To bomb or not to bomb the bomb!

Der Spiegel has a long, detailed and excellent summary on the background to the Iran-Israeli stand-off, to say nothing of the Israeli-American stand off!  This latter situation was exemplified yesterday by the carefully choreographed dance between Obama and Netanyahu conducted before the press.  Oh, how I would love to have been a fly on the wall during their private meeting!  There is no love lost between the two men and as one commentator pointed out, Israel, the only real democracy in the Middle East, has never received a visit from Obama, the supposed defender of democracies.  Netanyahu must suspect that once Obama gains a second term the pressure of public opinion on him to support an Israeli attack will be lessened considerably.  However, in the remaining few months of the presidential election race, the sitting president will be forced to offer considerable support if Israel strikes or be painted a moral coward by his opponents.  Thus, irrespective of the exact state of Iranian nuclear preparations, Netanyahu has every imperative to act before November.

The Spiegel report offers a very good analysis of the likely state of play within the Iranian leaderships - I use the plural deliberately.  Like Saddam, their refusal to open up their weapon resources merely serves to re-inforce intelligence, or rumour, that they are poised to complete their work on a nuclear bomb.  Like Saddam, they may pay a severe price for their unwarranted secrecy - assuming that it is, indeed, unwarranted.

A reader of James Fallows in The Atlantic sends in an interesting and intelligent letter which ends thus:

I would advocate that we must recognize the differences between the present controversy and the precedents [preceding wars].  I see several critical differences between Iraq/Vietnam (in which our intervention was founded upon a false premise) and Iran, in which the issues are not necessarily the same:  1) Iran appears committed, not only to disputing Israel's legitimacy, but to eradicating Israel as a state altogether; 2) Iran's development of nuclear capability threatens the stability of the Middle East in a variety of other ways, such as intimidating Saudi Arabia and other pro-Western countries in the region.  If Iran rejects the internationally-recognized principles of nuclear nonproliferation and becomes a nuclear state, what are the consequences of other countries in the region, in addition to Israel, following suit? 3) Our choice in Iran may not be merely between peace and war, but whether we let Israel go it alone, or we support them.  Israel's calculation is different from ours, both because of its proximity to Iran and because, given the history of the Jewish people, the Israeli government can never again risk their extermination.  Given those realities, are we better off with the risks of a preemptive attack to try to maintain a non-nuclear Middle East, or the risks of a Middle East in which the Saudis, Egyptians, Iran, Israel, the Pakistanis, and perhaps Hamas, Hezbollah and others, have nuclear capability?

I'm not advocating the neo-con approach, nor of talking up a war.  But I think Obama's measured approach rightly recognizes that the risks here are very serious, and that "existential" risk to Israel may be more real than we care to admit.  The real problem, as with Iraq, is that it's difficult to have a serious public debate about the issue when we don't know what we don't know. We won't know if our intelligence sources, or Israel's are privy to information that would make a decisive difference in what we should do.  As with Iraq, we'll only find out after the fact, whether we made the right choice.

Somewhere I read that Washington was taking steps to top up its oil reserves.  Can we rely on 'Dim Dave' to do the same?

 ADDITIONAL:  I just caught the tail end of an interview on Fox News with Roger Bolton, the former American ambassador to the UN.  He emphasised his belief that Israel should have attacked in 2008 whilst when there was a sympathetic president in the White House.  Even more important, he said, was the fact that by now Iran will have duplicated their manufactures and hidden them in secret places unknown to anyone else and consequently any raid would be ineffective. 

 

Comments

[Whyaxye]

This from Craig Murray's blog:

"Then we have Obama on his knees before AIPAC, accepting his marching orders and promising that the US will participate if Israel decides to attempt to launch Armageddon. Are there no US taxpayers out there, unbesotted by religous fanatacism, who find it humiliating to have their national leader so obviously powerless and crawling before the Israeli lobby? Given that it is the US which funds Israel, and not vice versa, it is all very peculiar. Or is it simply that the US taxpayer funds Israel, but Israel funds US politicians, thus Israel is simply a de facto pimp in the diversion of taxpayers money into politicians’ pockets?"

Obama being on his knees probably explains why he has not visited them. Either that, or he's afraid of being mobbed by ecstatic crowds.

[David Duff]

What a tit that Murray is!

[Jimmy]

Is he related to Andy Murray! A couple of tits. Double Breasted.

[Jackson]

As the American Indian might say: "Obama speak with forked tongue."

[David Duff]

Spot on, Jimmy.

Jackson, welcome to D&N. I am all in favour of Obama taking a long, considered view of this hellishly tricky problem because an attack is going to hammer the world economy but he's been in the job for three years and has had all the time in the world to think about it. If I was an Israeli I wouldn't trust him an inch.

[Jackson]

Thanks DD.

[Jimmy]

Iran does not recognise Israel and has stated frequently its intention to wipe out Israel. I would say Iran has declared war on Israel more so by supplying weapons to Hamas, Hezbollah etc. The clock is ticking.

[David Duff]

Indeed, JImmy, and God only knows what will go off when the clock strikes!