Posted on 09/25/2009 1:22:38 PM PDT by Tolik
Where to begin with the “surprise” announcement of a second, previously undisclosed “nuclear facility”? Some thoughts:
(1) This is Iran’s answer to the Obama video peace offensive. This summer we kept quiet while thousands went into the streets of Tehran to protest brutality and a rigged election — just so that Obama’s much-heralded peace offensive, planned for October, could showcase his transnational diplomatic charisma. I think all that brilliance has just been preempted by the theocracy, which quite understandably concluded that Obama not only would not support democratic dissidents in the new “reset button” era, but was increasingly desperate, as the new anti-Bush, to obtain some sort of agreement with Iran by any means necessary.
(2) The IAEA under previous head Mohamed ElBaradei became a disgraced, politicized organization whose first mission is to resonate with anti-American Western elites (note the Nobel Prize given ElBaradei and his failed agency in 2005), and whose second is to appease Muslim countries, on the theory that years ago democratic Israel got a bomb, so what’s the big deal if an autocratic Muslim country does the same? This is no exaggeration; it comes out of the mouth of ElBaradei himself and is often echoed by his supporters in the West.
(3) We have no reliable intelligence agencies — none at all. For partisan purposes, they have leaked false information about both Iran and Iraq for years. During the political wars of the Bush era, they claimed that Iran was “years away” from obtaining the bomb — and anyone who doubted that dubious assessment was either unhinged or of questionable character. Do we remember the much-welcomed 2007 conclusion from the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”?
That bombshell was cited for months as “proof” of neoconservative paranoia and warmongering over Iraq. In fact, over the last decade, we have seen a long series of politicized leaks from the CIA and politicized memoirs from former operatives designed to undermine the case against Iran. The result is that after endless assurances that there was no Iranian effort to get a bomb, it turns out that there has been one all the time, and it is now on the eve of coming to fruition. We should have an investigation to determine what, if anything, the authors of the 2007 assessment knew about the recently disclosed “second” facility.
4) Despite the president’s praise of the UN, trashing of the previous administration, and grandiose proclamations that we are back on the Human Rights Council, there is little international concern over Iran. A few nations walked out during Ahmadinejad’s rant, but most delegates stayed glued to their seats. Russia and China — the former recently appeased by the missile deal, the latter recently rebuffed with the tire tariff — are flush with cash and enjoy the notion that Iran bothers us more than it does them; they have not yet been hope-and-changed into helping Obama with his grand vision on the grounds that he is not Bush. Some look at our president and see a messiah; these two see a rookie in charge of a now-bankrupt country with $2-trillion-a-year deficits that is unsure what to do in two wars and in dire need of both imported oil and trillions in cash.
We can imagine that Europeans’ “concern” will translate into something analogous to their effort in Afghanistan. Britain’s past appeasement of the sailor-kidnapping Iranians, and its recent oil-prompted release to Libya of the Lockerbie murderer, will not create much worry in Tehran about British sanctions.
In short, there is nothing the international community can or will do about Iran’s road to a small arsenal of nukes. What would work — an ironclad international boycott and embargo of Iran’s oil exports and gasoline imports — is beyond Western statecraft. In this new Obama era of morally equivalent multiculturalism, we have no desire to stand for human rights and support the Iranian opposition in any meaningful way; and as for trying to appease either the Muslim world or Russia and China in hopes of getting help from them — well, no comment on that.
(5) We are no longer really an ally of Israel. Most of this administration’s efforts in the Mideast have consisted of pressuring Israel in unilateral fashion. We are reaching out to Syria, the West Bank, and the Muslim world in general, while warning democratic Israel not to do a litany of things. The only mystery now is how far the estrangement extends. In that regard, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s recent suggestion that we might shoot down Israeli planes on the way to Iran as they passed over Iraq is not as lunatic as it would have seemed last year.
I think the script is pretty clear: The world is either terrified or intrigued by the Iranian bomb program but will do nothing to stop it. The Western powers privately hope that Israel will do something, and if it does, the intervention may prove to be a military and diplomatic disaster (which is the bad choice, as opposed to the worse one of allowing a nuclear Iran) that will allow the U.S. and the West at last to decouple from this “rogue” nation.
The main thing to remember about Friday’s revelation that Iran has a secret uranium-enrichment facility is that it is not a revelation.
Sure, the facts are new. They are these: In addition to a uranium-enrichment site at Natanz that international inspectors have monitored for years, Iran has been constructing a facility inside a mountain near the city of Qom. This facility is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards, the elite corps under the “Supreme Leader’s” orders and imbued with that pious zeal for which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is celebrated. It appears to be too small to be useful in enriching uranium for large-scale energy production, but would be suited to enriching it for atomic warheads. It also appears to have been designed with an eye toward avoiding detection. The IAEA has now requested access to the facility. If granted, this would be of some marginal value, but would probably achieve little more than endless procedural wrangling between inspectors and Iranian officials who specialize in hiding evidence from inspectors.
Rather than revelatory, these facts are confirmatory. They confirm, for instance, that the Iranian regime lies through its teeth about its nuclear activities. We knew this already from, among other things, the revelation a couple of years ago that Iran had run a secret program to develop a nuclear warhead (now supposedly abandoned) despite its assurances that its intentions were peaceful, and the revelation in 2002 that it had been operating a nuclear program in contravention of international law for the better part of two decades.
They confirm, additionally, that the European approach to the crisis has failed. That approach was to assure the Iranian regime that no, we really didn’t want to do anything that would be very hard on them, but yes, we would certainly like to give them a lot of money in exchange for their word that they are well-meaning persons.
Most important, they confirm what has been apparent all along: that the Iranian regime is a very serious security threat and is doing precisely what states do when they wish clandestinely to build nuclear weapons. Even President Obama seems not to have a very hopeful outlook, and has declared that the “configuration” of the Qom facility is “not consistent with a peaceful nuclear program.”
That is in truth a forceful statement, amounting almost to an explicit rejection of Iran’s claim, throughout the standoff, that its sole aim is civilian energy production. Unfortunately it is coupled with a diplomacy of wishful thinking and faith in international bureaucracy. Obama learned of the facility’s existence during his transition briefings following the election. Why, then, did we go through this week’s U.N. charade? Why did the administration not instead present the facility — and the regime’s failure to report it at the planning stage, which it was required by treaty obligation to do despite its protestations to the contrary — to Russia and China as justification for placing a new sanctions resolution on the Security Council’s agenda?
The administration will have a chance to redeem itself on October 1, when it and other great (and formerly great) powers engage in talks with the regime. It should use that occasion to demand major concessions, including a guarantee that inspectors may conduct snap inspections at any suspected site, with enumerated consequences for noncompliance. It should arrive having presented to Europe, China, and most especially Russia a very forceful demand that Iranian intransigence on these points be met with highly punitive sanctions. (While the facts are not revelatory, they provide Russia enough diplomatic cover to do a 180 on Iran and back a tough policy.) And if the Security Council remains deadlocked, there is still much the U.S. could do with a “coalition of the willing” to lock Iran out of the global financial order (the Bush administration pursued a similar strategy with North Korea and then abandoned it).
The president also should, but almost surely will not, signal that any failure to attain such results would put the military option back on the table.
For the better part of a decade, the diplomatic establishment has wanted — for reasons self-interested in some cases and in others naïve — the world to think that Iran’s intentions are peaceful. Iran seems determined to prove it wrong. How much more confirmation do we wish to see?
U.S. officials say Iran's nuclear plant is no secret to them
More Details on What the U.S. Knows About Iran's Secret Nuclear Site (What? Bush didn't lie?)
Iran May Hide Nuke Technology in Tunnels (Bush had already warned the UN of Iran's secret sites)
Hunting for Iran's secret nuclear plant near Qum on Google Earth
Ping !
Let me know if you want in or out. Links:
FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index NRO archive: http://author.nationalreview.com/?q=MjI1MQ== Pajamasmedia: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/ His website: http://victorhanson.com/
The logical conclusion to a successful demonstration of an Iranian weapon will be an arms race throughout the Middle East. The Saudis can afford one, of course; actually pretty much any state-sized actor could. Of course, who would sell? Besides Russia, China, North Korea, and Pakistan, that is...
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index:
Just a partial list. Much more at the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
Brazil VP says country should build nuclear arms
And don't forget Obama's friend Chavez: Venezuela can buy them too.
Obama hates whites (except for a few).
Obama hates America.
Obama loves dictators.
Oh, yes. The neo-Soviets in Russia have given Chavez a $2 billion line of credit toward weapons purchases, too. Nuclear non-proliferation is dead.
Krauthammer's Take [NRO Staff]
From last night's Fox News All-Stars.
On Obama presiding over the U.N. Security Council and passing a nuclear non-proliferation resolution:
What did he accomplish? Nothing. This is really quite surreal. As we speak, the Iranians are spinning thousands of centrifuges and developing uranium. The American delegate at IAEA announces that Iran already has enough uranium to construct a bomb. It's testing its missiles, flouting all U.N. resolutions, as are the North Koreans.
And the response of America?
The president of the United States — on camera, of course — presides over a perfectly useless meeting of the Security Council and passes a perfectly useless resolution airily declaring the end of nuclear weapons.
Look, my model U.N. in high school was more realistic than this Security Council. The resolution, as you pointed out, isn't even binding.
And the problem is that the assumption of Obama is that the reason that these rogue states are pursuing nukes is because we have not led by example — rather than the obvious, that they want the prestige and the power of having a nuke.
In fact, the '80's and the '90's, when we radically reduced our arsenals, is precisely when Iran and [North] Korea launched their ambitions and nuclear programs….
We’ll know they have “the bomb” on the day Israel ceases to exist. We’ll know they have many on the day millions of Americans die...
Engagement Has Failed! Time to Engage More! [Jonah Goldberg]
Isn't that, in a nutshell, the essence of Obama's foreign policy?
Anyway, from a reader:
I don’t have the time or skill to write about this but you might have an interest. After reading the Corner’s link to Simon Tisdall's blog, I was struck by his comment that “…the argument about who was right and who was wrong about Iran is hardly important at this juncture”, mainly because he believes the stakes are too important now to focus on anything other than how to deal with it. The whole piece is incredibly contradictory and a waste of time. However, it got me thinking back to the 2007 NIE that stopped the Bush administration in its tracks from taking any serious action. Every Iranian apologist, every left/liberal in the U.S. and many Republican senators (Hagel, Lugar and others) convinced the Bush team that a strong show of force against the mullahs was not wise. I want the American citizenry to know that those who doubted the NIE were proved right. Attention must be paid! (I hope the cliché doesn’t offend you)
And, from another:
So let me get this straight, our crack intelligence community knew about this second Iranian nuke plant a year ago (so it couldn't have been that big of secret to begin with) which means our Wonderful and Gracious Dear Leader knew about this second facility and STILL felt the need to reach out to the Iranians as if they were rational actors who could be trusted along with canceling the missile defense site site in Europe?
Do you know where I can find those "If you're not outraged your not paying attention bumper stickers" or do I have to go and talk to my liberal friends and get one from them?
... and Hussein will decalre martial law, suspend the entire Constitution “for the duration”, and assume the Presidency of the Area Formerly Known as America for life... having achieved his goals to a) destroy the USA, b) become dictator for life, and c) preside over a place that is equal to all but superior to none - a grolveling Third World “country”.
But of course, El Bamadente for life probably would care much if Iran did get Nuc's.
A one sentence reality check.
When they use them on Tel Aviv and Rome, I’m sure Husdein will read a nice speech about a “new age” etc, and his popularity will soar.
When the Iranian sea launched nuke airburster goes off over Chicago, I’m sure his popularity will fall in the polls... taken by horse and rider, since all electronics will be toastados for years...
The non-proliferation policy served us well for 50 years. Now the genie is out of the bottle and isn't going back inside. We need to recognize that we will live in a world with nuclear-armed tyrants who hate us. We need to prepare for that: missile defenses, air defenses, and secure borders.
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