Davos Takes Up Iran
In a Davos forum yesterday, Bill Clinton said of the world response to Iran's nuke-quest:
Diplomacy has yielded little. Only the Russian offer to enrich Iranian uranium remains viable. The US is unlikely to approve the big financial incentive option, and the Mullahs are unlikely to bite at it. IAEA action is growing more likely, but if sanctions result, the Mullahs will only be hardened in their hatred of the West.
The last option Clinton mentioned is of course military intervention. On that score, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R GA) said in Davos that if diplomatic options are exhausted, leaving war as the only option:
The trick is to not allow diplomacy to go too far. Without verification, we have to assume the Iranians are making headlong progress towards acquiring the bomb. But assumptions in the Saddam/WMD error are known to be problematic.
That's why it's important to get to the point where we're conducting diplomacy with a huge, heavily armed, unified strike force leaning over our diplomats, cleaning their weapons, checking their radar, and launching Special Forces missions inside Iran.
That'll jigger up the old status quo.
"We have to .. not rule out sanctions at the U.N. and not rule out any other option. We shouldn't jump to the last option first because we've got a few years here."A few years? What's the source of his intelligence on that? We don't know how much time we have -- if any -- before the Mullahs arm their nukes. What if it's one year, and the "several years Clintons" of world diplomacy are on a "conservative" 18-month timetable for negotiations?
Diplomacy has yielded little. Only the Russian offer to enrich Iranian uranium remains viable. The US is unlikely to approve the big financial incentive option, and the Mullahs are unlikely to bite at it. IAEA action is growing more likely, but if sanctions result, the Mullahs will only be hardened in their hatred of the West.
The last option Clinton mentioned is of course military intervention. On that score, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R GA) said in Davos that if diplomatic options are exhausted, leaving war as the only option:
I think he's wrong about us not preparing for military action at this point. Senior military strategists in Germany, France, the UK and the US should be, and probably are, working together now to work out the logistics and responsibilities of a joint force."We're not preparing for that right now but I think when you see the worldwide reaction to the potential for weaponization by Iran, it's pretty easy to think in terms of a large coalition of folks being prepared to take whatever action is necessary.
"This is not (about) firing a couple missiles into Iran and taking care of this problem. We're talking about a major issue from a military standpoint."
The trick is to not allow diplomacy to go too far. Without verification, we have to assume the Iranians are making headlong progress towards acquiring the bomb. But assumptions in the Saddam/WMD error are known to be problematic.
That's why it's important to get to the point where we're conducting diplomacy with a huge, heavily armed, unified strike force leaning over our diplomats, cleaning their weapons, checking their radar, and launching Special Forces missions inside Iran.
That'll jigger up the old status quo.
posted by Laer at 10:22 AM
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