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Friday, September 25, 2009

Preparing to Deploy Even Harsher Words

Don't get your hopes up over this display of faux toughness:

Armed with the disclosure of a secret Iranian nuclear facility, President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain demanded Friday that Tehran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions "or be held accountable" to an impatient world community.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Iran has until December to comply or face new sanctions. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused Iran of "serial deception."

Said Obama: "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follows."

Their dramatic joint statement opened the G-20 economic summit.

Obama urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate the site.


We've knkown this for quite some time. The public outrage is only to make it look like we're doing something.

Iran is seeking the capability to nuke Israel. Is our president seriously thinking that "breaking rules" is something the Iranians will worry much about?

And what world do you have to inhabit to think the IAEA will do much? Give the IAEA a year to confirm what our intelligence agencies have known?

All this outrage over the existence of the secret enrichment plant is one more example of focusing on a detail while ignoring the big picture that Iran is heading for nuclear weapons capabilities. We raise our voices over this plant yet the basic problem is that we are clearly unwilling to stop Iran:

I guess if we don't plan on stopping Iran from going nuclear, these periodic debates we have about exactly where Iran is in the process are rather irrelevant. Iran will get there if we don't stop them, right?


And focusing on enrichment misses the point that if I was a mad mullah, I'd want a half dozen nukes before I start enriching Uranium to bomb quality. Since that level of enrichment is clearly the the trigger for considering military action, I'd want to be a nuclear power before reaching that trigger point:

We're not dealing with idiots. If the Iranian mullahs believe there are red lines that trigger Israeli or American action, why wouldn't they take counter-actions rather than just blindly cross those lines and provide a pretext for military action against them?


As far as I'm concerned, North Korea's nuclear program is Iran's nuclear program. Iran will buy whatever nuclear warheads that the Pillsbury Nuke Boy cobbles together.

Which means that even Israel may be fooled by Iran and miss the chance to stop Iran from going nuclear.

Have a nice friggin' day.