Monday, December 05, 2005

No Peace At Christmas

Events in the Middle East are eclipsing our ability to pay attention. While Iraq occupies America's attention, events in Iran may be coming to a head.

El Baradei:
Iran only months away from a bomb
IAEA chairman Muhammad ElBaradei on Monday confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb.

If Teheran indeed resumed its uranium enrichment in other plants, as threatened, it will take it only "a few months" to produce a nuclear bomb, El-Baradei told The Independent.

On the other hand, he warned, any attempt to resolve the crisis by non-diplomatic means would "open a Pandora's box. There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate; and at the end of the day you have to go back to the negotiating table to find the solution."
Such much for that. A leader of an ineffective body, saying Iran is about to get a nuke but don't do anything about it. But the Israelis may not wait.

Netanyahu hints could consider Iran nuclear strike
Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that he could consider a pre-emptive air strike against Iran's nuclear installations if he were to be re-elected. Netanyahu, who is widely expected to regain the leadership of the right-wing Likud party later this month, said Israel needed to "act in the spirit" of the late premier Menachem Begin who ordered an air strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

"I view the development of the Iranian nuclear (programme) as a paramount threat and as a real danger to the future of the state of Israel," Netanyahu told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
How did it come to this? America was and is focused elsewhere, at least the public is. We really don't know what our leaders are thinking on this one. Most other nations see a chance to embarrass the US and make a profit. The European powers that aren't supplying Iran are too weak militarily and constitutionally to do anything about it.

Israel is
willing to do something - something no one wants them to do.

There are two countdown clocks ticking, one in Tehran and one in Jerusalem. It is anyone's guess as to which will reach zero first.

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