- Feb 8, 2001
- 4,822
- 0
- 0
Sometime in the future, when you look back on these days, you will wonder why the U.S. did not take direct action to stop the development of the Iranian nuclear bomb.
It could have been done by a coordinated air strike or it could have been the imposition of a true embargo and blockade of Iran. We could even have been supportive of something else, anything else, that could have held off disastrous consequence.
But, didn't the world join us then in navel gazing and posturing in self delusion? For a few months we were accepted back into that oh so warm embrace of those who would destroy us by bombs and by the sweeter suffocation of pacifism.
Will it be so when thousands have died? Or when fallout is settling throughout the Mid-East, Europe or maybe the U.S.?
Did you cheer the Israelis as they attempted to stave off the existential threat they faced or did you watch numbly as the clouds of war rolled across your TV screen?
Did you celebrate with the thousands of Palestinians the death of Israelis, Europeans and Americans? Did you join the conflagration or did you just write your little notes to your friends on P&N abhorring, ignoring, rejecting the little effort that was made to preclude catastrophe.
You heard it explained to you in the press, you had your intelligent conversations and you remember how the hairs stood up on the back of your head when you first heard.
But that was then.
Now it has all changed.
It will never be the same again.
Until the next time.
To bomb, or to bunker? Israel's Iran choices narrow
* Current diplomatic course falls short of Israeli hopes
By Dan Williams
16 Sep 2009 12:55:52 GMT
Reuters
JERUSALEM, Sept 16 (Reuters) - The orchestrated roar of air force exercises designed to signal Israel's readiness to attack Iranian nuclear facilities are belied, perhaps, by a far quieter project deep beneath the western Jerusalem hills.
Dubbed "Nation's Tunnel" by the media and screened from view by government guards, it is a bunker network that would shelter Israeli leaders in an atomic war -- earth-bound repudiation of the Jewish state's vow to deny its foes the bomb at all costs.
Lash out or dig in? The quandary Israelis call existential seems close to decision-point. Iran's uranium enrichment has already produced enough raw fuel for one nuclear weapon, U.N. inspectors say, though Tehran denies having military designs. Next month's international good-faith talks offer no clear relief to Israel, which wants world powers to be prepared to penalise Iran's vulnerable energy imports but sees Russia and China blocking any such resolution at the U.N. Security Council.
That the Obama administration signed on to negotiating without preconditions -- a potential disavowal of the United States's past demand for an enrichment halt -- may only crank up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ticking clock.
"The longer the U.S. delays playing hardball with Iran, the sooner Israel is likely to strike," wrote Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens.
Yet for every expert or diplomat bracing for an imminent attack, there's another who anticipates that Israel will be forced to stand down, hobbled by tactical limitations and the strategic hazards of ruining its top ally's regional agenda.
"Israel cannot take action so long as the United States is sincerely holding a real dialogue with Iran," said Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser.
Should Iran not yield, Eiland said, Washington might be able to persuade Moscow and Beijing to back tougher sanctions.
"But Israel could also end up alone, with two bad choices -- not doing anything and allowing Iran to have de facto military nuclear capacity, and carrying out a military intervention," he said, declining to elaborate on which choice he would recommend.
PLIANCY
The talks' duration could come down to the pliancy in an Iranian posture that has so far entailed defending enrichment as a legal right and brushing off allegations of warhead research.
"If Iran shows a little more skin, then the talks will drag out longer," said Mark Fitzpatrick, non-proliferation scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London..
"If doesn't show any more skin, then I think there could be sanctions by the end of the year," he said, suggesting that the United States and Europe could target Iran's financial sector.
Assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and carried out a similar sortie against Syria in 2007.
Aerial and naval manoeuvres, leaked to the media, have told of plans to reach Iran, though this time the targets are so distant, dispersed, and fortified that even Israel's top brass admit they could deliver a short-term, disruptive blow at most.
Hence Israel's discreet arrangements for living with the possibility of a nuclear-armed arch-enemy -- the bunkers, the missile interceptors, the talk of a U.S. strategic shield and of Cold War-style deterrence based on mutually-assured destruction.
One government intelligence analyst suggested that Israel had passed a psychological threshold by "allowing" Iran to manufacture enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) for a bomb. "We keep fretting about whether they will have a 'break-out capacity', but really they're already there," the analyst said.
The U.N. national intelligence director has assessed Iran will not be technically capable of producing high-enriched uranium (HEU) for the fissile core of an atom bomb before 2013.
Turning LEU into HEU would be an overt breach of international law, requiring Iran to eject foreign nuclear inspectors and recalibrate its centrifuges.
That, Fitzpatrick said, could be enough to trigger American military intervention -- Israel's ideal scenario. But he also saw the possibility of Iran agreeing to a limited domestic enrichment deal, with safeguards against illicit bomb-making.
Israel could still upend such talks and hit Iran -- say, if it suspects a parallel, secret enrichment project is coming to fruition. The Israelis may also want to preempt Iran's bid to buy advanced Russian air defences that could stave off a strike.
"There are three clocks at work here: technical, in terms of Iran's advances; operational, in terms of our capabilities and their precautions; and diplomatic," Eiland said.
"The questions is when and how these clocks might become synchronised for a 'window' in which Israel would act." (Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
Breaking: International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran can make and deliver bomb
VIENNA (AP) - Experts at the world's top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press.
The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency's leaders share Washington's views on Iran's weapon-making capabilities.
It appears to be the so-called "secret annex" on Iran's nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA's chief.
The document says Iran has "sufficient information" to build a bomb. It says Iran is likely to "overcome problems" on developing a delivery system.
It could have been done by a coordinated air strike or it could have been the imposition of a true embargo and blockade of Iran. We could even have been supportive of something else, anything else, that could have held off disastrous consequence.
But, didn't the world join us then in navel gazing and posturing in self delusion? For a few months we were accepted back into that oh so warm embrace of those who would destroy us by bombs and by the sweeter suffocation of pacifism.
Will it be so when thousands have died? Or when fallout is settling throughout the Mid-East, Europe or maybe the U.S.?
Did you cheer the Israelis as they attempted to stave off the existential threat they faced or did you watch numbly as the clouds of war rolled across your TV screen?
Did you celebrate with the thousands of Palestinians the death of Israelis, Europeans and Americans? Did you join the conflagration or did you just write your little notes to your friends on P&N abhorring, ignoring, rejecting the little effort that was made to preclude catastrophe.
You heard it explained to you in the press, you had your intelligent conversations and you remember how the hairs stood up on the back of your head when you first heard.
But that was then.
Now it has all changed.
It will never be the same again.
Until the next time.
To bomb, or to bunker? Israel's Iran choices narrow
* Current diplomatic course falls short of Israeli hopes
By Dan Williams
16 Sep 2009 12:55:52 GMT
Reuters
JERUSALEM, Sept 16 (Reuters) - The orchestrated roar of air force exercises designed to signal Israel's readiness to attack Iranian nuclear facilities are belied, perhaps, by a far quieter project deep beneath the western Jerusalem hills.
Dubbed "Nation's Tunnel" by the media and screened from view by government guards, it is a bunker network that would shelter Israeli leaders in an atomic war -- earth-bound repudiation of the Jewish state's vow to deny its foes the bomb at all costs.
Lash out or dig in? The quandary Israelis call existential seems close to decision-point. Iran's uranium enrichment has already produced enough raw fuel for one nuclear weapon, U.N. inspectors say, though Tehran denies having military designs. Next month's international good-faith talks offer no clear relief to Israel, which wants world powers to be prepared to penalise Iran's vulnerable energy imports but sees Russia and China blocking any such resolution at the U.N. Security Council.
That the Obama administration signed on to negotiating without preconditions -- a potential disavowal of the United States's past demand for an enrichment halt -- may only crank up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ticking clock.
"The longer the U.S. delays playing hardball with Iran, the sooner Israel is likely to strike," wrote Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens.
Yet for every expert or diplomat bracing for an imminent attack, there's another who anticipates that Israel will be forced to stand down, hobbled by tactical limitations and the strategic hazards of ruining its top ally's regional agenda.
"Israel cannot take action so long as the United States is sincerely holding a real dialogue with Iran," said Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser.
Should Iran not yield, Eiland said, Washington might be able to persuade Moscow and Beijing to back tougher sanctions.
"But Israel could also end up alone, with two bad choices -- not doing anything and allowing Iran to have de facto military nuclear capacity, and carrying out a military intervention," he said, declining to elaborate on which choice he would recommend.
PLIANCY
The talks' duration could come down to the pliancy in an Iranian posture that has so far entailed defending enrichment as a legal right and brushing off allegations of warhead research.
"If Iran shows a little more skin, then the talks will drag out longer," said Mark Fitzpatrick, non-proliferation scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London..
"If doesn't show any more skin, then I think there could be sanctions by the end of the year," he said, suggesting that the United States and Europe could target Iran's financial sector.
Assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and carried out a similar sortie against Syria in 2007.
Aerial and naval manoeuvres, leaked to the media, have told of plans to reach Iran, though this time the targets are so distant, dispersed, and fortified that even Israel's top brass admit they could deliver a short-term, disruptive blow at most.
Hence Israel's discreet arrangements for living with the possibility of a nuclear-armed arch-enemy -- the bunkers, the missile interceptors, the talk of a U.S. strategic shield and of Cold War-style deterrence based on mutually-assured destruction.
One government intelligence analyst suggested that Israel had passed a psychological threshold by "allowing" Iran to manufacture enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) for a bomb. "We keep fretting about whether they will have a 'break-out capacity', but really they're already there," the analyst said.
The U.N. national intelligence director has assessed Iran will not be technically capable of producing high-enriched uranium (HEU) for the fissile core of an atom bomb before 2013.
Turning LEU into HEU would be an overt breach of international law, requiring Iran to eject foreign nuclear inspectors and recalibrate its centrifuges.
That, Fitzpatrick said, could be enough to trigger American military intervention -- Israel's ideal scenario. But he also saw the possibility of Iran agreeing to a limited domestic enrichment deal, with safeguards against illicit bomb-making.
Israel could still upend such talks and hit Iran -- say, if it suspects a parallel, secret enrichment project is coming to fruition. The Israelis may also want to preempt Iran's bid to buy advanced Russian air defences that could stave off a strike.
"There are three clocks at work here: technical, in terms of Iran's advances; operational, in terms of our capabilities and their precautions; and diplomatic," Eiland said.
"The questions is when and how these clocks might become synchronised for a 'window' in which Israel would act." (Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
Breaking: International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran can make and deliver bomb
VIENNA (AP) - Experts at the world's top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press.
The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency's leaders share Washington's views on Iran's weapon-making capabilities.
It appears to be the so-called "secret annex" on Iran's nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA's chief.
The document says Iran has "sufficient information" to build a bomb. It says Iran is likely to "overcome problems" on developing a delivery system.
:roll:
Facebook
Twitter