It is happening in slow motion, to be sure.
But we are witnessing how a nuclear armed Iran is changing the face of the Middle East.
For years, US leaders, including President Barack Obama, warned that a nuclear armed Iran would spark a regional arms race.
And this is happening.
As the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens (a former Jerusalem Post editor in chief) noted this week, Turkey signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Japan that includes “a provision allowing Turkey to enrich uranium and extract polonium, a potential material for nuclear weapons.”
Saudi Arabia has long had a nuclear cooperation deal with Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons program the Saudis financed.
Jordan and Egypt have both raised the prospect of developing nuclear programs.
And in 2007, Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear installation built for it by North Korea and paid for by Iran.
In his article, Stephens cited a recent report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board stating that the world is entering into “a new nuclear age” that, as we see is characterized by everyone, including non-state actors, seeking to develop and proliferating nuclear capabilities.
Iran’s nuclear status has opened the floodgates to this era of nuclear chaos.
Also in response to Iran’s nuclear progress, Gulf states and others are treating Iran with newfound deference. Kuwait, Qatar and Oman all seem to be breaking ranks with Saudi Arabia by expressing support and indeed obedience to Iran.
Shortly after word broke in late November that the US and its partners had reached an interim nuclear deal with Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammed Javad Zarif took a victory lap in Kuwait and Oman.
In his press conference with his Kuwaiti counterpart, Zarif said, “We believe that a new era has begun in ties between Iran and regional states which should turn into a new chapter of amicable relations through efforts by all regional countries.”
Zarif also visited Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In Beirut, he took on the role previously held by the US and France when he mediated between Hezbollah and the March 14 movement to form a new government.
The fact that Hezbollah has since reneged on its agreement to the deal doesn’t mean that Iran is weaker than it thought. Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy. Its refusal to join the government means that Iran is now demanding better terms than it previously accepted. Its new terms require total Hezbollah domination of the country.
As Michael Rubin reported in Commentary this week, the Iraqi Kurds, who have been US allies for decades, have now accepted Iranian mediation of their leadership crisis.
All of this newfound deference toward Iran owes entirely to Iran’s new nuclear status.
In Washington, the Obama administration placed the full weight and prestige of the White House on its campaign to derail a widely supported bill in Congress to install additional sanctions against Iran in six months if Iran fails to comply with its obligations in the interim Joint Plan of Action. Over the past week, due to administration pressure, the Senate buried the sanctions bill.
Far from feeling the need to protect its agreement with the mullocracy, it appears that the administration’s main goal in that campaign was to weaken and discredit AIPAC, which supported the sanctions bill.
As Lee Smith noted this week in Tablet, weakening the pro-Israel advocacy group has become one of the administration’s major second-term goals.
AIPAC was the target of the administration’s campaign rather than the sanctions themselves because the sanctions regime against Iran – painstakingly cobbled together over a decade – disintegrated last November. When word of the interim deal got out, the stampede of European businessmen to Tehran began.
This week’s delegation of a hundred French businessmen to Iran in search of deals that could bring as much as $20 billion into the country was just the latest demonstration that the entire debate about sanctions is an irrelevant sideshow.
Just as its leaders have always believed, Iran’s new nuclear status is its economic salvation.
Most observers are missing Iran’s rise to the stature of regional hegemon because the Iranian regime has yet to try out its new power against Israel. With Iran and its Syrian and Hezbollah proxies tied up in their jihads in Iraq and Syria, they haven’t yet been able to turn their guns on Israel. But when the fighting in those theaters abates, there can be little doubt that Israel will move to the top of their target list.
And as Jonathan Schanzer pointed out in Foreign Policy this week, the Middle East is being flooded with advanced weapons that erode Israel’s qualitative military edge over its adversaries.
Hezbollah and Hamas have 60,000 missiles in their arsenals – three times the number they possessed at the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. And as Schanzer noted, these missiles are far more powerful and precise than the ones they fielded eight years ago. Hezbollah’s Yakhont missiles can strike naval vessels within 120 kilometers of Lebanon’s coast. Hamas has advanced anti-aircraft missiles that threaten the air force.
As for the air force, its fleet of F-15s and F-16s is already a decade old.
Syria, of course has retained more than 95 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal. And its forces are more battled hardened than ever before.
Iraq, now largely an Iranian satellite, is receiving advanced drones from the US. There is no reason to trust that those drones will not be shared with Iran and Hezbollah.
In his interview last month with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, President Hassan Rouhani stated unequivocally that contrary to claims by Obama administration officials, Iran will never “under any circumstances” destroy any of its centrifuges.
Zakaria said that means the negotiations for a final nuclear deal with Iran will end in “a train wreck,” since the sides’ conceptions of what was agreed to “look like they are miles apart.”
But Zakaria is wrong. The talks won’t end in a train wreck. Indeed, they may never end at all.
Catherine Ashton, the EU’ foreign policy chief, said Sunday that negotiations with Iran may well go on after their six-month deadline in July.
Moreover, whether the negotiations go on forever or end at a certain point, the result won’t be a train wreck. It will be Iran with a nuclear bomb or nuclear arsenal in its basement, waiting for a propitious moment to conduct a nuclear weapons test or attack.
Last spring, Rouhani gave a television interview explaining how he used his position as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003 to facilitate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Rouhani boasted that they massively expanded uranium enrichment at Natanz, and constructed the nuclear reactor at Bushehr and the heavy water plant at Arak under the cover of the negotiations.
In testimony last month before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Iran has already reached the breakout point where it can assemble nuclear weapons at will. In his words, Iran’s “technical advancements strengthen our assessment that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons.”
Obama and his advisers claim that the US has the intelligence capability to know if and when the Iranians move from breakout capacity to actual bomb making.
But as Stephens reported, the Defense Science Board report rejects that conclusion. According to the board, the US does not have the capability to know when a country moves from breakout capacity to an actual arsenal.
So given Rouhani’s previous subterfuge, there is every reason to assume that Iran is using its current negotiations to move from breakout capacity to a nuclear arsenal.
This state of affairs has grave implications for Israel.
Today it is no longer self-evident that Israel has the capacity to effectively strike Iran’s nuclear installations.
Through deed and word, the White House has made clear repeatedly that it prefers a nuclear- armed Iran to an Israeli strike to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. As it has done several times over the past six years, the Obama administration can be expected to continue to use the many means it has at its disposal to prevent Israel from launching such an attack.
Moreover, with each passing day Iran’s nuclear sites become more and more difficult to attack successfully. And Iran’s technological capabilities have vastly expanded over the past decade. Today Iran can replace damaged or destroyed centrifuges much faster than it could in the past.
Iran’s ally North Korea has also expanded its nuclear capabilities and its arsenal. Pyongyang is ready and willing to sell Iran replacements for any nuclear components that might be destroyed in a military strike.
Finally, Iran recognizes the implications of growing European and US hostility toward the Jewish state. It knows that if Israel openly attacks Iran and sets back its nuclear weapons program, the EU and the US will punish Israel, and express sympathy with Iran, and so give the Iranians cover to rapidly rebuild any lost capabilities.
Iran’s achievement of breakout capacity and seemingly unfettered path to a bomb in the basement, and its consequent rise to the position of regional hegemony, is the greatest Israeli foreign policy failure since the 1993 Oslo Accord with the PLO.
Our leaders on the Right failed us. They were too weak to pay the diplomatic price for attacking Iran’s nuclear installations when Israel could have easily set the program back for a decade or more.
Our leaders on the Left failed us. Their messianic faith that America will protect us from Iran if we just surrender to Palestinian terrorists lulled us to sleep at the watch when we needed to be most vigilant.
Today, due to the administration’s full-bore assault on Israel’s right to defensible borders and to our historic heartland, we have devoted ourselves to a fruitless and irrelevant discussion of how much of our land and our security we need to give up to appease the Palestinians who will never, ever be appeased.
Our leaders continue to hope that a proper mix of concessions to the PLO will convince Obama to stand by his empty pledge to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Obama will do no such thing. Concessions to the Palestinians will weaken us militarily and politically. And they will give us no advantage over Iran. While it is important to deal with the administration’ hostile insistence on reciprocated Israeli concessions to the PLO, we cannot ignore Iran.
Iran either has a bomb already or is about to get one. And, having been abandoned by the White House, we face this threat alone.
We must now, immediately and consistently, do whatever we can still do to diminish the Iranian threat.
Caroline Glick’s new book, The Israeli Solution: A One- State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, is due out on March 4.
yamit82 Said:
Experience never fails!!!!! He is weather in just the correct way Sugar,not wrinkled!!!!! He plays the piano, good hands, yawl.
@ yamit82:
We just had a Deer Parade go down the road,4 does and 2 bucks.
yamit82 Said:
Of course
yamit82 Said:
Of course
It’s not lack of planing that is the problem,it’s lack of will! Remember the story of “The Little Red Hen”
honeybee Said:
he is an old winkled guy who probably needs Viagra.
@ LtCol Howard:
Dr Kedar – Nuclear Iran
Before Israel, Iran using Nukes as a threat… they will take control of the Gulf States, the Saudis, and Afghanistan before Israel.
The Big Satan before the Little Satan.
He didn’t say it but here is my logic. Israel may have a credible ICBM defense maybe not 100% or even 50% effective??? But they can’t know what their effectiveness is. we have coming on line two systems in addition to the Arrow 2 the Arrow 3 and David’s Sling. To attack Israel and to succeed they would have to beat our anti missile defenses. Therefore their missile attack would have to be salvos of at least 10-20 including dummies in the hope some few will get through. But they can’t be sure and they believe that if they are not successful Israel will in retaliation wipe Iran off the map including their regime along with Mecca and Medina and all of their oil fields. I don’t believe they are suicidal or stupid. Israel’s Jericho’s are hardened against such a nuke attack and so are our Submarines with nuclear cruise missiles, a 2nd strike option.
They would have to risk not succeeding against Israel and being incinerated for their efforts. Kedar and I believe they will use first their nukes as an umbrella to gain regional hegemony where they control 57% of the worlds energy resources and by price manipulation destroy the western economies and China’s as well. They believe with good reason that once they have enough nukes and a credible delivery system nobody would dare challenge them militarily not even America.
Kedar says he believes the world wants Israel to do their dirty work for them and for that reason alone he is against Israel trying.
He believes that if America and the west gave Iran 1 week to load all of their nuclear program on ships to be sent to NATO for example, or they will be bombed out of existence and if the threat was believable to them they would agree. He might be correct.
the phoenix Said:
LOVE THAT MAN,bet his participles never dangle!!!!!
@ honeybee:
http://youtu.be/mevxenJ6Mtc
😉
yamit82 Said:
Obama is a “fancy pants” ditherer. He is the kid you who you held up for his lunch money even through you had a nice home packed lunch of your own. He is afraid to make a desision for fear of the consequesces that may fall on him. The Major and Lt.Col may post and fuss all they wish. Blame Reagan,he’s the one that could have taken out Iran,blame that idiot Carter he gave Iran power. Now it wil take someone with USA population behind him and balls enought to it. In other words Clint Eastwood, or the Lone Ranger.
watsa46 Said:
And Dalrin, when did you make this brilliant metaphysicla discovery???????
@ yamit82: I WATCHED THE LINKS YOU SUGGESTED.. I knew Sam Cohen. (He passed away some years ago. )
@ Mladen Andrijasevic:Our concern that the “rational decision “of the supreme leader will be to use a nuclear weapon against Israel (as Foreign Policy magazine showed that Saddam Hussein was “rational” in all his decisions).
Interestingly, all our middle east participants rated the probability of our “doomsday scenario”, presented below this article, as high. However, most of our State Department/intelligence types rated the probability as “low”.
A FRIGHTENING SCENARIO FROM A RECENT SIMULATION/EXERCISE AS TO WHAT A BESIEGED , TOPPLING , EXTREMIST ISLAMIC IRANIAN REGIME WOULD DO AS TO THEIR TERMINAL ACT ON STAGE.
IRAN SCENARIO …IT IS SPRING OF 2015.
As a majority of Middle East analysts predicted, Iran was able to develop nuclear weapons. And by spring of 2014 Iran had somewhere between 5 and 10 operational weapons. {Delivery of these weapons was never a problem. Aircraft delivery had been solved in 1945. Trucks and ships were always possible. Missile range had been adequate since 2012. Warhead development may have been completed undetected. Iran and Hezbollah had violated Israel’s territory with drones.}
At that point, bombing Iran would be fruitless since it would not destroy Iran’s nuclear capability, but would invite retaliation.
Whether through concern about retaliation (assured mutual destruction theory) or rational calculations“ or for some other reason, Iran had not struck Israel.
Regime change which had been a US and Western objective now appeared to be happening and the ruling Iranian regime appeared isolated and likely to be overthrown.
The question on everybody’s mind became: “ If the Iranian regime is in danger of being overthrown, will they use their nuclear weapons against Israel?”
The temptation had always been there, but now the logic of such a strike—a jihadist Hail Mary—might become persuasive.
If the mullahs struck Israel would Israel strike back with its own nuclear weapons:? … Or would the United States and the rest of the world say to Israel: “Whom would you be killing, except millions of Iranians also struggling to topple the regime? ” [And wouldn’t this statement be correct?]
And assume the regime, at its dying breath, managed at least to fulfill its core ambition to destroy the Jewish state: Would it not be a worthy capstone for the Islamic Republic? Suicide is a sin, but this would be an act of martyrdom on a world-historical scale.
@ honeybee:
Treasury Dept Accuses Iran of Working with Al Qaeda: Obama Rejects Sanctions
by Daniel Greenfield
This is coming from inside Obama’s own administration. It’s not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld talking. And still Obama insists on pandering to Iran, letting it go nuclear and accusing skeptics of seeking war.
This is Iran’s Get Out of Jail Free card for everything. “You’re damaging the diplomatic effort.” This is why Iran is playing out the diplomatic game because it knows that the Chamberlains don’t have the guts to end the diplomatic hoax no matter what it does.
The Iranian government is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s closest military and diplomatic ally. U.S., European and Arab governments have repeatedly charged Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, of deploying soldiers to Syria to bolster Mr. Assad’s regime, an accusation Iran has denied.
U.S. officials, however, have intermittently accused Tehran and the IRGC of colluding with Sunni militant groups, who historically are enemies of Tehran’s Shiite government, but also are fighting the U.S. and its allies.
On Thursday, the Treasury Department sanctioned three IRGC officers for allegedly providing support for Afghanistan’s Taliban, a hard-line Sunni group.
The Obama administration charged that Tehran has allowed senior al Qaeda members operating from Iranian soil to facilitate the movement of Sunni fighters into Syria.
The allegation by the Treasury Department on Thursday would suggest that elements of Iran’s government or military were at least tacitly supporting the opposing sides of Syria’s civil war.
Iranian officials denied the accusations, saying Washington was harming diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the international standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Nothing to see here. Just the diplomats of Iran hard at work.
Raised Muslim and embracing far left ideology is a highly toxic cocktail. But he did not initiate the relationship btw the US and fanatical Islamists. This goes back more than 100 years ago. The “greedy” cared only about their greed!
the phoenix Said:
I’am a bee scorned!!!!!!!!!!! Que triste
@ honeybee:
Dear hb,
When almost ALL posts go unanswered, I do not attribute it to coincidence, but intention…. 😉
Nonetheless, the points/questions I DO raise/ask in my specifically addressed comments, DO get addressed/answered (albeit addressed to other posters, or as a general comment) and truly, that is what I am after.
No hard feelings.
🙂
@ yamit82:
It doen’t matter what links you provide,the USA will dither about until a crises pushes the USA into action. Its the human condition. The people who rule in this world are those see a problem and promply act. Very rare.
@ LtCol Howard:
Always glad to read your post!
the phoenix Said:
I told you,the cosmos hates you!!!!!! Too nice!!!
the phoenix Said:
Don;t waste your post,Yamit82 NEVER listens to anyone. He’s the personification of Hutzpah!!!!! He’s a finely devoped adiction!
@ yamit82:
Sam Cohen advised to strike “tomorrow morning”
That interview was some 1000+ mornings ago…. And the (apparent) situation seems unchanged.
If anything, it seems that the goi is doing EVERYTHING they can to avoid just such an event.
Do you see anything different happening or about to happen?
What is WRONG with this ‘captcha’ thing?
It insists that 3-1 is not 2…..
And as a result, a comment to yamit cannot go through … 🙁
@ LtCol Howard:
These may be the most important links you will ever view and read
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=3647
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_QFXGxw6Tk
In his interview last month with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, President Hassan Rouhani stated unequivocally that contrary to claims by Obama administration officials, Iran will never “under any circumstances” destroy any of its centrifuges.In addition are Iran’s extensive and very successful development and testing activities relating to ballistic missile propulsion, ballistic missile guidance, and warheads specifically designed to carry and detonate nuclear weapons.
Iran’s nuclear chief, Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, in Tehran, in a two-part interview with semi-official state news television Press TV on Tuesday declared that rather than being dismantled, “The entire nuclear activity of Iran is going on.
Salehi told the interviewer that the recent Geneva agreement with world powers allows Iran to switch over ALL of its centrifuges working to make 20 percent enriched uranium to produce to the 5 per cent threshold. “The nuclear facilities are functioning; our enrichment is proceeding, it’s doing its work, it’s producing the 5 percent enriched uranium and those centrifuges that stopped producing the 20 percent will be producing 5 percent enriched uranium. In other words our production of 5 percent [uranium] will increase. The entire nuclear activity of Iran is going on.”
You can come and see whether our nuclear sites, nuclear equipment and nuclear facilities are dismantled or not. The only thing we have stopped and suspended – and that is voluntarily – is the production of 20 percent enriched uranium and that’s it.”
He said the agreement does not impact Iran’s ability to develop even more efficient centrifuges, which it is working on now, and would test run for two years before putting them into mass production.
Watch the Press TV interview (part 1 and part 2) below:
Press TV’s Interview with
Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, Head of the Atomic Energyganization of Iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExBfdO-Tob0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T51nrSv8OkY
@ Yidvocate:
Although I have not read her new book yet, I understand her one state solution contemplates absorbing all the fakestinians into Israel as citizens of the state. That would be a disaster of catastrophic proportions
@ yamit82:
Pentagon Study Vindicates Israel on Iran Nukes
The Defense Science Board has concluded that American intelligence agencies are ill equipped to detect when foreign powers are developing nuclear weapons or ramping up their existing arsenals.
2 points by the author should resonate with most of the readers of this blog”
Israel is left alone.
There is no diplomatic option
Pentagon: ‘US Would Have No Clue If Iran Got Nuke’
New Pentagon report reveals US unable to detect nations acquiring nuclear bomb, expert notes India example – ‘we had no warning whatsoever.’
As much as I admire and value Caroline for her incisive analysis and correct thinking, most of her articles pose cogent questions but rarely offer answers or solutions. This one is typical.
Although I have not read her new book yet, I understand her one state solution contemplates absorbing all the fakestinians into Israel as citizens of the state. That would be a disaster of catastrophic proportions.
So I guess she’s not so good at answers or solutions after all and is best at refraining from offering any.
Question 5 of the Kerry Middle East Competency quiz:
http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/a-mini-5-1-question-quiz-for-secretary.html
What do Twelver Shi’a belonging to the Hujetieh group believe in?
Answer:
Bernard Lewis about Hujetieh:
There is one other point, which I think I will mention if you would allow me, and that is what I would call the apocalyptic aspect. In Islam, as in Judaism , as in Christianity, there is a scenario for the End of Time. When the final battle takes place between the forces of good and the forces of evil, of which for Christians, Jews and Muslims alike means between us and them, the us being differently defined and them being more or less the same. In the Muslim view, no, let me correct that, in the view of a certain section within the Iranian leadership, it is not by any means unanimous, that time is NOW. For a group called the Hujtieh whose main leader is Ahmadinejad, the apocalyptic time has come. The Mahdi, the Muslim Messiah is already here. The final battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil has already begun
That is extremely important for another, not immediately related reason. That is the question of Iran’s nuclear weapon. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons right through the Cold War, but neither side used them because both sides were aware that if either one did the other would do the same and this would lead to mutual destruction – MAD as it was known at the time. Mutual assured destruction was the main deterrent preventing the use of nuclear weapons by the Soviets For most of the Iranian leadership MAD would work as a deterrent, but for Ahmadinejad and his group with their apocalyptic mindset mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent, it’s an inducement and they believe that the End of Time has come, the final battles are already beginning and the sooner the better, so that the good can go and enjoy the delights of paradise and the divine brothel in the sky and the wicked, that means all of us here, will go to eternal damnation..