Posted on 07/03/2005 10:49:29 PM PDT by strategofr
The Bush administration has given up on the battle against Iran’s nuclear armament. This is the meaning of Washington’s decision to back the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA’s board vote Monday, June 13, to reappoint Mohamed ElBaradei as agency director for a fifth term.
Israel thus finds itself alone in the ring with the Iranian nuclear menace. Nothing now remains to stop Tehran attaining its goal of a nuclear bomb or bombs by the end of 2006 or early 2007 - except for the extreme eventuality of direct Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The question is what brought about this drastic reversal in Washington? And why are Bush administration officials willing now to endorse ElBaradei after reviling him for four years (not forgetting the row over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction) as responsible more than any other international agent for letting Iran run off with a military nuclear capability?
One answer is that US president George W. Bush’s team now believes time is running out too fast for preventive action to take effect – and not only on Iran.
Towards the end of President George W. Bush’s first term in late 2004, the mood in Washington was upbeat; a second term was seen as the chance to bring the administration’s military and diplomatic objectives to fruition. This has been replaced today by a sense in administration circles that the tough projects, like the campaign against al Qaeda, the Iraq war, the chances of thwarting the forward march of North Korea and Iran towards a nuclear bomb, the creation of an independent Palestinian state and an Israel-Palestinian peace treaty, cannot be resolved by 2008. There is a willingness to leave solutions in abeyance for the next occupant of the Oval Office.
Top officials Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley are therefore busy consolidating the administration’s achievements to date and working on stopgap remedies that will hold up until after the next presidential election. Bush will then wind up his presidency on a high note and the public will expect his successor to solidify his gains.
On Iran in particular, the Bush administration has concluded that turning back the clock on its nuclear bomb project is no longer realistic. Washington is therefore bending all its diplomatic and intelligence-related resources to the goal of delaying the actual production of the bomb as long as he is president.
In adopting this posture, the Bush administration is not operating in a vacuum.
On the other side of the Atlantic, most of the European leaders on whom Bush relied are groping for solid ground. With the exception of French President Jacques Chirac, the European Union in early May threw in the sponge on the diplomatic strategy which Washington had adopted as the keystone of its effort to pre-empt Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
UK prime minister Tony Blair, who is hanging on by a thread after a disappointing general election in May - and not generally expected to last full term, is one of the few British politicians still staunchly standing by UK-US strategic collaboration on the Iranian issue. Blair is making a well-publicized tour of European capitals in the run-up to this week’s EU crisis summit on the anti-constitution groundswell and his assumption of the Union’s presidency for six months on July 1. But his foreign secretary Jack Straw, according to DEBKAfile’s Washington and Tehran sources, has been raring for some weeks now to inform the Iranians that Britain and Europe at large no longer oppose their nuclear designs. He is stopped only by Blair’s objections.
In Berlin, were it not for Gerhard Schroeder’s dire straits and impending snap election, his foreign minister Joschke Fischer would have long ago been on the same flight to Tehran as his British counterpart.
Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi is fast losing points, while Chirac was set back critically by his country’s refusal to ratify the EU constitution. All in all, the health of the European alliance suddenly looks pretty fragile. This renders pretty futile the strenuous efforts Bush and Rice invested in the past year to mend fences with European leaders. Paradoxically, aside from the British premier, the French president is the only substantial European leader willing and able to ally himself with Washington’s effort to vanquish Iran’s nuclear ambitions, defeat Syria and bring the New Lebanon exercise to a positive conclusion.
But Washington is under no illusion that this support is enough for a uniform international front capable of eliciting UN Security Council economic sanctions stringent enough to deter Iran from implementing its nuclear plans. Even if this front was feasible, the prospect of sanctions recedes in the face of potential concerted Russian and Chinese opposition.
The deepening animosities prevailing in relations between the White House and the Kremlin and Moscow’s assistance in Iran’s nuclear projects, including the sale of nuclear fuel and technology, makes a Russian veto of any Security Council penalty against Tehran more than likely.
China too is strengthening its economic ties with the Islamic Republic and sees itself as a big buyer of Iranian oil. Beijing moreover entertains objections in principle to UN sanctions.
The heads of the Islamic regime in Tehran sense a major victory in the offing for their plans for a nuclear weapon. They see another eighteen to twenty-four months’ grace to complete their project undisturbed. For Israel, Washington’s quiet retreat from its campaign against an Iranian bomb spells disaster, the collapse of yet another vital strategic asset intrinsic to the Sharon government’s defense posture.
They may as well. Europe will be affected in the near future by Iran's weapons projects, but we won't. By the time Iran's nukes have enough range to reach us, we should have our anti-ballistic missile defense working well and sufficiently staged, though.
DEBKA Alert!! My BS meter is pegged.
We have much to worry about.
"They may as well. Europe will be affected in the near future by Iran's weapons projects, but we won't. By the time Iran's nukes have enough range to reach us, we should have our anti-ballistic missile defense working well and sufficiently staged, though"
The purpose of iran's nukes is defensive. They make it unlikely the US will try to effect regime change, and allow Iran to proceed full speed ahead with support for terrorists.
In addition, Iran is simply being given Russian missles of ever-longer range (probably) and pretending to develope them. Their range is increasing very fast and we still don't have the technology developed for effective national anti-missle defense---or know when we will have it. in addition, a national anti-missle defense will be hugely expensive.
Correct.
....and they can sell them to terrorist orgs to do the dirty work.
The iranians have said repeatedly that it is their muslim duty to acquire nukes and use them on Israel as soon as they get them Hardly defensive only.
After applying my standard Debka credibility discount to the article, I give it a 1% probability score.
Missile Defense Agency
http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html
Consider the source before you go assuming too much.
Need sleep - save for tomorrow.
ping
Well this pretty well guarantees that Israel will blow them into the previous millennium. America can then solemly inform the glass parking lot which used to be Iran, "We told you so."
Irans nuke won't be delivered by missle ace. It will come in via a container ship. Probably but ot necessarily into N.Y. harbour.
Maybe the U.S. is a punk but I don't believe Israel will sit on their collective asses and let Iran nuke them.
Defensive purposes?
What planet you living on there sport?
Iran has three objectives:
1. Nuke Isreal
2.Nuke America
3. Mideast and Muslim world domination.
Russia's suitcase nukes have shown that a nuke does not need to be big, or overly heavy. Getting one of Mexico's knowledgeable coyotes to carry it across the border in an old Volkswagen and then set it off in, say, Dallas, would suffice. Iran doesn't even have to make the nuke on its soil; it can outsource the job to somebody else willing to be vaporized for Allah.
I missed this announcement.
Top officials Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley are therefore busy consolidating the administration’s achievements to date and working on stopgap remedies that will hold up until after the next presidential election. Bush will then wind up his presidency on a high note and the public will expect his successor to solidify his gains.
Whoever wrote this drivel should go sit in a corner and shut up. Sheesh, he even forgot the token "according to an anonymous WH source" to make this somewhat believable.
That's a bit generous, doncha think?
"Sheesh, he even forgot the token "according to an anonymous WH source" to make this somewhat believable."
This does not need to be added in DebkaFile, since nearly everything they write is from an annonymous source or a guess. A lot of people can't stand them because they have no proof for their statements.
However, I like reading them. It seems to me they generally "get it right". I'll admit, I haven't read them much.
But there's no doubt, for some people, skipping over their stuff is the way to go.
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