Looming Threat
By refusing to directly confront Iran’s provocations, the United States has become the Islamic Republic’s key ally in its march toward a nuclear bomb
By Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine
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Seen this way, it is clear that the White House wouldn’t want to highlight Israel’s spot in Iran’s crosshairs, because no matter how many times President Barack Obama tells Israeli officials and Jewish audiences that an Iranian nuclear bomb would be unacceptable, his administration’s real policy position has just been exposed. A demand for more sanctions against Tehran in response to an operation intended to slaughter hundreds of American allies in the U.S. capital—in a series of attacks that would have also caused hundreds of American casualties—makes it clear to everyone, especially the Iranians, that Washington isn’t going to do anything serious about stopping Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.
Because Washington doesn’t want to do anything about Iran, it has little choice but to ignore it—or deny its machinations.
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The problem is that Obama’s White House, like George W. Bush’s, fears that taking too active a role against Iran and its assets will put U.S. military personnel at risk of Iranian retaliation in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to some U.S. intelligence estimates, Shiite Iran is responsible for far more American deaths and injuries in America’s two Middle East combat theaters than al-Qaida or other Sunni factions. That means that American strategists, civilian and military, no longer consider the U.S. military a deterrent to Iranian actions; rather, the presence of American troops in theaters where the Iranians also operate has effectively deterred the United States from taking action against Tehran.
U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Washington’s policy of not confronting Iran about its openly aggressive behavior have created a situation in which our troops are now effectively being held hostage, a situation that Iran underlines with each new act of aggression and terror. Which is why U.S. policymakers cannot recognize the pending withdrawal from Iraq—or what is effectively the liberation of many thousands of American hostages—as an opportunity to go after Iran. Instead, Washington will continue to wage clandestine operations against Tehran—like killing Iranian nuclear scientists and sabotaging Iranian centrifuges with a computer worm. None of those operations will stop the Islamic Republic from getting the bomb—rather, that secret war, presumably conducted in tandem with Israel, is meant only to deter the Jewish state from attacking Iran in earnest.
Yes, the Iranians hate the Saudis, who reciprocate the sentiment, and the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, targeted in the disrupted plot, seems especially detested by the Islamic Republic. As the WikiLeaks cables showed, it was al-Jubeir who reminded U.S. diplomats that Saudi King Abdullah “told you to cut off the head of the snake,” meaning Iran. The point of the Iranian plot was to show that the Americans are incapable of protecting their allies, even in the U.S. capital. But as mad as the Saudis are at Washington for not doing anything about the Iranians, sometime down the road they’ll be prepared to grit their teeth and cut a bargain with their foe. There is no such deal in the offing for the Jewish state.
More to the point, the Iranians recognize that unlike Saudi Arabia, Israel is capable of doing something about the Islamic Republic’s ambitions. In the last five years, Jerusalem has waged war against two of Tehran’s clients, Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 and Hamas in the winter of 2008-09. Also, it’s worth remembering that the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 attack on a Jewish community center there were retaliations for Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s then-leader Abbas Mussawi. (Iran and Hezbollah left their fingerprints on those operations, too. The issue in Argentina was not insufficient evidence but police and prosecutorial incompetence.)
If the only country able and willing to go after Iran’s nuclear program is Israel, the only one who is capable of stopping the Israelis, Tehran realizes, is the United States. And so Iran and the United States now find themselves in one of the Middle East’s oddest alliances, with the United States unwittingly aiding Iran in its effort to get the bomb. If this happens, Tehran will use this new weapon to remake the political map of the Middle East in ways that are very unlikely to benefit the United States, and will directly threaten the survival of its closest ally.
God help the world if this clueless but arrogant moron is re-elected. After virtually destroying the US economy and making its foreign policy a laughing stock in just a few years, he is now resorting to the only thing he knows – vicious un-American class warfare – in a desperate attempt to get re-elected. The country will long rue the day they elected him out of white guilt over slavery and non-whites voting for a non-white.
I do not think that obama is neccessarily afraid of iran-he is just in the same camp.
Catarin, You are confusing Herman Cain with with the clueless Darth Vad.., ….er, Barack Obama, who is bought and paid for by George Soros, the Wall Street bankers and the race pimps in the black community.
I, too, want a lower income tax society and an elimination of the EPA. In addition to the destructive EPA, which is protecting nothing and destroying the economy under a blizzard of useless regulations, I would also return education policy to the states and local school boards and eliminate the Education Department that is destroying education in the US and the Energy Department which has only rectricted the supply of energy causing the US to be dependent on foreign sources and causing energy prices to double under Obama.
Doing so would create a tsunami of economic growth and put millions of Americans back to work and cut the unemployment rate in half back to the average of 5% it was under Bush 43.
All we want is for the accomplished and authentic black American, Herman Cain, to politically destroy the clueless African-American Darth Vad.., …er, Barack Obama, before he completely destroys the republic, Israel and the world as well.
The Associated Press has revealed that Herman Cain has been bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. For years he’s made the lecture circuit of various conservative groups backed by the Kochs. The Kochs want practically a no tax society and the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency. They don’t want to be bothered removing toxic agents from the counter tops they manufacture or want restrictions on the discovery and manufacture of oil.
You can have Cain. Remember his name sake killed Abel.
If Herman Cain replaces Barack Hussein Obama Jr as President of the United States, I think he will treat Ayatollist Iran as America’s number one enemy threat and will use military force to bring down that government. He has a decisive type personality who knows better than to imagine enemies can be converted to friends without first being overwhelmed.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Catarin, you are a loyal Democrat stooge, for whom Obama can do no wrong.
We know that when the Iranians were protesting in the streets in 2009 and begging Obama for even moral support, he refused and threw them under the proverbial bus.
Obama has earned his stripes all right – the world is now a more dangerous place with considerable uncertainty about how Egypt and Libya, Yemen and Tunisia will turn out. No foreign leader gives a crap about Darth Vad.., …er, Barack Obama, who once famously called the US one of the foremost Muslim countries in the world, before genuflecting before King Abdullah and then apologizing for America’s past defense of freedom and democracy – IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE OF BRUTAL ARAB DICTATORS. They must have been shaking their heads about what a moron you Democrats had elected.
We don’t know what the Obama administration’s dealings with Iran have been. Obama has earned his stripes in American foreign policy, eliminating threats I, at least, knew nothing about. As far as I know the U.S. still has Iran surrounded by U.S. troops and war machines. I think we would be able to strike at a moment’s notice if need be.
Ahmadinejad seems to have issues with the Ayatollah. I mean, how smart does an Iranian need to be to see that the Shiite leaders have stolen their freedom and rights. I remember reading years ago that Iranian young people loved to cruise the streets of Tehran, playing music, the girls wearing makeup, with the opportunity to stop and meet someone at young people’s hangouts. You can’t get much more Americanized than this. (I’m not sure if other countries take up the American teenagers’ love of cruising in cars. I did it decades ago.)
One thing that surprised me. Ahmadinejad borrowed the Cylinder of Cyrus the Great of Persia from the British Museum, with all the great exploits of Cyrus’ rule (including his rescue of the Jews from Babylon), and he extended its loan so more school children from all over Iran could see it, and then he returned it to the Museum. I think Ahmadinejad cares about the greater glory of Persia, which has ticked off the Ayatollah.
What do you expect when the US elects an anti-American, anti-Semitic, Democrat as president, with the help of 78% of American Jews?
Jimmy Carter weakened US national defense and intelligence capabilities and emboldened the Iranian mullahs and Ronald Reagan had to pick up the pieces. Bill Clinton weakened US national defense and intelligence capabilities and emboldened Al Qaeda and George W. Bush had to pick up the pieces. Now Darth Vad.., ….er, Barack Obama, is weakening US national defense and intelligence capabilities and emboldening Iran and the Palestinians and the next Republican president will have to pick up the pieces.
The US, under Reagan, stood up to the Soviet Union. Now, under Obama (and also before, under Carter), it’s grovelling at the feet of the Iranians. The least we could do, would be to pay the Russians to rub out the Islamies. With our permission, they could nuke them. The Dems simply haven’t got any self-respect. Well, in all fairness, neither do the Republicans: Bush didn’t put out Iran’s lights either. The saddest part is, grovelling is habit-forming.