October 19, 2011, 6:01 PM
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The Obama administration's response to Iran's plan to bring its 32-year-old war against the United States to the US capital is the newest confirmation that President Barack Obama has no intention in taking action to remove or diminish the threat Iran poses to the US, its allies and interests.
Last week, the Justice Department revealed that law enforcement officials foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US and to blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington.
They arrested an Iranian-American dual national who is a relative of a senior terror mastermind serving in Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The dual national, Mansoor Arbabsiar, contacted an American undercover agent whom he believed worked for one of Mexico's drug cartels and asked for the cartel to assist Iran in carrying out the plot.
Iran declared war on the US in 1979. Since then, it has used its terrorist arms in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region to murder Americans. It has used its terror arms in Latin American to target US interests and allies. And now it has been caught in the act of recruiting agents to assist it in carrying out acts of terror in Washington, DC.
Following the Justice Department's announcement, the Obama administration proclaimed it intends to "isolate" Iran in the international community. While it sounds like a serious plan, particularly when it is stated assertively by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the fact is that this is not a serious policy at all.
Indeed, upon reflection, it is clear that the announced aim of isolating Iran involves doing nothing to retaliate against Iran for its aggression.
There are three reasons that this is the case. First, by placing the burden for punishing Iran on the nebulous "international community," Obama is signaling that under his leadership, America does not view operational plans to attack US interests on American soil as something that America should deal with.
In Iran's case, the "international community" means Russia and China. The two UN Security Council-veto-wielding regimes have collaborated with Iran on its illicit activities generally and its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles specifically. Russia and China have blocked all serious sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. Their active defense of Iran at the Security Council renders it a foregone conclusion that the UN will never authorize military force to be used against Iran's nuclear installations.
Since Russia and China prefer to see Iran acquire nuclear weapons than authorize any UN measure that could prevent or slow down this development, it is hard to imagine either government suddenly agreeing to isolate Iran just because it planned to kill the Saudi ambassador and blow up a couple of foreign embassies in Washington.
THE SECOND reason it is reasonable to conclude that the administration is being disingenuous in its tough talk about Iran is because the administration tells us it is being disingenuous. Speaking to The New York Times over the weekend, several senior White House officials said they were considering options to steeply escalate the US's sanctions against Iran.
Specifically, they said the administration is mulling the prospect of barring financial transactions with Iran's central bank. They also said that the White House is thinking about barring contact with Iran's Revolutionary Guards-owned company that controls the sale of Iranian oil and natural gas to foreign countries.
Then again, administration sources also told the Times that they aren't certain that the sanctions are such a good idea. If the US blocks the only viable path toward purchasing Iranian gas and oil and otherwise makes it impossible for Iran to sell its natural resources, they warned, the US would cause the market price of both commodities to rise sharply, thus harming its own economy.So probably the US won't ratchet up sanctions on the regime after all.
Then there is the notion of military retaliation. After the news broke of the foiled terror plot, Obama let it be known that the "military option is on the table." But then, he didn't specify the goal of the military option or its target. Is the US developing an option for attacking Iran's nuclear weapons facilities? Is it preparing to attack Iranian regime targets in an effort to topple the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world? Is it planning a military strike against IRGC targets in Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan?
It is highly unlikely that the US is planning to undertake any of these missions. Over the weekend, the US announced that its troops would be fully removed from Iraq in January. Obama has insisted on withdrawing his surge troops from Afghanistan despite the Taliban resurgence in the country.
As for attacking regime targets, it is hard to imagine that after siding with the mullahs against democracy protesters in the aftermath of the stolen 2009 presidential elections, Obama would decide to call suddenly for the regime to be replaced - let alone take military action to advance that goal.
THEN THERE is the nuclear issue. Since Russia's and China's support for Iran at the Security Council rules out any option of a Security Council-sanctioned attack in Iran's nuclear installations, it is fairly obvious that the administration will take no military action whatsoever against Iran's nuclear program. This is, after all, the administration that believes the US must receive UN approval for any military operation.
Obama's effectively pro-ayatollah policies have caused him to treat the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran as essentially identical to the threat posed to the US by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As nuclear proliferation scholar Avner Cohen explained in an interview with The Jerusalem Post earlier this month, the administration is committed to a policy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Cohen explained, "The US wants itself, and also Israel, to be engaged in a thorough effort to contain Iran - like the way the Soviet Union was contained during the Cold War - meaning that for all practical purposes and short of extreme circumstances, both the US and Israel would have to put aside the military option and instead work to contain Iran."
According to Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, the US will have an opportunity to put its nuclear containment policy toward Iran into action in the near future. In an interview two weeks ago with Der Spiegel, Heinonen asserted that within two years, the Iranians will have sufficient quantities of plutonium to produce atomic bombs. Within a year, they will have enough highly enriched uranium to have what is referred to as "break-out capacity," meaning they can produce nuclear bombs at will.
The problem with Obama's non-response to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its terror plot to attack Washington is that the Iranian regime is nothing like the Soviet Union. The regime whose first foray into international diplomacy involved taking a knife to the nation-state system by attacking the US embassy and holding its personnel hostage is not a strategic equivalent of the Soviet Union. A regime that sent 100,000 of its children to their deaths during the Iran-Iraq War by dispatching them to the battlefields as human mine sweepers is not a regime that can be contained through mutual assured destruction as the Soviets were.
Iran's war against the US is a war that only Iran is fighting. And if something doesn't change very quickly, it is clear that since Iran is the only side fighting the war, Iran is the only side that will win the war.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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It is puzzling why nobody seems to take any notice of what scholars of Islam are saying on Iran. Both Bernard Lewis of Princeton University and Raphael Israeli of Hebrew University believe the Iran cannot be deterred. Yet their views are either unknown among the general public, or dismissed as farfetched. Western secular minds just cannot grasp the depth of conviction of the Shi'a faithful.
MAD Deterrence and Mad Leaders By Raphael Israeli http://madisdead.blogspot.com/
"it has used its terrorist arms in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region to murder Americans" - Iran has been quite openly - not to say demonstratively -killing Americans in Iraq for years now. The moment US leaves Iraq it'll become an Iranian protectorate. Every American soldier stationed in Iraq knows all this, but the US mainstream media as well as the presidents, both Bush and Obama, have worked hard to obscure the war Iran has declared on their country. Similar efforts were made by the West to play down the threat from Hitler's Germany for half the decade leading to WWII.
What annoys me is what I heard at Frank Gaffneys radio that the 3 retired generals admiral Anthony Charles Zinni, Falcon and John Philip CNN Abizaid said NOT to "dismantle" Irans atombomb facility. http://www.securefreedomradio.org/2011/10/17/the-arab-spring-is-dead/
According to the BHO worldview, since there's nothing exceptional about America, there's no pressing justification to do what's necessary to protect and defend Western civilization from those intent on crippling and eventually destroying it. Though in all fairness, the net effect of the Bush admin.'s efforts to "contain" Iran amounted to very little, if anything. Even more discouraging, I've yet to identify a candidate of presidential calibur who's demonstrated the willingness to do what it takes to neutralize the Iranian threat. Good article, Caroline.
Obozo is a muslim idiot...I know what the warped minds say-he's brilliant..yeah, right....like the way the word Genius is bandied about. Obozo is an idiot because of the lack of reality that motivates his thinking and behavior. He's never done anything except agitate and spout idealism in campus cafeterias. And now the fools in the US have put him in charge at a time when Iran will go nuclear. And don't count on Netanyahu doing anything to stop Iran..the recent foolish deal with Hamas should indicate that he is just an inflated weak leader who'll do nothing but rely on empty US guarantees. With a nuclear Iran it'll be like Russian Roulette..."lots of fun!"
america and israel should strike iran hard and destroy their airforce,nuclear instalations,and the mullah house when it is full.then destroy their oil fields and see how they like starving.we need to wake up to the fact that we are at war with islam.
The reason Russia and China are protecting the Iranian nuclear program is that it changes the balance of power and weakens Americas interests while at the same time strengthening their influence.
Being able to strike or threaten the west via proxy is something that the Russians and Chinese want. It also gives them tremendous leverage in international affairs.
The Obama administration also sees the real possibility of disarming Israel of its nuclear arsenal being more possible only when there is something to bargain with.
Russia & China will disarm Iran, and the US will disarm Israel.
In reality the cold war never ended, it was just repackaged and renamed.
Obama and his trilateralist friends like Zbignew Brzezinski, Carter etc. see this as a needed step towards the globalist endgame, "Order from Chaos".
....After all it is Carter and Brzezinski that created Iran and the Taliban in the late 70'+.
We are dealing with an administration which consists of a US president and his followers whose main interests lay in furthering the Muslim cause. Iraq has already thrown in its lot with Iran proof positive that all the years US soldiers have fought and lost their lives for Iraqi freedom has basically been for naught. Iran has shown by action and deed that she cares only for herself and will stop at nothing to achieve world dominance which barring a miracle is a distinct possibility. Like an octopus her tentacles are far reaching from the Middle East to Europe, Canada, Latin America and yes, The US. A sorry and frightening state of affairs unless we Americans can find a worthy opponent for the 2012 presidential elections who can put us back on track before it is too late. An excellent assessment Caroline. Thank you.
.....Iran is the only side that will win the war."
Not completely. Russia and China will also win and that is the point wherein both of those governments, find a productive friend in Mr.Obama and his friends within the US government.
It is no accident that everything he and they do, advantage and benefit our enemies, while harming the intersts of the American people, our Israeli allies and others throughout the world.
It is no accident that the people who will be harmed by those actions and omissions, do not hear of it until it is too late to react and prevent it from happening, since the media are completely infested with Marxists, who revere Stalin, Lenin, Mao, the Soviet union and communist China.
It all makes sense...