no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable. Israel is undoubtedly ratcheting forward its decision-making process. President Obama is almost certainly not.
He still wants “engagement” (a particularly evocative term now) with Iran’s current regime. Last Thursday, the State Department confirmed that Secretary Hillary Clinton spoke to her Russian and Chinese counterparts about “getting Iran back to negotiating on some of these concerns that the international community has.” This is precisely the view of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, reflected in the Group of Eight communique the next day. Sen. John Kerry thinks the recent election unpleasantness in Tehran will delay negotiations for only a few weeks.
Obama administration sources have opined (anonymously) that Iran will be more eager to negotiate than it was before its election in order to find “acceptance” by the “international community.” Some leaks indicated that negotiations had to produce results by the U.N. General Assembly’s opening in late September, while others projected that they had until the end of 2009 to show progress. These gauzy scenarios assume that the Tehran regime cares about “acceptance” or is somehow embarrassed by eliminating its enemies. Both propositions are dubious.
Obama will nonetheless attempt to jump-start bilateral negotiations with Iran, though time is running out even under the timetables leaked to the media. There are two problems with this approach. First, Tehran isn’t going to negotiate in good faith. It hasn’t for the past six years with the European Union as our surrogates, and it won’t start now. As Clinton said on Tuesday, Iran has “a huge credibility gap” because of its electoral fraud. Second, given Iran’s nuclear progress, even if the stronger sanctions Obama has threatened could be agreed upon, they would not prevent Iran from fabricating weapons and delivery systems when it chooses, as it has been striving to do for the past 20 years. Time is too short, and sanctions failed long ago.
Andrew Campbell
Jul 2nd, 2009
The world is a perilous place and diplomacy has to be tried to the last degree!!! If not WAR in the middle east would have horrible consequences
for the globe!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is a terrible
recession on the planet, can we fix that???