The president took the prime minister to the Situation Room in the basement of the White House for the hour-long briefing from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and their British counterparts.
With British forces rapidly winding down in Iraq, Prime Minister Blair comes all the way here to be briefed on the Iraq situation in Blair's last month of office?
Sure, talks with Iran about Iraq are about to begin, it appears. But who expects anything to come of them? Is this about getting Iran to say no to something?
Maybe we will bring up Iran's nuclear efforts despite Iranian desire to limit the talk to Iraq topics (well except for Iran's role in fomenting violence, of course). Iran is moving forward quickly on its nuclear front (tip to Real Clear Politics):
Here's the math: International inspectors reportedly found that Iran has about 1,300 centrifuges running. If the Iranians can sustain that progress, their next milestone comes when they've got 3,000 running. At that point, nuclear experts said, Iran would be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb within nine months or so.
"We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told The New York Times. "From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that's a fact."
And related, with Iran breaking the NPT why are some so concerned with keeping them "in" the treaty? In what meaningful way are the Iranians "in" it when they are forging ahead to nuclear weapons?
Mr. ElBaradei does deserve blame – but not for announcing Iran’s progress. He deserves blame for concluding that world attention should now be focused on making “sure [the Iranians] remain inside the treaty.”
The Iranian regime has broken the Nonproliferation Treaty repeatedly. It broke the treaty by pursuing a clandestine nuclear research and procurement program for 18 years, without notifying the IAEA of its activities. It broke the treaty by purchasing documents and equipment to manufacture uranium “hemispheres,” a polite way of describing nuclear bomb cores. Even the IAEA has acknowledged this.
Hope springs EUternal. Maybe this is all about rubbing European noses in the futility of talking Iran out of nukes.
And maybe we demand Iranian answers for the safety of an American they've kidnapped (tip to National Review Online)?
Haleh Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, and in December of last year she traveled to Iran to visit her ailing mother. In a statement on its website, the Wilson Center explains
that in late December, “on her way to the airport to catch a flight back to Washington, the taxi in which Dr. Esfandiari was riding was stopped by three masked, knife-wielding men. They took away her baggage and handbag, including her Iranian and American passports.” Her visit to a passport office four days later instigated six weeks of interrogations. Last Monday, just over a week ago, she was arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where she stands accused of being a Mossad agent, a U.S. spy, and of trying to foment revolution inside Iran -- the same charges that were leveled at the American embassy staff in 1979 when it was taken hostage.
If we are finally preparing for an assault on the mullahs in Tony Blair's waning days, these events could paint a picture of impending action. But I've been wrong many times in the past three years about the imminence of actions.
But if action is imminent, what would it be? Obviously not an invasion. We haven't the troops and wouldn't even if we weren't fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I doubt that Blair would start a war that he immediately turns over to his successor.
So it is either a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities (and regime targets just in case) or an attempt to change the Iranian regime.
I worry our intelligence isn't up to supporting a revolt in Iran even after four years of time to do so.
But if it isn't up to this task is it up to providing a target list for an aerial campaign? Satellites can't pinpoint everything.
So if we are truly about to strike, much depends on our intelligence services. And if we do strike, Bush and Blair together in defense of the West one last time, it must mean that there is at least some confidence that we have the spooks to pull off something that can do some good.
I hope it is a revolt of some sort since it is the mullah regime that is the danger and not the precise status of their nuclear program. Even a wildly successful take down of Iran's nuclear program leaves poison gas, bio weapons, and terrorism in general in the mullah arsenal. Regime change is the best hope for ending this crisis and not kicking it down the road a bit.
Perhaps we subcontracted the Iran Job to the British. After all, I keep hoping that the Brits are pulling troops out of Iraq to make them available for an Iran mission.
Of course, even if the only option to a nuclear Iran in the near term is a campaign to strike Iran that simply delays the day and buys time, that is surely worth the risk.
We will soon see if I am seeing phantom dots yet again when it comes to Iran, based on what I hope is British and American determination to end this threat and not trust in the good will of mad nuclear-armed mullahs.
