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Saturday, September 03, 2005

European Patience

Iran continues to forge ahead with their nuclear plans. The end point will be nuclear-tipped missiles. The Europeans have been trying their sophisticated, big-brained diplomacy to convince and bribe the Iranian mullahs into abandoning this path. The Iranians show no interest in even pretending to cooperate any more. The Euros are distressed:

On Saturday, a Vienna-based diplomat said the European Union felt betrayed by Iran's move.

"The Iranians have destroyed the basis for dialogue," he said.

The diplomats — who demanded anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the Iran game plan with the media — said Tehran could still avoid referral by reimposing a freeze on such activities before the start of the board meeting.

That appeared unlikely, however.


Well, the basis for even more talk was not destroyed, apparently, since even a halt after producing enough uranium hexafluoride gas (among a number of items they'd need to go nuclear) to build one bomb would be good enough for the Europeans.

Sadly for the European big-brained set, the Iranians care little enough for the charade of talks that they won't even do that! They could halt for a couple months, produce more gas, halt for a couple months, and string the Euros along forever.

In the end, however, the Euros know that there will be no referral to the UN Security Council for action:

If Iran is hauled before the Security Council, it, in turn, could impose sanctions — although members China and Russia are believed to oppose such a move. At a minimum, the issue would receive world attention if debated by the U.N.'s top body.

See? All is not lost Euros! You can pretend that referral to the UNSC is tough, yet the Chinese or Russian veto will save you from this charade.

But Iran will get "world attention." Yeah, that will do a lot of good.

The bottom line is that if we are to keep the nutball mullahs, who gave Iran the title of charter member of the Axis of Evil, from owning nuclear weapons, it will be up to the cowboy Americans to use force of some sort.

I continue to have faith that this administration has used the past years to work with the opposition inside Iran to pave the way for regime change. It will be a betrayal if our government has decided that protecting the American people consists of trusting the mullahs not to murder us in mass numbers.

Get on with it. Before it is too late.