Posted on 05/19/2008 8:10:51 AM PDT by IrishMike
Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted to a policy defeat when it comes to Iran -- the US has no “leverage” complained the secretary. “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage … and then sit down and talk with” Iran, Gates said. The reality is that fear of certain and violent decapitation is the only leverage the mad mullahs are likely to understand.
But Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, says he knows how to deal with rogues like Iran. He proposes to talk and without pre-conditions and presumably with no leverage. Apparently, he believes his campaign rhetoric of unspecified “change” will capture the cooperation of the hegemonic mullahs.
Obama’s approach is naïve and cedes the initiative to Tehran. Iran may be willing to talk to Obama but count on Tehran continuing her destructive ways. Since last summer, the US and Iranian ambassadors have negotiated in Baghdad three times yet Tehran increased her support for Iraqi insurgents.
The US must accept the fact that there is no non-military “leverage” that will compel Iran to change course. That reality logically gives Tehran a win on key fronts if the military option remains off the table: Iran will have its way in Iraq, at the nuclear bargaining table and in places like Lebanon.
Iran is winning in Iraq. Baghdad’s government is dominated by Tehran- supporting Shia. It uses Iraqi proxies like Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army to kill Americans hoping the US will abandon Iraq. Our lame duck president pledges we will stay the course in Iraq but the presidential candidates are promising exit strategies.
Tehran will not back down from its goal of an Iranian puppet government in Baghdad because that would virtually guarantee the Sunnis remain on the fringes of power and the Iraqi military will never again become powerful enough to threaten Iran as it did in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Besides, a pro Iranian government in Iraq would also further insultate Iran from international sanctions, to which it already seems almost impervious, as is indicated by her nuclear program.
Tehran continues to enrich uranium in spite of a host of international sanctions. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "… is quite prepared, as is the rest of the leadership, to ignore the various Security Council resolutions that require Iran to suspend these activities," acknowledged Greg Schulte, US Representative to the US International Atomic Energy Agency. "We are dealing with a regime that is very determined," Schulte said.
Even if Iran’s claim to a peaceful nuclear program were credible (and they’re not) her determination goes beyond internal programs. Iran is determined to exercise far more than an appropriate amount of influence over the internal affairs of neighboring nations.
Using proxies, the mullahs have expanded their influence from western Afghanistan (Herat) to the Mediterranean. In the early 1980s, Iran created the terrorist organization Hezbollah to advance her Islamic revolution. That organization has become the world’s largest terror group with American blood on its hands from the 1983 Marine barracks incident in Beirut to the current battlefields in Iraq. Recently, it has successfully fought Israel and now dominates Lebanon.
Iran’s imperialism has effectively created a bi-polar Mideast. The May 11th edition of the Iranian daily Kayhan addresses this new reality: “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the US.”
The bi-polar Mideast creates a Hobson’s choice for the US side. Aaron Miller, a former US Mideast negotiator, explains that America “…is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon.”
America’s Mideast options are bleak. The “military option” against Tehran isn’t attractive in part because our forces are already overstretched by two regional wars and the alternative, diplomacy with economic sanctions, hasn’t worked. Besides, our Sunni Arab allies are divided.
Tehran seems impervious to American diplomacy. For three decades our countries have communicated through posturing and exchanging insults. When we have negotiated we have played by Iran’s rules and always come up second best.
There is an explanation for our diplomatic stumbling. Gary Sick served on the National Security Council for three US presidents. He says our problem with the Iranians is the way that nation makes decisions and the Iranians’ “negotiating gene.”
Sick explains that to negotiate with Tehran you have to deal with multiple power centers: start with Supreme Leader Ali Khameini but take account of the majles [parliament] and the office of the presidency. Decisions in Iran are based on the consensus of these power centers which is alien to the West.
Iranians also believe they are superior negotiators. Sick explains that “Iranians grow up thinking their success or personal identity is determined by how well they bargain or that they can out-bargain or outwit anyone.” This view results in their unwillingness to compromise which puts Americans at a disadvantage, says Sick.
Therefore, when negotiating with Tehran you either accept her terms or you abandon talking and revert to brute force recognizing the regime for what it is -- a theocratic, self-righteous state that accepts no compromise.
One statesman who endorses brute force with Iran is former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He uses the direct analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany. “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities general assembly. “Believe him and stop him,” Netanyahu said of Iran’s Ahmadinejad. “This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this.”
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger agrees. Iran threatens the viability of the international community, says Kissinger. The Iranian problem “…will not go away” and he cautioned that if something is not done soon there will be multinational proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Last week, President Bush was in Jerusalem where he splashed cold water on negotiating with "radicals and terrorists" saying it was "a foolish delusion." Quickly the Pentagon’s spokesman claimed there was “absolutely no gap” between Gates’ views on negotiating with “radical” Iran and the president’s.
Tehran must have chuckled over the administration’s mixed messages. “What does incentives mean,” Ahmadinejad asked rhetorically while referring to Gates’ search for incentives to leverage negotiations with Iran.
Iran is winning on all fronts because the US has failed to find effective leverage to alter her dangerous, imperialistic activities. We must either surrender to Tehran’s mad mullahs or find Gates some persuasive leverage but that leverage is looking more like “shock and awe” brute force.
All the while the world diddles with their push towards some form of socialism, the New National Socialists are producing weapons grade material for the A-Bomb that will be used against the West. Whether it’s Israel, London, Rome or New York we don’t know, but it will happen because we have lost our backbone, or will soon do so.
Whoa, hold on there pilgrim. Did Obama already win the Presidency?
At minimum, New York and Rome. They’ve made that clear, going for the financial heart and the spiritual heart.
So let's get it on !!!!
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This isn't such a mystery...
With two carrier groups within striking distance:
(1) Tease them... or p*ss them off just enough to get their tactical planes into the air....
(2) Introduce them to AMRAAM technology and extraordinary air-to-air kill ratios...
(3) Should they launch anti-ship missiles or use missiles ro target any allies or friendly land-based forces...
(3a) Say "Hello" to MOABS and bunker busting 2000-lb JDAM's....
(3b) Say "Bye-Bye" your reactor and centrifuge labs...
Any/all of these engagements....
Which will be over in about 30 miniutes...
Will give us all the leverage we need!
JMHO...
If I remember correctly, Iran has only one major gas refinery. Imagine our negotiating power if their total number was...say...none.
Talk and bravado is cheap and easy. Where’s the action, the last 7 years?
Talk and bravado is cheap and easy. Where’s the action, the last 7 years?
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There is no time like the present,
and the sooner the better !
Gates sounds weak. He needs to rattle some sabers, and then convince his boss, the president, to say “Go time!”
While our President diddled with an intern through the 1990’s, our enemies hit us repeatedly and we did nothing...until 9/11.
The same scenario is playing out now, minus the diddling President. We will do nothing until one or more of our cities is a smoldering, radioactive ruin. It’s amazing how stupid, self-centered, and short-sighted the American electorate has become.
The second one bomb goes off in Iran, crude oil heads for $200 a barrel and gas heads for $5 a gallon—speculators will drive the price through the roof even if the other (predominantly Sunni) Arab nations do nothing to restrict supply. And that’s not taking into account any Iranian attempts to close the Straits of Hormuz to tanker traffic.
That’s what is so galling about these environuts and Gorebots screaming about “no drilling in ANWR” and “coal causes global warming.” Getting ourselves weaned off of Middle East oil isn’t just an economic imperative, it’s a national security imperative. These treehugging idiots are crippling America’s national security in the name of a few caribou and snail darters, and they don’t care. And they need to be crushed...but we have a hostile Congress, a President with no political capital or stomach left to do it, and three Presidential candidates who have bought into their bullshit.
}:-)4
I believe there will be US air strikes on Iran this year. They will take out bases threatening our operations in Iraq and Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Wait, President Bush will do it. He is just waiting for the optimal time.
Bomb 'em and let the dust settle it.
More Shock and less Awe!.
I hope you’re right.
I’m sick and tired of the Iranians killing and maiming our soldiers and Marines in Iraq, and I know the overwhelming majority of the people here on Free Republic feel the same way.
Check out my new tag line.....
Make that, “The road to victory in Iraq is through Iran.”
Our leverage is the Straits of Hormuz. Its all won and lost there.
Close it to Iranian traffic, while escorting non-Iranian traffic safely through. Or, simply start "inspecting" every ship coming in or out of Iranian ports, effectively stacking them up out into the Indian Ocean.
Iran imports gasoline; it doesn't make enough to feed its own economy. And it is completely dependent upon oil exports for its national income. It wouldn't take two weeks for the point to be made.
We would no doubt have to attack and clear its shore missile batteries, and brace for attacks on our troops in Iraq. But the Hormuz is Iran's jugular vein. Put your thumb on it and press, and see if the negotiations get a bit easier.
I think the person needing convincing is Gates. He is in league with many who are trying to prevent any aggressive action against Iran by Bush.
Bush has said, admittedly a long time ago, that he will not stand by while rogue nations arm themselves with ever more lethal weapons. I believe he meant that....and may still be able to pull it off.
I think the person needing convincing is Gates. He is in league with many who are trying to prevent any aggressive action against Iran by Bush.
Bush has said, admittedly a long time ago, that he will not stand by while rogue nations arm themselves with ever more lethal weapons. I believe he meant that....and may still be able to pull it off.
“The reality is that fear of certain and violent decapitation is the only leverage the mad mullahs are likely to understand.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> As opposed to certain but NONviolent decapitation, I suppose. Yea, verily, that VIOLENT decapitation sho do be de wust kind.
Airstrikes on Iranian-Run Training Camps Needed, Says Ambassador
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200805/POL20080519a.html
“I’ve lost 147 soldiers under my command since I’ve been here in the last fourteen months,” said Lynch. “Many of those soldiers were killed by explosive-formed penetrators that are all traced back to Iran, or by Iranian rockets.”
“We’ve got detailed biometrics,” said Lynch. “We check for fingerprints, and we traced those back to where they started. We’re following the money back to Iran. We’re following the munitions back to Iran, and then looking for those people that are trained in Iran as well.”
“I’m very confident that what I’m coming across are Iranian munitions,” he said. “I mean, those are traced back into Iran by machine markings and by lot numbers. ... It really comes down to two issues. It comes to training the Shia extremists, and supplying the Shia extremists with munitions, and oh, by the way, with money as well.”
And, just like in the years before the Nazi’s went to war against the world, they are being facilitated the Russians.
If the Russians/Communists had not helped Hitler rebuild his armies and invade Poland, the war might not have happened, or gone very differently.
If not for Russia and its retrograde communist leaders, Teheran would not be charging headlong into nuclear catastrophe.
Regardless of what happens, I can only hope that Russia’s duplicity bites her in the ass once again.
We already lost our will and backbone. Both Iran and North Korea are pets of Russia and China. Both Iran and North Korea are now lil’ frankenstein monsters with there own arsenals. Kim Jong was CAUGHT proliferating a plutonium reactor in Syria which was bombed back in September of 2007.
We are past the point to be able to effectively stop material proliferation including weapons grade uranium and plutionium from reaching Iran. There are many missing nuclear papers from our State Department. There are a ton of additional traitors also at the CIA and FBI, because we had to be ‘sensitive’ and hire multicultural workers whom had there own loyalties and not to America.
When an American city goes up in smoke due to an atomic terrorist attack, retaliation must also include the ones whom armed the lil’ frankenstein’s. Even better, perhaps we should be growing a spine and telling Russia and China now to deal with these nations and clearly state that any attack tracing back to either nation means the same retaliation given that our nation suffers.
Meanwhile, America must grapple with the underpinnings of our financial system being non-sustainable. Having spine by the time it is all said and done over the next decade or two will occur as necessity creates the will and our country certainly has the means. But I do not think it will be easy, it will be difficult.
Very true.
Since Iran has no problem with arming insurgents in Iraq, I say we smuggle weapons to dissidents in Iran, and let them see what it’s like to have to deal with roadside bombs and assasinations.
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Don't tase me, bro...
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