Israel Matzav: Not if you do a good enough job of it...

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Not if you do a good enough job of it...

President Obama is trying to sell us on the idea that a strike on Iran would cause the Mullahcracy to try harder to obtain nuclear weapons.

US President Barack Obama said Thursday that no matter how powerful the American military, a strike against nuclear facilities in Iran could lead the Islamic Republic to “pursue even more vigorously nuclear weapons in the future.”

“No matter how good our military is, military options are always messy,” Obama said. “Any armed conflict has cost to it.”

There are so many reasons why this is wrong. First, where are they going to get the resources to recover if all their nuclear facilities are destroyed? Second, who says that the theocracy wouldn't be deposed if there were a successful strike (and they wouldn't need Obama's help this time)? Third, if you don't try, they're just going to get nuclear weapons without any extra cost. If you try, you raise the cost to the. Fourth, unless you put boots on the ground, the only likely cost is weapons and materiel (and maybe a quick spike in oil prices). How does that compare with the costs of a nuclear Iran?

Obama said he hopes the deal being forged in Geneva – which will offer Iran modest sanctions relief “at the margins” of the core sanctions regimen – will challenge Iran to agree to a final-status commitment without a fixed time period.

“What that gives us is the opportunity to test how serious are they,” he said, adding: “If it turns out six months from now that they’re not serious, we can crank those sanctions right back up.”

$40 billion of relief isn't exactly relief at the margins. And six months from now, Iran will almost certainly be nuclear if left alone.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is not impressed either:

At about the same time Obama was speaking in Washington, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu urged again in Jerusalem for the sanctions pressure to continue.

Netanyahu, speaking to Masa participants, said he was not impressed by an International Atomic Energy Agency report issued Thursday saying the Iranians have slammed the brakes on their nuclear program since the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in June.

“I am not impressed with reports that we hear that Iran has not expanded its nuclear facilities and the reason for that is they don’t need to,” Netanyahu said. “They’ve got enough facilities, enough centrifuges to develop and to complete the fissile material which is at the core of an atomic bomb.”

According to the report, Iran has only installed four new centrifuges in the past three months, compared to 1,800 centrifuges in the three months prior to Rouhani’s election.

Netanyahu said the question was not whether the Iranians are expanding their program, but rather how to stop it entirely.

To achieve this, he said, there is a need to continue the sanctions pressure on Iran.

And Netanyahu doesn't need a teleprompter to speak - I've been on stage with him.

Bottom line: Obama isn't going to hit Iran and he's going to do everything he can to stop Israel from hitting Iran. We have to have a plan of action.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran