Unless We Take An Emphatic Stand, You're Looking At The Future
Posted on 05/12/2008 6:08:20 AM PDT by moderatewolverine
Would you take an offer if you knew that by refusing it you'd get a better one?
Tehran's answer to the latest "generous package" offered to end its uranium-enrichment program is an emphatic "No."
The offer comes from the Six Powers, the UN Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany; it was shaped in London in days of hard bargaining between the United States and the European Union on one side and Russia and China on the other.
Yet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is already ignoring three Security Council resolutions and swallowing the bitter medicine of sanctions. And he has reason to believe that time is on his side.
He knows America will have a new president in nine months; the "mad Bush" will be gone. Sen. Barack Obama has said he'd invite Ahmadinejad for unconditional talks, ignoring UN resolutions that call on Tehran to stop uranium enrichment. So why pay now what one may not have to pay tomorrow?
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
“Six Powers”
Powers? Pushovers, maybe.
“No” requires more than merely articulating phonemes.
Won't, is more accurate. Answer: They're afraid of what the rest of the middle-east will do.
What’s so surprising? We even say “No” to our kids today and then negotiate. People don’t want an answer....they are afraid of their own shadow.
We need a well planned airstrike to hit the nuke facilities and more importantly decapitate the mullahs/govt. Hit training camps also but leave all other infastructure in tact. With the govt. crippled but basic services in tact maybe some Iraninans will say enough is enough.
“We need a well planned airstrike to hit the nuke facilities and more importantly decapitate the mullahs/govt.”
I’m certain the Mossad is well aware of Iran’s nuclear activities and are monitoring closely. As soon as the threat is established, Israel will take care of the problem.
Shortly afterwards, we’ll be embroiled in an all out war in the Middle East.
Maybe we should be keeping Bush.
We're going to be embroiled in an all out war in the ME no matter what the time line. The intersection of Islam and oil leads to only one conclusion.
ha ha - nice one.
Let's really pi$$ off the Left *and* simultaneously protest the GOP candidacy of John McCain with the following bumper sticker:
Bush/Cheney '08.
Fine with me. It will have to happen sooner or later and my feeling is the longer we wait the bloodier it will be.
Yeah, the old "principle" argument. It would make a great epitaph
I doubt half the states will get involved. I could see Saudi Arabia shutting off oil supplies, but they’ve seen our military in action many times, I doubt they and others are stupid enough to join a war against us.
The issue goes well beyond that of domestic politics in each of the participatory nations including Iran. It is precisely the sort of thing that collective security organizations such as the UN were built to address - ongoing national programs that are deemed to be a threat to regional security and not simply a matter between two contending nations. And we see a total paralysis of that system for the simple reason that, as Taheri points out, there is no consensus as to either the magnitude or the urgency of this particular problem.
That is the reason it devolves into the domestic politics of the participatory nations. The real paralysis is not within the electoral politics of the U.S., Great Britain, Russia, or Germany, or even within the electoral politics (such as they are) of Iran. Those are an excuse. The failure is within the overall international organization, and there is no cure within sight.
Time is on Iran's side, although it may take a little more time than even the mullahs are happy to contemplate. But that at least appears to be a matter that reaches beyond whether Ahmadinejad will be at the helm or not. The mullahs will have their bomb (and so, shortly, will Saudi Arabia and Turkey). It isn't so much that it is acceptable to Russia and China, it's simply that it's more trouble for them to help do something about it than it is to let it go. And as long as there is an element in this that serves to confound U.S. foreign policy that is likely to continue.
There are two possible jokers in the deck. One is active help by either Russia or China (North Korea has already dipped its fingers into the affair and possibly Pakistan as well) to accelerate the Iranian effort for unstated reasons that appeal to those respective foreign policies; or an increasing level of Iranian meddling in Lebanon that threatens to spill over into Israel such that a more immediate confrontation with Iran appears advantageous (or unavoidable) to the Israelis. The real danger point appears to be the latter at the moment - Hizbollah's antics are bloody and destabilizing enough as it is; those antics expanded under the protection of an Iranian nuclear umbrella may be too much for Israeli strategists to contemplate. They are, and will be, directly aimed at the overthrow of the Israeli state, war by proxy army that is the very thesis of the War On Terror.
Negotiation out of this impending crisis that depends on its current clear winner to back off is doomed. Should the situation in Lebanon turn for the worse from the Iranian perspective then things might change. At the moment that does not appear likely.
Israel will take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities immediately if Obama wins the election. Get ready, folks.
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