LFTC readers reading this post should also see my 9/29 post on Israel versus Iran risks & my 9/28 post on the Iranian second uranium enrichment facility disclosed last week. Today's LFTC post, in effect, completes an LFTC Iran trilogy. First read a few articles of note and then check out the link to a major report on Iran's nuclear program and options for dealing with it, released by a major Washington group.
Time carries an article by Mideast reporter Robin Wright portraying a weakened Iranafter four months of internal strife. Washington Post pundit Anne Applebaum urges international pressure on Iran over human rights abuses, rather than via economic sanctions that can be circumvented, or by a risky strike that likely will not hit all facilities; better to try both, but she is on target re human rights being a key to undermining the regime. Soldier-author Robert Maginnis writes that Iran, anticipating stronger sanctions, now imports more than twice its 176,000 mbd oil consumption (of which some 40 percent must be imported). A New York Times front-pager discusses differences among Western intelligence agencies as to the state of Iran's warhead design program. Here is an update on Iran's latest tests of advanced ballistic missiles.
A Wall Street Journal editorial perceives (rightly) "French atomic pique" in President Sarkozy's acid now-public comments since disclosure of Iran's second uranium enrichment plant. Read the language in full, whose general thrust is that while 44 focuses on a utopian future of a nuclear-free world, North Korea & Iran are giving rise to a dystopian present of proliferating rogue nuclear states.
The Bipartisan Policy Center has issued a major report, Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iran's Nuclear Development (75 pages text + 11 pages of Appendices). The report bluntly states that Iran will likely cross the nuclear threshold in 2010, and that Israel is more willing than ever to consider a military strike. Unless severe sanctions are adopted, the President will have no choice but to honor his pledge to do whatever it takes to stop Iran. The full report is worth a close look. The authors summed up their position in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
Bottom Line. We are rapidly approaching a showdown for which Iran is assiduously preparing, while president Obama seems stuck in the clouds. Pressing America to led world disarmament instead of focusing on rogue proliferators and regional hegemons will accomplish nothing. America has shed 95 percent of its nuclear arsenal, which impresses Iran & North Korea only in showing unwillingness to confront present dangers. Whether our European allies, until now irresolute in the face of Iran's challenge, can rally President Obama to step up to the plate may well determine whether Israel decides to take matters into its own hands.
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