LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC - Index 10/2/09

4 posts: (1) Iran: Putin's Power Play Overpowers Obama--Us v. Them; (2) Palin Breaks China--Wobble Watch; (3) Gaddafi Does the UN: Birds of a Feather....--Turtle Bay Tortoise; (4) Passage of a Piano Legend--Class & Crass.

LFTC - Iran: Putin's Power Play Overpowers Obama

While our President sees virtue in extending the hand of friendship to tyrants galore, soldier-author Ralph Peters sees a Putin power play in the West's negotiations with Iran over Iran's nuclear program.  Peters writes:

This is one macro-region for energy, the zone of ultimate control. Putin gets it, even if we don't. Here's Czar Vladimir's strategic trifecta:

* For now, Russia profits wonderfully from its trade, both legal and illicit, with Iran, while the West talks itself to death. Life is good.

* But life could get even better: If Iran's nuclear quest isn't blocked, a nuclear arsenal will give Iran de facto control of all Persian Gulf oil. Putin envisions a Moscow-Tehran axis, an energy cartel that dramatically increases the value of his oil and gas -- the only economic props keeping the corpse of Russia upright.

* If Israel's driven to a forlorn-hope attack on Iran's nuke program, Iran will respond by striking Gulf Arab oil fields and facilities, while closing the Strait of Hormuz. The US military will be in it, like it or not. Oil and gas prices will soar unimaginably -- and the bear will have its paws on the golden tap.

So the worst outcome for Putin -- more of the same -- is still good. A bad outcome for everybody else is even better in Putin's strategy to renew Russia's superpower status.

Why on earth would this guy help us stop Iran? When he hates us, anyway? (It isn't you, Barack. It's just business.)

For all his viciousness, Putin's a serious strategist. We don't have any high-level strategists. Not one. On either side of the Potomac.

The Times Online reports that yesterday in Geneva Iran agreed to do two things: (a) allow inspection of its Qom uranium enrichment plant (the one revealed to the public last week) before the second meeting of negotiators; (b) ship 1200 kg of low-enriched uranium to Russia & Fance for enrichment to 20 percent, for medical applications (maybe).  Estimates are that Iran has 1600 kg of LEU--but this does not include any unknown, undiscovered facilities and their output; it is reasonable to assume that Iran has several of these.  A Wall Street Journal story adds detail on enrichment arrangements; inspectors are prepping to visit the Qom plant; the US is ramping up enforcement of existing sanctions; but Iranian opposition leaders are skeptical.  Proliferation expert Henry Sokolski explains in a nutshell why the West blinked and thus Iran won the first round of the latest talks.

The WSJ editors see "Springtime for Mullahs"in Geneva, with the West conferring legitimacy on Iran's tyranny:

Consider the Iranian offers in turn. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency won't find anything incriminating at the Qom facility. Having lied about it for years, the Iranians now have plenty of time to clean the place out. Iran's experience with the IAEA goes back to the first inspections starting in 1992, which somehow prevented the world from learning about Iran's bomb program for a decade and then only from an Iranian dissident group. A freeze on enrichment used to be the U.S. precondition for talks with Iran. Now the U.S. and Europeans say that in exchange merely for this enrichment promise, they'll freeze any additional sanctions.

Iran has timed its olive branch well. The Europeans are more frustrated with past Iranian stalling than is Washington and have started to hanker for tougher measures. Those demands will now be muted. For years, Iran has talked with the Europeans, using the time and diplomatic cover to make nuclear progress. The Obama ascendency offers the mullahs another chance, with an even more eager partner, to repeat the exercise with a far bigger potential payoff. Expect Iran to follow the North Korean model, stringing the West along, lying and wheedling, striking deals only to renege and start over. In the end, North Korea tested a nuclear device.

On long evidence, the regime has no intention of stopping a nuclear program that would give it new power in the region, and new leverage against America. The Qom news reveals a more extensive, sophisticated and covert nuclear complex than many people, including the CIA, were willing to recognize. The facility is located on a Revolutionary Guard base, partly hidden underground and protected by air-defense missiles. Its capacity of 3,000 centrifuges is too small for civilian use but not for a weapons program. It's a good bet an archipelago of such small covert facilities is scattered around Iran.

Charles Krauthammer smells naivete & appeasement:

You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Washington Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia ... what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority -- and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz, Havard law prof & ace on Israel, calls for disavowal of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that when issued undercut the Bush administration's hardliner Iran faction.  AD, who called the NIE "stupid" at the time (he was right), now adds "dishonest" to the list (right again): The 2007 NIE was issued when intelligence officials knew about Iran's secret Qom uranium enrichment plant!  That is, the NIE's authors lied to promote a dovish policy they favored, concealing knowledge that would, if known publicly, have discredited the NIE's conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program.

As for the American public, it is ahead of Team Obama: a Sept. 29-30 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows Americans well aware of the Iran menace: 71 percent of Americans are worried about a nuclear Iran, 69 percent feel Obama has not been tough enough on Iran, and 61 percent support military action to stop Iran going nuclear.

Bottom Line.  Obama plays checkers  in Geneva, while Vlad the Bad plays chess in Tehran.

LFTC - Palin Breaks China

Sarah Palin's Sept. 23 address, the WSJ editors write, shows a sounder grasp of foreign policy than President Obama evinces.  Palin calls for human rights pressure on China, free trade promotion with singing of free trade accords now stalled in Congress, and for stronger support for US regional allies Japan, Australia & India.  I tried to dredge up a transcript of her speech, without success.

LFTC - Gaddafi Does the UN: Birds of a Feather...

Here is a transcript of the Libyan dictator's Wed Sept 23 speech; the video of the 96-minute bloviation is also at this link.  One blogger offers highlights of what Washington Times pundit Wes Pruden called--referring to last week's gaggle of speeches and resolutions that will accomplish nothing--"the Children's Hour":

1. Gadaffi called Barack Obama his son: “I extend our congratulations to our son President Obama because he attends with us the General Assembly meeting for the first time as President of the United States of America.”

2.Gadaffi implied that swine flu is an artificial form of biological warfare: “Perhaps Swine Flu is one of these viruses that were not controlled and it is produced in laboratories as war weapon.”

3. Gadaffi compared himself (and other disliked dictators) to Julius Caesar: “Once Rome has voted for Julius Caesar to be a dictator and the Senate gave him the authority to be dictator because they thought that dictatorship was useful to Rome then. This is an internal affair. Who can say to Rome , why did you that? That is making of Caesar a dictator ruler!”

4. Gaddafi, an hour into the speech, insulted the General Assembly: “I woke up at 4am, before dawn! You should be asleep! You’re all tired after a sleepless night!”

5. Gaddafi compared the General Assembly to the kooks in Hyde Park: “You make your speech and then you disappear. That’s all you are right now.”

6. Gaddafi then compared the General Assembly to al-Qaeda: “This is terrorism, like the terrorism of al-Qaeda. Terrorism is not just al-Qaeda, it takes many forms.”

7. After calling Barack Obama his “son,” he then gives the President another backhanded compliment: “Now the black man doesn’t have to sit in the back of the bus, the American people made him president and we are proud of that. We would be happy if Obama stayed president of America forever.”

My Take

I missed the speech, but noted 96 minutes + solving JFK assassination (Israel did it--probably the father of one of the 5,000 Jews who stayed home on 9/11).  Better to save jet lag would be to put the UN in Libyan desert, where Gaddafi likes to pitch his tent.  Might have trouble persuading the escort services & limos to relocate, but parking problem is over forever.  I wish he had spoken 96 days, with delegates forced to listen!  And how about making Gadaffi next Secretary-General?  He is perfect choice.  Apparently, he tore up UN charter & his interpreter collapsed during his speech!

The Times Online piece notes that all-comers' record for UN windbaggery is an 8-hur speech by India's then-Defense Minister, V.K. Krsihna-Menon,, in 1957.

LFTC - Passage of a Piano Legend

Recently, Alicia deLarrocha, a true piano legend, passed on at 86.  This New York Times obituary gives details of her extraordinary career.  She was for me, after Artur Rubinstein, the supreme classical pianist I had the great good fortune to hear in concert.  I heard her many times over a 35-year period.  To all LFTC readers with a love of music, if you have never heard her, find her on YouTube and play a Spanish piece  Even Rubinstein, a great Spanish music player, conceded she was without peer in that repertoire.  Her Mozart sub-specialty was superb, and she played other composers superbly as well--even Chopin.  She also edited a definitive edition of the complete works of Granados--her prime teacher, Frank Marshall, has studied with Granados.

The NY Tiems piece presents her view of Spain's three foremost piano composers:

Ms. de Larrocha’s most enduring contribution, however, was her championship of Spanish composers. Although Arthur Rubinstein played some of this repertory, few other pianists outside Spain did, and none with Ms. de Larrocha’s flair. She made enduring recordings of Albéniz’s “Iberia” and Granados’s “Goyescas,” and helped ease those works into the standard piano canon. She also made a powerful case for the piano music of Joaquín Turina, a composer otherwise known mostly for the guitar music he wrote for Andrés Segovia, and she almost single-handedly built a following for Federico Mompou, a Catalan composer of quietly shimmering, poetic works.

Although she was often regarded as partial to Granados — her mother and an aunt were among his piano students, but he died before Ms. de Larrocha was born — she refused to cite a favorite.

“I don’t believe there is a ‘best’ of anything in this life,” she said in a 1978 interview with Contemporary Keyboard. “I would say, though, that Granados was one of the great Spanish composers, and that, in my opinion, he was the only one that captured the real Romantic flavor. His style was aristocratic, elegant and poetic — completely different from Falla and Albéniz. To me, each of them is a different world. Falla was the one who really captured the spirit of the Gypsy music. And Albéniz, I think was more international than the others. Even though his music is Spanish in flavor, his style is completely Impressionistic.”

The obit notes that the great New York Times music critic, Harold C Schonberg, himself once a pianist, wrote of her playing style:

Reviewing the concert in The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg wrote of her Spanish set that “she had a way of idiomatically shaping a musical phrase that cannot be taught — a sudden dynamic shift, a note instinctively accented, a touch of the pedal, an application of rubato. Her rhythm was extraordinarily flexible. Obviously this music is in the pianist’s blood. She invested it with a degree of life and imagination that not many pianists before the public today could begin to duplicate.”

I was lucky that my own main musical mentor introduced me to the music of this great artist and took me to hear her in recital.  My mentor once found himself sitting nest to none other than Rubinstein, at one of deLarrocha's first New york recitals.  They chatted at intermission, and after  Rubinstein said, in a supreme accolade from one legend to another: "I think we had better both go home and practice."

Said it all, didn't he?

LFTC - Index 10/1/09

2 posts: (1) Iran: Pre-Geneva Considerations--Wobble Watch; (2) A Smart Carbon Strategy, Not Green Fantasy--"It's the Earth Stupid!

LFTC - Iran: Pre-Geneva Considerations

As the long-awaited Geneva talks convene today between the "P 5+1" (5 Permanent Members of the UN Security Council--US, UK, France, Russia, China--plus Germany, negotiating with Iran, several considerations should be kept in mind.

First, as Michael Ledeen reminds us in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, American administrations have been talking to the Iranians frequentlysince the February 1979 accession to power of the Islamic regime.  This includes several meetings during the Bush years, in 2006, 2007 & 2008, some barely noticed at the time.  Second, a top nuclear proliferation expert & a leading Iran watcher detail how complex the permutations are of containing Iran's nuclear programand monitoring its progress.  They think it highly likely that Iran has several other undeclared nuclear sites, else it could not enrich uranium rapidly enough to suit its strategic aims.

Third, a Washington Post report sees China too much in need of oil from Iran to join in serious sanctions; worse, Iran, once an importer of 40 percent of its refined oil, now imports only 25 percent, aided by new refining capacity and domestic stockpiling.  It is thus far less vulnerable than it was even two years ago.

Finally, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon says that the latest disclosure of Iranian duplicity puts the burden squarely on Iran to prove they are not violating the Nonproliferation Treaty and applicable UN sanctions.  Ban has now talked the talk; whether he can walk the walk....

Bottom Line.  Iran appears prepared to stonewall the Geneva conference.  Whether the allied nations can rouse themselves to impose sanctions outside the UN, thus bypassing a Russian veto or Chinese behind-the-scenes sabotage, is dubious at best.  Stay tuned.

LFTC - A Smart Carbon Strategy, Not Green Fantasy

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Peter Huber, energy maven par exellence, has just published a short study, Kill Oil With Natural Gas and Electricity: A Carbon Strategy the World Can Afford (Sept. 2009--the full .pdf file is on the right side).  In ten elegantly written pages it presents the kind of win-win carbon footprint reduction strategy that, unlike the "renewables" fantasy of militant Greens, actually can work without imposing economic ruin.

Why the Green Way Won't Work.  The Green program--embraced, alas, by Team Obama--is to rapidly migrate to "renewable" energy--a/k/a alternative energy--sources, to replace petroleum and coal; the latter is to be heavily taxed under "cap & trade" rules, to sharply reduce carbon emissions, and thus ameliorate man-made contributions to global warming.  This Green Way is doomed to fail, for two main reasons: (1) renewable sources of energy--hydroelectric, wind, solar, biomass (ethanol, methanol, cellulosic, wood)--lack the energy density (power provided per unit of physical space & weight), reliability and economic efficiency to replace oil; (2) China, India and poorer nations seeking to promote economic development will refuse to follow carbon reduction strategies that heavily penalize the use of coal, because coal is deemed essential to enable these nations to grow economically.  For rich nations, accepting a heavy carbon tax would be an economic penalty that would seriously retard growth but not mire them in poverty; for poor nations, penalizing coal is literally a life-and-death proposition.  Greens, for their part, regard carbon emissions reduction as life-or-death, to avoid deleterious global climate warming; poor nations, however, simply are not buying this.  As Huber puts it:

Chasing carbon, we’re often told, will get us over oil, too. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t believe it. About 80 percent of the world’s people live in poor countries that are as eager to get over oil as we are—they, too, want to escape the economic clutches of autocrats who rule 10 percent of the people but control 80 percent of the easily accessible oil. The poor, however, have made clear that they won’t be spending what money they have curbing carbon, though collectively they emit more greenhouse gas than we do and their emissions are rising much faster. The people who can least afford to be wrong have accepted the inconvenient economic truth: coal, gas, and uranium are the only practical, affordable substitutes for oil and will remain so for a very long time to come.

Earth to the carbon police: kill oil first. Do that, and you’ll kill some carbon too. Chase carbon willy-nilly instead, and the poor will ignore you, oil will thrive, the oil nasties will celebrate, and carbon emissions will rise, not fall.

What Will Work: A Win-Win Strategy.  Huber starts by pointing out that 80 percent of the easily accessible oil is in lands populated by 10 percent of the world's people, but controlled by tyrants Huber puckishly terms "the oil nasties."  Everyone agrees that the West would be far better off sending fewer trillions to them; Huber argues that if we promptly take the right steps, we will send $10 trillion later rather than $60 trillion sooner to the oil nasties.

Alas, since the October 1973 Arab oil embargo, American administrations followed perverse strategies that delayed for a generation opportunities to replace oil with natural gas, shut down nuclear power plant construction and subsidized synthetic fuels such as gasified coal.  The Greenest energy state in America is California, whose energy costs are the highest, and whose economy is collapsing.  Oil was 46.0% of US energy consumption in 1973, and rose to a peak of 47.4% in 1977.  Price decontrol of oil & natural gas in 1981 helped, but fickle regulation driven by Green fantasies & a focus on keeping electric rates low delayed realizing the full benefits of decontrol.  Still, by 2008 oil provided only 37.4% of US energy needs.  (For the globe, oil provided 46.1% of energy in 1973, and fell to 34.4% in 2006.)

Oil has been replaced in the US & overseas, since 1973, not by renewables--their use has grown but their fractional share of total usage has not--but by coal, natural gas & uranium.  For decades, Huber writes, these will remain the only viable energy replacements for oil.  Since 1973 the US & the rest of the world have been replacing oil these ways.  Oil provided 16.9% of US electric power in 1973, but only 1.1 percent in 2008; for the world, oil provided 24.7% of electric usage in 1973 but only 5.8% in 2006.

Instead, Huber proposes that we "kill oil" as an energy source for transport and electricity (oil still will be needed for petrochemical products, such as plastics).  The primary weapon: natural gas, a fossil fuel (like coal & oil) that burns cleanly, but unlike oil is hard to transport.  Natural gas has one other problem: Its energy density is half that of oil, so that a tank of gasoline that gives 300 miles of driving, if filled with natural gas instead, would give only 150 miles.  Yet the average distance between gasoline stations is only 15 miles, so the incremental inconvenience is minimal.

The internal combustion engine designed to run on oil was for decades matchless in efficiency and cost.  Today, with minimal modification at affordable cost, gas and diesel oil (a higher end gasoline product used in heavy vehicles) can be replaced by natural gas.  Natural gas already powers 10 million vehicles, mostly buses and trucks, around the globe.  With tax incentives for conversion to jump start the process, within a decade from natural gas being made widely available for transport we can wean ourselves off gasoline as a transport fuel.

Our current wheels inventory is 5 cars & 2 trucks/buses per 10 residents.  We use 4 billion barrels of oil annually to power transport.  Replacing oil with natural gas would save us $100B of highway costs; replacing an equivalent usage on the electric grid would cost $100 billion, making the net combined oil replacement migration an economic wash.  Given opposition to nuclear plants, coal is the best bet for powering the grid; California's Green-driven energy costs twice as much for electric power as Indiana's coal-powered grid.  (Nuclear energy is far better environmentally, if nuclear waste is fed back into the reactors, though more expensive.)

Nuclear plants will be going up all over the world outside America; by 2020 a nuclear plant will be coming online every 5 or 6 days.  Since 1973 uranium has provided the only significant global reduction (5 percent) in carbon emissions.  Apropos of the benefit of natural gas powering vehicles outside America, were the rest of the world to match our wheel count, the world would see 2 billion more cars & 800 million more trucks, with attendant vast increase in carbon emissions if oil remains the transport fuel of choice.

Oil's share of US energy production peaked in 1954, and fell behind natural gas in 1970.  We are, Huber writes, on the cusp of the biggest shift in energy markets since oil was discovered in 1859.  Shale rock contains enough extractable natural gas to completely cover oil consumption for 50 years or coal consumption for a century.

Given some $2 trillion embedded investment in our current petroleum infrastructure, Huber proposes that Washington provide a set of incentives to rapidly convert from oil to gas:

To kick off competition this late in the day, Washington will have to take some affirmative steps to restart the clock. By doing that, we might in fact help the rest of the world get over oil—and some carbon too. Promote private and public investment in new links to connect our vast supplies of stranded gas to our trucks and heavy-duty vehicles. Facilitate diesel-to-gas and gasoline-to-gas vehicle conversions. Accelerate the replacement of old fleets with new gas-powered vehicles. Continue developing the know-how that squeezes gas out of the earth—we already lead the world here, and by improving what we already do so well, we can help kick oil out of hundreds of millions of furnaces and engines worldwide. At home and abroad, the less affluent will be delighted to join the rich in swatting down oil with cheaper gas.

An Alternate Serious View.  Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey favors electric/hybrid solutions for the highway, in a solid interview all should read.

Bottom Line.  If Team Obama continues to be driven by Green Way fantasies, we will once again have squandered a grand opportunity.  Sadly, energy policy is an area where perversity prevails nearly all the time.  And the Green militancy of this administration knows few bounds.  White House energy & climate change czar Carol Browner is a Green super-hawk; the now-discharged WH Green jobs czar was Van Jones, an avowed Communist, and a 9/11 "truther" (i.e., wedunit, not al-Qaeda).  The petrodollar bonanza reaped by Saudi Arabia since 1973 financed, among other things, terrorism and Islamist fanaticism around the world.  We will send trillions more under any energy scenario, but will send many fewer trillions if we adopt a natural gas-centric energy policy.

We need not total energy independence, but maximum energy security.  We can import uranium from Australia, because we will be sending money to friendlies who are allies in wars against jihadism and WMD catastrophe.  For the same reason we can import natural gas from Canada if economically efficient; Sarah Palin closed the largest natural gas deal ever with Canada before she left office.

Because Green Way faith in renewables is both economically and environmentally damaging--it cannot supply reliable enough power for base load continuity, and it will spur deforestation-- it should be jettisoned in favor of the far more rational natural gas-centric strategy.  If the Senate holds on cap & trade one ruinous bill will fall by the wayside.  But for a rational energy policy to be adopted probably awaits an administration not driven by Green militancy.  Mark 2013 as the earliest date for launching a better policy, and 2017 as the second earliest date.

LFTC - Index 9/30/08

One post: Nuclearizing Iran: A Pre-Bombshell Status Report--Us v. Them.

LFTC - Nuclearizing Iran: A Pre-Bombshell Status Report

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.

LFTC - Index 9/29/09

One post: IRAN Risks: Israeli Strike & Iran Retaliation--Us v. Them.

LFTC - IRAN Risks: Israeli Strike & Iran Retaliation

Below are my latest thoughts on the developing situation in the Mideast, between Israel & Iran.  The two nations seem to be steering a collision course for a showdown early in 2010.  On Monday Iran tested two more advanced versions of its medium-range ballistic missiles.  These missiles now can be fired from mobile launchers and carry multiple warheads.  Bush 43 official Eliot Cohen sees either a nuclear iran or an Isreali/US military strike within one year, as neither negotiations nor sanctions will induce the Iranians to surrender their nuclear option.

1.  Last June Saudi Arabia reportedly gave the Israelis clearance to overfly Saudi airspace if they promise to keep quiet.  This obviates the need to cross US-controlled airspace.  This in turn prevents Obama from freezing the Israeli air option by warning that he would immediately alert Tehran if Israel traverses US-controlled airspace without US consent.

2.  Israel will not necessarily use air power alone.  It has submarine-based missiles, land-based missiles & special forces.

3.  Iran will not be so quick to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.  Most of the 40 percent of  the world's oil that passes through there goes not to America, but to Europe, Japan & China.  America would face a price squeeze, with oil, in the short-term easily over $200.  But the others would face not merely a price crisis but a supply crisis as well.  The immense harm to the global economy would be blamed on Iran as well as on Israel--although America & Europe would share the blame for failing to push through strong sanctions outside the UN, 5 to 6 years ago, when Iran, still far from nuclear status, surely would have caved.  Now that Iran is on the threshold of achieving nuclear status sanctions, even stronger than the UN would approve (where Russia can veto), are probably too late to stop Iran.

4.  Obama would also be blamed domestically for his hostile stance towards Israel, leading the Israelis to realize that America would not give them real help against Iran, and leaving Israel to act alone if Iran is to be stopped.  And as nearly everyone knows, much of the world would blame the US for clandestinely approving the Israeli strike, even though not true.  Great Satan always will share any blame heaped upon Little Satan (not only in the Islamic world).

5.  $200-plus oil would spell the end of OPEC.  The economic pain inflicted would force Western countries to implement every possible oil alternative, on an expedited basis.  Iran would be a huge loser in the medium- and long-term.  In the short-term its Navy would be destroyed, possibly even its ports.  It simply is not credible for Iran to take on the entire world via such a destructive act.  No matter how mad at Israel Europe would be they would have to wake up.  Moscow would lose also in the long run, because Europe would be given a graphic demonstration of what dependence on adversarial powers for energy does to their security.

6.  More likely, Iran would retaliate via its terror proxies, chiefly Hezbollah & Hamas.  That could inflict real pain in the dozens of Western countries where thousands of inviting targets lie unprotected from car bombs, suicide bombers, etc.  The intended punitive effect would be achieved, without crashing the global economy.  Iran would begin to rebuild its nuclear capabilities, but European countries might think twice about helping the second time around.  Closing the Straits would be in much of the world viewed as a CAPITAL OFFENSE, one that could lead to the destruction of the regime.  Thus, closure is not worth the extreme risk to Iran.  Terror is cheaper & easier, and carries far less risk of massive retaliation.  Moreover, terror would not impose incentives to migrate away from Mideast oil once & for all.

7.  Obama is at zero by now with PM Netanyahu.  Which is what happens when you kick Israel around over a bunch of stupid settlements and play Pied Piper to the Palestinians, supinely suck up to the Iranians, Syrians, etc.  Israel is in a far stronger position to ignore Obama than it was 18 years ago to ignore Bush 41.  No longer an economic basket case, Israel has become an economic superstar--read George Gilder's The Israel Test (2009),, a brilliant book on this topic (which I reviewed for TAS).  The Israeli public shows all of 4 percent (yes, that is a four) believing Obama a friend of Israel, so where is the political price Bibi pays for defying us?  What Obama did to Poles & Czechs will not be missed in Israel either.  Punishment after an Israeli strike on Iran?  Blanket embargo of Israeli goods backfires for reasons Gilder sets out--Israel supplies too many essential parts of the Internet & other high-tech goodies to the world's advanced economies.  They may sell fewer shofars, but that's about it.

Obama, I strongly suspect, has likely thought of little or none of this.

Bottom Line.  Feckless diplomacy since Iran was caught cheating on nuclear energy nearly a decade ago, and tepid sanctions watered down to win Security Council approval, plus an administration catering to Iran while pressuring Israel, have all combined to make an Israeli strike the only plausible way to stop Iran from going nuclear soon.  If struck, Iran surely will retaliate, but far more likely via unleashing terrorism than by taking the desperate all-or-nothing step of closing the Strait of Hormuz, lest the major powers be so damaged economically that their public insist their leaders take decisive action to end dependence on Mideast oil--and also end the regime in Iran.

LFTC - Index 9/28/09

One post: Iran's Latest Nuclear Surprise--Us v Them.

LFTC - Iran's Latest Nuclear Surprise

Here is the Washington Post's Friday front-pager on Iran's revelation that it has a previously undisclosed second uranium-enrichment plant.  A second WP report summarized initial Western responses to the disclosure.  A Saturday NY Times piece recounted details of closed-door diplomacy last week between the Security Council powers.  The Independent reports that with 3,000 centrifuges the facility can make a bomb or two per year.  AP report that Iran will help Venezuela search for uranium deposits--anyone think Chavez wants to make luminous dial watches?

Iran decided to disclose the plant, located at Qom (the religious capital of the Shia clergy) upon becoming aware that the secret was out--the US knew of the facility but had decided to wait until proof positive of its purpose could be shown.  The article also details how ambiguities in interpreting the Nonproliferation Treaty enable Iran to argue its concealment was technically lawful.

Washington Post pundit David Ignatius adopts nuclear expert Graham Allison's description of the Iran nuclear challenge as "a Cuban Missile Crisis in slow-motion".  The WP editors state that discovery of the second uranium enrichment plant "changes the calculus" re Iran, and means severe sanctions must be adopted; perhaps more significantly, the WP editors call re a re-assessment of US intelligence on Iran.  A Saturday WP front-pager adds two key points re Team Obama's Iran views: (1) Sanctions must not be seen as America alone--which effectively gives Russia & China the high cards in the 5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China & Germany)negotiations with Iran; (2) SecDef Robert Gates saying a week ago that "there is no military option" because a strike could only delay Iran's nuclear accession, and also because there likely are other secret facilities.  Fox News pundit Stephen Hayes notes that Iran has been caught lying thrice in the past decade, and yet Obama says "the offer stands" for a path to peace.  Such fecklessness can only earn the contempt of the mullahs yet again.  Howard Berman, the California Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, calls for stopping Iran now.  First HB wants negotiations through year-end, then if unsuccessful (as will  be the case) imposing "crippling sanctions" by passing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (H.R 2194), now pending in Congress.

At NRO, Michael Ledeen notes (sadly, he is right) that Obama, Brown & Sarkozy knew about this, and kept silent until they no longer could, and thus their outrage is mere posturing, with the talks deadline now pushed back to December despite Iran's latest duplicity.  Victor Davis Hanson offers additional evidence of the feckless western non-responses to Iran's nuclear quest.

Heritage Foundation scholar Peter Brookes notes that the reactor is located on a military base--a rather odd spot for a civilian reactor.  National security maven Cliff May calls for immediate imposition of harsh sanctions.  But the Financial Times reports that Chinese state companies are now supplying petrol to Iran, to the tune of 30,000 - 40,000 barrels per day, making up for other companies who cut back shipments.  Iran imports 120,000 mbd via oil trading intermediaries, representing 0 percent of its refined oil needs.

Claudia Rosett sees a UN at odds with President Obama's view of common interests in human progress:

But also out of that alliance, the U.N. was created crooked from the start. It is a grand collective, immune to law, reporting to itself, largely unaccountable and most easily exploited and corrupted by its least principled members. If it is to be used at all, it is a vehicle best used sparingly and with great caution.

Outside the walls, barricades, motorcades and security nets cocooning the U.N. this week, there have been thousands of protesters from some of the countries with dignitaries speaking within. To name a few, I have come across demonstrators from Libya, Burma, China, Cameroon, and, in large numbers, coming in some cases from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, Iran. Most of them are calling for the same things: democracy, justice, freedom. As Obama's presidency unfolds, there are almost surely moments ahead in which, whatever the yen to define away differences and dismiss divides, Obama--and America--will have to choose: The tyrant on the U.N. stage, or those little folks across the street.

Michael Barone sees Obama clinging to a 1960s worldview of America as "the bad guy" in world affairs, and thus 44 is  inclined to ditch allies in favor of appeasing enemies in diplomatic intercourse & geostrategy.  The Wall Street Journal editors see the "disarmament illusion" in Team Obama's attempt to get Iran to give away the bomb at the negotiating table.\:

The Iranians have heard it all before, waltzing along in talks with the "E-3" and now the "P-5-plus-1" (the Security Council permanent members and Germany), all the while ignoring Security Council resolutions and its commitments as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Let's also not forget the boost Iran got in late 2007, when a U.S. national intelligence estimate concluded that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and kept it frozen. The U.S. spy agencies reached this dubious conclusion while apparently knowing about the site near Qom. The intelligence finding stole whatever urgency existed for the Bush Administration to act against Iran, militarily or otherwise, which perhaps was the intended goal. The Iranians got more time and cover.

In an interview with Time magazine this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn't sound overly concerned, saying that if the U.S. mentioned the previously secret facility, it "simply adds to the list of issues to which the United States owes the Iranian nation an apology over." Following the violent protests this summer in response to Iran's fraudulent presidential elections, Mr. Ahmadinejad has kept power but looks both weaker and more ruthless. He makes explicit threats against Israel and he engaged in more Holocaust denial at the U.N. this week.

Meantime, the U.S. and its allies dream. Mr. Obama used his global forum this week not to rally the world to stop today's nuclear rogues but to offer lovely visions of disarmament in some distant future. In the bitter decades of the Cold War, we learned the hard way that the only countries that abide by disarmament treaties are those that want to be disarmed. It's becoming increasingly, and dangerously, obvious that Mr. Obama wasn't paying attention.

Ralph Peters sees this mess headed for (a) a US default and (b) a partially successful Israeli strike that leads Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz and thus push oil sky-high.

Bottom Line.  Iran's latest announcement brings to mind once again a quotation LFTC has oft offered: the late Russian dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's warning, delivered in his 1978 Harvard address, that the West's illusions about Moscow would be "broken by the pitiless crowbar of events."  Then the shock was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  The next shock increasingly looks like it will be a WMD shock.