Next stop on the Axis of Evil Express -- Iran.
Believe it or not, we can thank International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chairman Muhammad El Baradei for finally confirming what AT has been telling our readers for over a year. In a report in today’s Jerusalem Post, El Baradei,
…confirmed Israel’s assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb..
John at The Officers Club has a pithy summary of the niceties involved in dealing with Iran's nukes. Read the whole thing. Perhaps the most important to America right now is this:
Now that the U.S. controls Iraqi airspace, the Israelis would have to seek permission from Washington to move on the Iranians. American authorization would be seen as American complicity in the attack. I suspect that if Washington did give the go-ahead for airstrikes, their attitude may be "we're going to get blamed anyway, we may as well join them."
Indeed. Our only other choice is to try to live with a nuclear Iran, and while we might be able to contain Iran, could we contain a nuclear missile war between Iran and Israel? And why should we want to? The stated policy of the President of Iran is to wipe Israel off the map. The stated policy of Israel is to use preemptive strikes to keep Iran from going nuclear, as the Israelis did to Iraq in 1981.
The Europeans have been carrying the ball on this one for years, but since they don't use their hands in their brand of football, it should come as no surprise they've dropped it. It's been obvious to everyone -- including to the Euro's? -- that the Iranians have been stringing them out, playing for time to complete their work. And now the UN's Atomic Agency has confirmed that Iran is but months away from The Bomb. Great work, Europe, as usual.
Can we count on Europe's help to explosively disarm the nuclear facilities of Iran? Right. Just how long do you think France would insist we sit around a few tables and talk talk talk about it before they pitched in. I'd predict just long enough for their customers, Iran, to complete the bomb. Here's a sample of tyical Euro-think from TigerHawk:
First, understand what is happening in Iran. This is much easier for Europeans than Americans. We have embassies there. We do business there. We can travel there. As senior American officials freely admit, there is no country in the world they have less contact with.
So there's a particular obligation on us Europeans to go there, to look and listen and then to share our findings with our American friends....
If Europe and America split over Iran, as we did over Iraq, we have not a snowball's chance in hell of achieving our common goals. ... Today's nuclear diplomacy around Iran shows us we already live in a multipolar world. Without the cooperation of Russia and China, little can be achieved. [emphasis added]
Now that Europe's diplomatic failure is almost complete, into whose lap does the problem fall? Ours, as usual.
There are only two options I see that avoid the unacceptable risk of nuclear war between Iran and Israel:
Help the Israelis bomb Iran.
Bomb Iran ourselves, without Israel's help.
TigerHawk points to a third option, but IMHO it's much too late for that, and it ultimately didn't work anyway.
And isn't that what B-2's are for? Quoting John again:
Another major problem -one that is rarely mentioned- is that Israel does not have the single most important element in warfare at its advantage: surprise. The Iranians are expecting an attack, and are preparing accordingly. There will be Iranian army units near all of these facilities in case of commando incursions, a heavy blanket of surface-to-air missiles (sophisticated ones) around each possible target, and Iranian Air Force fighters nearby to intercept any IAF F-15s and F-16s. Couple this with the fact that Israel has to hit triple the targets than they did in 1981, at twice the range, you begin to understand the magnitude of the obstacles to such an operation.
The consequences of leaving it to the Europeans, which is the same as doing nothing, might be catastrophic. The consequences of bombing Iran ourselves would be dire. I'll take dire.