Let me talk to you a little bit about Iran.
Of course, I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve been hearing again today that the Iranians aren’t happy with the deal that they seemingly had agreed to only a few days before. In fact, this has been essentially the kind of to-ing and fro-ing and other shenanigans that the Iranian regime has been engaged in for years, first with the Europeans and more recently with the United States and Russians and the Chinese and so on. It’s not pretty. And the question arises, not only will they ultimately go ahead with this arrangement, by which they are ostensibly going to alleviate all of our concerns about their nuclear weapons program by moving whatever low enriched uranium they have to this point processed we’re told, too low to be useful as a nuclear weapon, but if they continue processing it could become highly enough enriched to become one. The thought being that if the Russians will do some reprocessing and the French will then put it into fuel rods and the Americans will sort of provide technical support this potential ticking time bomb can be managed in a way that will alleviate concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon.
I say not on your life, for the following reasons: first, I don’t for a moment believe, nor should you, that what is going on here is a good faith negotiation on the part of the Iranians. I think what we’re likely to see is this kind of chicanery, this kind of bait and switch, buying time for Iran by engaging in what, despite the President’s admonishments, more or less an open ended negotiation. The reason it is open ended is because we’re constantly being told hey if we just give them a little more time, if we just put up with this it will ultimately produce the desired results. It won’t. I’d be willing to bet you dollars to donuts it won’t.
But let’s just say for the purposes of discussion that it will. Let’s say that the Iranians actually do transfer some significant percentage of what we think they have in the way of low enriched uranium. And I use that formulation advisedly because I think it’s almost certain that if they’re prepared to give us anything it isn’t all of the low enriched uranium they have it would be enough to buy them time, but let’s just say again, that it’s all they have, give them the benefit of the doubt of this whole enterprise. If the United States and the Russians and the French become implicated in all of these transactions one thing is certain: it becomes vastly more problematic to take on the military option should it become apparent to everybody that that really is the only way to prevent Iran from obtaining the nuclear weapon with which the regime in Tehran has repeatedly indicated they would be prepared to wipe Israel off the map and perhaps to try to bring about a world without America.
Implicated I’m suggesting in the following ways – the Russians, the French, the Americans would all be now involved with Iran, they would have their prestige on the line they would certainly be signaling, say, to the Israelis to say nothing of the American military: don’t interfere, don’t even think about the military option. Secondly, you’re likely to see Russian, French, and American personnel on the ground, associated with at least some of these sites, that might be involved with this nuclear weapons program. Making them essentially human shields. Again, precluding effective military action as a practical matter from being taken.
So in short, even if you want to believe that the tooth fairy exists, that this time of years I guess we should talk about what Charles Shultz called the Great Pumpkin lives, you want to believe the Iranians really are prepared this time, no kidding, to deal in good faith with the West, I don’t think it’s going to net out the way we hope it will, the way we need it too, to avoid the spectacularly worrisome prospect or an Iranian regime under the Mullahs, capable of engaging in the kind of genocidal violence that it repeatedly has committed itself to pursue.
That’s what I think about the Iranian problem and most especially the negotiations the Obama administration has underway with it now. I’d be very keen to hear what you think.
#tcot
