Heating Up a War of Words

By Alan Caruba

On Sunday, March 4, President Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C. As February concluded on a Leap Year day, I opined that Israel and Iran were largely engaged in a war of words, noting briefly the military difficulties involved should Israel launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and other targets.

One American general quoted in my commentary estimated it would take a thousand sorties by air to have a decisive impact. That leaves the question of whether, in fact, Israel would have to attack on its own or whether, in fact, Obama’s AIPAC speech was intended to send a message to Tehran that such an attack would include an American component.

Obama emphasized his belief that “sanctions and diplomacy” will achieve an Iranian retreat from its long-stated goal of acquiring nuclear parity for itself, but it is fundamentally Iran’s goal of “wiping Israel off the map” that will determine the outcome of the current war of words.

That war of words heated up considerably on Sunday.

I was reminded of what George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003. “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”

What we know is that Iran is hell-bent on putting a nuclear warhead on the tip of a long-range missile and firing it at Israel.

What we know is that Israel must prevent this if it is to survive.

What we don’t know with certainty, despite the President’s speech to AIPAC, is whether America would engage Iran militarily in collaboration with Israel.

In addition to winding down U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he has not had any luck getting the nations of the Middle East to accept his many apologies or diplomatic efforts to reduce any of the conflicts and tensions in the region. Indeed, on his watch, he has witnessed a failed 2009 Iranian people’s protest against its leaders. There have also been insurrections that overthrew Tunisia’s, Libya’s and Egypt’s long-term dictators that took everyone by surprise.

The so-called “Arab spring” is still shrouded in Rumsfeld’s many “unknowns.” Few seem particularly hopeful.

What struck me most forcefully were the words of Israel’s president Simon Peres, a man who has devoted 65 years of his life to establishing, defending, and building Israel. He began by thanking the President “for being such a good friend” to Israel.

The former Israeli foreign minister did not use the language of diplomacy. “Iran is an evil, cruel regime. Iran is a danger to the entire world. It must be stopped and it will be stopped.”

“President Obama,” said Peres, “made it clear that Iran will never become nuclear. There is no space between us.” He concluded saying, “Mr. President, I know your commitment to Israel is deep and profound. We have a friend in the White House.”

If the president of Israel feels this way, it is hard to believe that it is not so.

The problem for myself and many Americans is that we have witnessed how mercurial Obama has been; how inclined to deception he is to get his way even in the face of significant opposition to his legislative agenda and other policies.

This is why my antenna lighted up when I heard Obama cite Israel’s “ability to defend itself, by itself.” By itself? By itself, military analysts are in general agreement that Israel’s chances of effectively knocking out Iran’s nuclear and military assets are relatively slim.

“There should not be a shred of doubt,” said Obama, “When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”

Coming from any other President that would seem to be a conclusive statement of support, including military support.

But President Obama is not like any other President this nation has ever known.

He has brought America to the brink of financial collapse. He has demonstrated considerable sympathy and affinity with Muslim nations. It is doubtful that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has much faith in his promises.

The “unknowns”, of course, are the secret discussions between the Israeli government and our own at this point.

Unknown, too, is the hubris of the Iranian leadership who believe they are directed by Allah to destroy Israel and to establish and lead a new Islamic caliphate to rule the world. Those are dangerous beliefs, but there is no doubt that Iran’s leaders have been guided by them since 1979.

For these reasons, there remains only the hope that President Obama’s promises are not writ on water.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Israel v. Iran: A War of Words

By Alan Caruba

The debate over when or if Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities has been raging of late and I am beginning to suspect that much of what passes for news represents a charade being orchestrated between Israel and the United States to ratchet up pressure on Iran’s leaders.

President Obama will address the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Sunday and no doubt his speech will be closely parsed for any indication of an official U.S. position regarding Iran’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons. The address by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will likewise be analyzed. Suffice to say, both oppose a nuclear Iran.

One fact stands out. U.S. efforts, in concert with other Western nations and aided by some Middle Eastern nations, have put tremendous pressure on Iran’s ability to sell its oil and to collect the revenues. It is having some success.

Another fact that is often overlooked is that Iran has avoided war since its conflict with Iraq from September 1980 to August 1988. It was costly in lives and treasure for Iran and ended in a stalemate. Later Saddam Hussein would attack Kuwait an act that played a role in the decision to put together a coalition to drive the Iraqis out and to later invade Iraq and depose Saddam.

Iran has preferred to use proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to pursue its attacks on Israel. It supports terrorist activity. Its alliance with Syria is going to be affected by the outcome of the internal attacks on the Assad dictatorship. The bulk of the Middle Eastern nations are united in their condemnation of the Syrian leader. Except for pro-forma support from Russia and China in the United Nations, Iran is increasingly isolated.

As Prof. Barry Rubin recently wrote in The Jerusalem Post, credible observers and analysts of the Middle East believe that Iran wants nuclear weapons because “Iran’s main goal, like that of Pakistan, is to make itself immune to any reprisals for terrorism and subversion by having nuclear weapons.” Prof. Rubin asserted that “In part, the rationale for the nuclear program is outdated, though that certainly won’t stop Tehran from pursuing it.” Prof. Rubin is an Israeli scholar, a research director, and a member of the editorial board of the Middle East Quarterly.

Prof. Rubin noted that, “After 32 years in power the Islamist regime in Tehran has yet to do something really adventurous abroad.”

Then there is the belief by military experts that Israel may, in fact, lack the capability to effectively neutralize Iran’s nuclear program. Richard Russell, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., has said that “The Israelis actually have limited means of attacking Iran’s nuclear program. This is a very, very difficult problem for the Israelis, and it’s getting more and more acute.”

While acknowledging that Israel’s air force is “capable of launching an attack on Iran and causing damage”, Yifah Shaper, director of the Military Balance Program at Tel Aviv’s University for National Security Studies, has said that “It is far from capable of disabling the Iran nuclear program. That would take at least a month of sustained bombing, That’s not something Israel can carry out alone.”

Retired U.S. Air Force General, Charles ‘Chuck’ Wald, calculates that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would require in excess of one thousand sorties. None of this is lost on the Israelis.

While Israel has previously destroyed nuclear reactors in Iraq in 1981 and again in Syria in 2007, the logistics of disabling Iran’s extensive nuclear facilities would be daunting. Israel would simultaneously have to invade southern Lebanon to deter Hezbollah’s use of thousands of missiles there.

While I have previously expressed the view that Israel would, if it lacked any other option, attack Iran, a closer examination of the many factors involved in such an operation suggests that it would only occur if there was credible evidence that Iran was preparing to launch nuclear-armed missiles. Current intelligence analysis suggests that Iran is still far from manufacturing the nuclear warheads for its missiles.

The question remains whether the ayatollahs running Iran would risk any attack by Israel and while, in general, that option exists, the economic weakening of Iran by current sanctions, they would likely exacerbate Iran’s leadership facing problem a restive, unhappy population that wants them out of power. An attack might serve to unite Iranians..

Finally, Iran’s military is far from capable of dealing with an Israeli air attack that might conceivably trigger support by the U.S. and allied nations. None of the Gulf nations has any love for Iran. There are lots of U.S. military assets in the region.

As the rhetoric heats up, Iran has been making a show of its military strength holding military exercises and by sending elements of its limited naval capability through the Suez canal and meaningless trips in the Mediterranean. It continues to threaten to close the Strait of Harmuz. Its Air Force is nothing to write home about either. It is composed of aged U.S.aircraft and Russian aircraft.

While a war of words will continue between Israel, the United States, and Iran, a cold calculation argues against an Israeli attack and against U.S. involvement after more than a decade of U.S. conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither nation wants a shooting war with Iran.

The odds, in this observer’s view, are against an Israeli attack despite my earlier concerns that it could or would occur in the near term.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Iranian Countdown

By Alan Caruba

How many times does Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have to publicly and loudly say that they intend to “wipe Israel off the map” and otherwise annihilate its Jewish population before the world takes seriously the murderous intent of Iran?

How many negotiations between United Nations Atomic Agency personnel and how much deliberate obfuscation and refusal to cooperate will it take before the world admits it is dealing with raving lunatics when it comes to the leaders of Iran?

In late February Ayatollah Khamenei, at meeting with Iran’s nuclear scientists, said “Pressures, sanctions, and assassinations will bear no fruit. No obstacles can stop Iran’s nuclear work.”

The widow of one assassinated nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Rochan Behdast, was quoted in the Iranian Fars News Agency article saying, “Mostafa’s ultimate goal was the annihilation of Israel.”

In the lead-up to World War Two, numerous meetings with the Nazi leadership (plus a secret agreement with the Soviets to divide Poland) did nothing to stop its annexation of Austria and its invasion of Poland, the trigger for the conflagration.

Let us understand something. All the sanctions in the world will not deter the Iranian ayatollahs from a mission that began in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini led the Islamic revolution that ousted the Shah and turned Iran into a prison nation. Among their earliest acts was to take U.S. diplomats hostage and hold them for 444 days.

International law and international sanctions mean nothing to the ayatollahs.


To the Iranian leadership—but not to its citizens who went into the streets of Tehran in 2009 to protest Ahmadinjad’s re-election—the whole world revolves around them. Their purpose is to bring back the Twelfth Imam, a mythical Shiite deity, to impose their brand of Islam on the world. Unknown to most is the fact that this can only be accomplished with a worldwide cataclysm of wars and massive death.

To the ever-lasting shame of the great powers, America, England, France, Russia, and China, they are all waiting for tiny Israel to preemptively attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and thus remove or at least delay the inevitable. It is a repeat of the 1930s run-up to World War II. They are running scared. They fear a war, but are failing to take the military action to avoid it a twenty-first century apocalypse..

An Israeli news agency DebkaFile report on February 22 was titled “Iran cuts down to six weeks timeline for weapons-grade uranium.” It reported that “Western and Israeli intelligence experts have concluded that the transfer of 20 percent uranium enrichment to the underground Fordo site near Qom has shortened Iran’s race for the 90 percent (weapons) grade product to six weeks.”

“The International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said Tuesday night, Feb 21, ‘It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin.’ This is the site where Iran conducts experiments in nuclear explosives and triggers.”

Disappointing?! Despite saying it was ready to resume talks with the great powers this is just one more example out of hundreds over the years in which Iran has purposefully stalled its way to still more time to achieve nuclear weapons.

When they get them, they will use them. The first target is going to be Israel and the next will be the United States of America, the Little Satan and the Great Satan, and time is running out.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, on February 17, released a report on a forthcoming March 3-4 Harvard Kennedy School of Government conference devoted to the dismantling of the state of Israel. A “One State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution.” The last “solution” Jews faced was the Nazi’s “final solution” that became the Holocaust.

President Obama, busy apologizing to and withdrawing from Afghanistan has been famously hostile to Israel, a signal to the ayatollahs who have rejected every effort he has made to open a dialogue. Harvard’s conference sends the same signal.

The Israelis have twice destroyed nuclear reactors under construction, first in Iraq, and later in Syria.

The Jews will save the world because they have to defend themselves. And they will receive only condemnation for it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Not If, But When

By Alan Caruba

The Jewish sage, Hillel, said, “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” This has been interpreted to mean that it is an obligation to stand against evil, even if other’s courage dissert them.

One doesn’t have to be a historian, a military strategist, a biblical scholar or any other credentialed expert to know that the question of the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities is not one of if, but when?

On previous occasions, the Israelis, sensing a direct threat, attacked nuclear facilities, first in Iraq on June 7, 1981 when it destroyed the Osiris reactor under construction and again on September 6, 2007 when it destroyed an undeclared nuclear facility in the Deir ez-Zor region in Syria. It’s worth noting that neither action sparked a war.

Earlier, in 1967, the Israelis, acting on intelligence that Egypt was about to attack, launched its air force and ground troops in what came to be known as the Six Day War. In time, Egypt came to the peace table, signing a historic agreement with Israel.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq now essentially clears the air lanes directly into Iran for an attack, shortening the route that otherwise might have been over the air space of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Israel with Saudi permission could use both routes because the Saudis are just as much opposed to a nuclear Iran. As it is, the U.S. Air Force has recently re-assigned key units formerly based in Iraq to Kuwait. The Middle East chess board is being reset.

The Israelis have already undertaken long range practice runs flyiing their bombers as far as Gibraltar and back.

The chatteratti are all saying that Israel faces an “existential” threat. They’re wrong. Israel faces an actual threat of destruction and Iran’s Supreme Leader has never made a secret of his intentions.

A February 1st Wall Street Journal editorial noted that James Clapper, President Obama’s top intelligence advisor, recently told a Senate committee that Iran’s leadership, including Ali Khamenei “have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States as a response to real or perceived actions that threat the regime.”

A story last year that made brief headlines involved a disrupted plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in a Washington, D.C. restaurant. The editorial noted that the press “went out of its way to cast doubt on the story. The Iranians can’t be that crazy?” Well, yes they are. What else should one expect from a regime that shouts death to America and Israel every day?

The editorial concluded, asking “If the regime is prepared to stage terrorist strikes in America when they don’t have a bomb, what will they be capable of when they do have one?”

Another suggestion that a mission is likely to occur was the unusual statement by the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, that he thought Israel would attack Iran. As the former Director of the CIA, he would be in a good position to know about such things, but it unusual for a DOD Secretary to make such predictions.

The political calculus for President Obama in an election year depends on whether the U.S. supports Israel (a popular option) or lays back and does little (as in Libya), thus losing any chance of securing the powerful evangelical Christian vote; not to mention Jewish support.

Israel will do what the United States, the Saudis, and everyone else in the region will not. It will save itself and the world from the crazed Iranian ayatollahs. The “collateral damage” will be people in Iran who will die as a result and the sad irony will be that the majority of Iranians want an end to the regime as much as the rest of the world.

Thus far, in addition to sanctions against Iran, several of its top nuclear scientists having been assassinated, and an explosion at an Iranian missile launch site killed some of its top military personnel. It also and temporarily eliminated its potential for launching a missile with a six thousand mile range, capable of hitting—you guessed it—the United States.

Presumably, members of Israel’s Mossad and the United States’ CIA should take a bow for these actions, but they can’t for obvious reasons.

After re-inviting members of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency to visit recently, the Iranians refused to permit them to visit their nuclear facilities, many of which are buried in bunkers for protection. Meanwhile, the U.S. has let it be known it is working on even bigger “bunker buster” bombs.

Israel is doing its best to signal the Iranian regime that they need to change three decades of an incessant drive to acquire nuclear arms. On February 2nd, its Vice Premier and Strategic Affairs Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, called a nuclear Iran “a nightmare to the free world”, noting that “the West has the ability to strike, but as long as Iran isn’t convinced that there’s a determination to follow through with it, they’ll continue with their manipulations.”

Throughout modern history, even in the face of an imminent threat, the West as vacillated, cut deals with Hitler’s Nazi regime, tried to alter North Korea’s nuclear program with bribes, and dismissed other threats.

Reading the U.S.’s true intent must be a fulltime job in some office of the Israeli government. For three years, the message has been less than encouraging and even hostile. A U.S. President who declared Israel should return to its 1967 borders is out of touch with reality. One can only hope this is all an elaborate hoax to put Iran off its guard. If so, it hasn’t worked.

As Ya’alon has said, “The Iranian threat is not a case of Iran versus Israel. Israel has never declared war on Iran, but the Khomeinistic regime has declared total war on the State of Israel’s very existence.”

The Israelis will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. It has no choice. It should be joined by the forces of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others who would benefit, but as in 1967, 1981, and 2007, Israel will be left to do what others lack the courage to do.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Iran's Nuclear Armageddon

By Alan Caruba

During the long years of the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union faced off against each other, both having an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Only once, during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, did the prospect of a real threat to the homeland arise. After a U.S. naval blockade was imposed, the Russians took their missiles home.

The key factor was that the Russian leaders were not suicidal. They were not crazy. They fully understood what it would mean to actually use nuclear weapons or be on the receiving end of them.

The Iranian ayatollahs are a different case entirely. Over the years, they have voiced a rather nonchalant attitude toward being on the receiving end of nuclear weapons because they are a Shiite martyrdom cult. During its eight-year war with Iraq, initiated by Saddam Hussein, an estimated 500,000 Iranians died, including 100,000 children sent to clear mine fields by setting them off.

The failure to grasp the depth and insanity of the current leaders of Iran is pushing the world toward the first nuclear confrontation since A-bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War II in 1945.

Yoram Ettinger, a former Israel consul general in Houston, Texas, warns that “Iran’s geostrategic goals are energized by its current Islamic zeal, viewing jihad (holy war) as the permanent state of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, while peace and cease-fire accords are tenuous.”

So, when the Israelis shared intelligence with President Obama in mid-November that the Iranians “will already have five nuclear bombs or warheads” by late March 2012, it raised the stakes for President Obama and the nation.

We already know Obama wants a reduction in nuclear arms. He signed a treaty with the Russians to achieve this. He refused to permit missiles to be based in Poland, presumably for the same reason. The surface to air missiles, however, could have deterred any missiles headed toward Europe.

I have absolutely no confidence in Obama when it comes to the preemptive action that must be taken against Iran’s nuclear and military facilities in order to end a threat that even the President acknowledged in a recemt Hawaii press conference would be directed not just at Israel, but at the United States as well.

The stakes just don’t get any higher and this President has not demonstrated any backbone except to okay the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the man behind the attack on 9/11. That was a no-brainer.

I don’t know what military assets and options we have in the Persian Gulf, but if an attack to deter an Iranian nuclear threat is undertaken either by Israel or together, we will likely need a lot of them.

Military observers have concluded that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz that provides access to and from the Persian Gulf, thus putting enormous strain on the provision of Middle East oil that flows through the Straits on a daily basis, not just from Iran, but from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq. An estimated 40% of all seaborne oil passes through the Strait, the equivalent of 20% of the total amount of oil traded worldwide. If closed, it would drive the cost of oil to stratospheric heights.

The failure of the U.S. to develop its own extensive oil reserves will prove to be a massive strategic error. The delay of a proposed Canadian oil pipeline to deliver oil to the U.S. is just one small element of this failure.

In an August 6, 2009 Jerusalem Post article, Anne Bayefsky of EyeontheUN.org wrote, “The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 20 this way: ‘The Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran…they have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran. Their strategy consists of begging us to talk to them.”

Ultimately it will be Israel’s call if U.S. leaders fail to step up to the task and, in the judgment of the Iranians, the U.S. will not. The Israelis have no choice.

In February 2010 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, addressing a crowd celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran,said  “Iran is now a nuclear state.”

The world is rapidly running out of time to prevent an Iranian Armageddon.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The World is Having a Nervous Breakdown

By Alan Caruba

If one has been in the habit of reading history then the events of the past and of the present inform each other. For this reason, it occurred to me that the world is once again having a nervous breakdown.

It’s not just about money, though surely the nations of Europe along with the U.S. have spent themselves into the poorhouse in ways that defy the imagination. If it weren’t so serious, it would be comical to see the desperation that has led our Federal Reserve to print money backed by nothing and to watch the central bankers of Europe move gobs of euros around between the new mother church, Germany, and the banks of Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Italy so that they can pay their bills.

They’re all broke. We have individual States that have a higher GDP than Greece that have balanced their budgets. Those are usually the States whose constitutions require they balance their budget. The rest are run by governors torn between taking the federal largess intended to deprive them of more sovereignty and hoping that the next natural disaster hits the State above or below them instead.

Few arrive at a nervous breakdown overnight. It takes time and a variety of bad decisions or bad luck or both. After blaming George W. Bush and Republicans for his problems, Obama has taken to blaming bad luck. Does he even know that people have concluded the economy is now officially and completely his fault?

When he proposed Obamacare, a million Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. to tell them not to do it. He should have listened to them. Now we call them the Tea Party.

Obama cannot explain away having increased government spending by 50% between 2008 and 2010 while calling for higher taxes on everyone at the same time there are an estimated 14 million Americans out of work, stopped looking for work, or can’t get a job because Obamacare has so screwed up the near future that businesses are reluctant to hire anyone.

The 2008 financial crisis was 100% a government creation dating back to the establishment of Fannie Mae in 1938 to purchase mortgages from banks in order to encourage more lending, more home building, more home ownership. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it ignored the timeless role of greed in banking.

Rule Number One: Almost everything the government touches, it ruins in some fashion. At the very least, it increases its cost of operation.

Rule Number Two: The government’s primary function is the defense of the nation against attack. As Ronald Reagan said, “Nobody ever started a war with us because we were too strong.”

Rule Number Three: Government exists due to its ability to tax and spend other people’s money. Spending always needs to be restrained.

Rule Number Four. Government will always produce more laws and regulations than are needed. It should be restrained. (See the U.S. Constitution).

Globally, we are just emerging from a bout of total insanity called “global warming.” This was a theory that said that something that represented 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere was trapping all the heat and would kill us unless massively reduced. That “something” is carbon dioxide, a gas on which—along with oxygen—all life depends. It is plant food; the less carbon dioxide, the less vegetation. Herbivores eat vegetation and carnivores eat herbivores. Humans, being omnivores, eat both.

The other craziness afflicting the planet is “radical” Islam. The truth is that it has been just plain old Islam for about 1400 years. There are a billion Muslims, most located in the Middle East, Africa, India, and Indonesia. Wherever they are, their non-Muslim neighbors cordially hate them because Islam teaches that all other religions are false and that those who believe them—infidels—can be killed for not being Muslims. The strange part of this is, depending on whether you’re a Shiite or Sunni, it is perfectly okay to kill other Muslims, too. Christianity went through this during the Reformation, 1517 to 1648.

When I was a child, the world went crazy and held a great big war. It involved Germany, Japan, and Italy as the “Axis” powers and just about everyone else did their best to destroy their military in every way possible. The Axis was defeated first and then, still holding out, the Empire of Japan had not one, but two, atomic bombs dropped on them before they quit.

World War Two was the direct result of Europe’s World War One. The surrender terms were so awful the Germans embraced a lunatic called Hitler and the Italians fell in love with Mussolini.

The Soviet Union came out of World War One when the Germans permitted Vladimir Lenin, a Communist, into Russia. He started a revolution and the Russians swapped a czar for a new dictator. Stalin took over from Lenin, but because communism has never worked anywhere it was tried, the Soviet Union eventually fell apart in 1991. Now a republic, the new dictator is named Vladimir Putin.

As the French say, “Plus les choses changent, ils plus elles restent les memes.” The more things change, they more they stay the same.

The world is having a nervous breakdown because institutions, religions, and political ideologies are having difficulty adjusting to the migration and growth of populations. Modern communications technologies are playing a role as well.

The chimera haunting everyone is the military capacity to inflict massive devastation and death has increased beyond the confidence of governments and people that it can be controlled without having to kill a lot of people, i.e., Iranians, in the process..

Capitalism, despite an abundance of communism still around, has triumphed, but like any system, has been subjected to a great deal of abuse, rocking the economies of the U.S., Europe, and making most other nations nervous, too.

And, finally, there are six-going-on-seven billion people on a planet that is probably not intended to have that many. It puts intense strain on everything from water to food to the sources of energy that fuel modern and developing nations.

So everyone’s on edge. Nations and continents are on edge. The world is having a nervous breakdown.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Ignoring Iran to Our Peril

By Alan Caruba

On Saturday, July 23, Daryush Rezaee-Nejad, an Iranian scientist involved with its nuclear program was assassinated in front of his home in Tehran. Two motorcyclists shot him in the head and throat. Being a nuclear scientist has become a very bad career choice in Iran.

According to Debka, an Israeli news agency that appears to have lines of communication into its intelligence community, “This was another in the series in the past year of mysterious attacks of top-flight scientists attached to the Iranian nuclear program.” What better way to slow down that program than (a) infect it with a computer virus called Stuxnet and (b) systematically kill the scientists involved with the development of a nuclear weapon?

It is not hard to say who may be involved in such an effort. The obvious parties would be the U.S. and Israel. Ali Larijani, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, was infuriated by the latest killing, calling it an “American-Zionist terrorist act” the demonstrated “the degree of American animosity.”

Earlier assassination attempts included Dr. Majid Shariani who was killed, but the attempt on Prof. Fereydoon Abbassi failed. He was appointed Vice President for Nuclear Affairs and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Organization. In a possible related effort, three Russian scientists known to be assisting Iran’s nuclear program died in an airplane crash.

For the record, American administrations going back to Jimmy Carter’s have no reason to feel anything other than animosity toward Iran, beginning with its breaking every diplomatic rule in the book by taking U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979 and holding them for 444 days.

The Iranians have been attacking U.S. military forces, starting with Marines stationed in Beirut as peacekeepers in 1983 right up through the conflict in Iraq, providing arms and aid to insurgents. By any standards you might apply, Iran has been at war with America for just over three decades.

In their push to acquire nuclear weapons parity, the Iranians have been relentless. In his book, “The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West”, Dore Gold related the history of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. Gold is the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and has held positions in Israel’s diplomatic corps.

Noting that Iran is an Islamic theocracy that so idealizes the cult of martyrdom it was the first to “systematically employ suicide bombing attacks in the present era”, Gold warned that it “could very well be immune to deterrence and the threat of full scale retaliation should it employ nuclear weapons.”

The notion that it is American intelligence operatives behind the assassinations and the Stuxnet virus ignores the greater likelihood that these have been Israeli efforts to slow Iran’s efforts, given that Iran has made no secret of its desire to destroy Israel.

There is another reason to question whether the U.S. is involved insofar as policies of the Obama administration going back to 2009 have led some observers to conclude that “President Barack Obama has decided to let Iran acquire nuclear arms.” That was the opinion of Anne Bayefsky in August 2009, writing in the National Review Online.

More recently, Fred Fleitz, a retired intelligence expert with a twenty-five year career at the CIA, DIA, State Department, and House Intelligence Committee staff, wrote a warning that was published in The Wall Street Journal, “America’s Intelligence Denial on Iran.”

“Mounting evidence over the last few years has convinced most experts that Iran has an active program to develop and construct nuclear weapons,” wrote Fleitz. “Amazingly, however, these experts do not include the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community.” Incredibly, U.S. intelligence officials are standing by their 2007 assessment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not restarted it since.

This constitutes criminal negligence.

“One cannot underestimate the dangers posed to our country by a U.S. Intelligence community that is unable to provide timely and objective analysis of such major threats to U.S. national security—or to make appropriate adjustments when it is proven wrong,” wrote Fleitz.

It’s hardly a secret that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. One can easily access maps showing the sites where the program is known to be underway.

There’s a reason for the Stuxnet virus and for the assassinations. It is the fact that Iran, once armed with nuclear weapons, will use them against either Israel or America or both.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Iranian Armageddon

By Alan Caruba

In the months and years leading up to the beginning of World War Two, all the parties knew full well Hitler’s intention to start a war. When he struck a deal with Stalin to divide Poland, the die was cast. The invasion came in September 1939. Previously, diplomats had met with the Nazis to offer them the former Czechoslovakia and turned a blind eye to other provocative events.

World War Two was preceded by Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” that spelled out his plans for Europe’s Jews and the torrent of lies that led to war and the genocide that became known as the Holocaust.

It is not surprising that history is repeating itself as in the case of an April 7 letter to The Wall Street Journal by Alireza Miryousefi of the Iranian Mission to the U.N. “There is no evidence of any military diversion” in Iran’s nuclear facilities claimed Mr. Miryousefi, who went on to assert that “the real threat of nuclear proliferation” was Israel which he described as “the Zionist regime.”

Despite Iran’s support for two terrorist organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, it was Israel, said Mr. Miryousefi, that was “the biggest terrorist and apartheid regime.”

Today, everyone knows the Iran’s crazed ayatollahs intend to secure nuclear weapon capability and everyone knows that, when they do, they will attack Israel with them. They have never ceased to call for its destruction. It is not a question of if, but when.

How close is “when”? The Iranians just released a video titled “The Coming is Near” that describes the current events in the Middle East as the prelude to the coming of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, a figure particular to the Shiite branch of Islam and one that Islamic scriptures say will lead the armies of Islam to victory over all non-Muslims in the last days.

In a nuclear age, as Nikita Krushchev, a former Premier of the Soviet Union, once said, “The living will envy the dead.” Those were the days of the Cold War and, with both the U.S. and Russia possessing nukes, the concept of mutually assured destruction, MAD, was understood. This, however, does not apply to the ayatollahs. They need massive destruction to bring about their Islamic End Times scenario.

In a recent Wall Street Journal interview with Bernard Lewis, the West’s leading scholar on the Middle East, he pointed out that the mullahs “are religious fanatics with an apocalyptic mindset. In Islam, as in Christianity and Judaism, there is an end-of-times scenario—and they think it’s beginning or has already begun.”

The result, said Lewis, is that “mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent—it’s an inducement.”

In the days leading up to World War Two, the diplomatic choice was appeasement. Today, hope is that the mullahs can be deterred long enough that Iranians will somehow bring about regime change from within. The computer virus, Stuxnet, had the affect of interfering with the enrichment process necessary to weaponize uranium, but may not now be a factor.

In the meantime, the Gulf Cooperation Council, composed of six GCC states are discussing a proposal to identify and deport an estimated 20,000 Shiites linked to Iran. In Kuwait the plan would focus on Lebanese Shiites with links to Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It is believed that many Iranian agents have been activated this year and, as such, pose a security threat. Said one GCC insider, “For years, the GCC knew of these people, but looked the other way. We can’t look the other way anymore.”

The news, unfortunately, just keeps getting worse and worse. In the muddle that represents the effort to overthrow Libya’s Gadhafi, DebkaFile reports that the “rebels” have sold thousands of chemical shells found in Benghazi to Hezbollah and Hamas, two puppet organizations funded by Iran.

When you add to that the thousands of rockets cached in Lebanon by Hezbollah and the rocketing that has been reinstituted from Gaza by Hamas, you have a trigger for a wider war.

Specifically, you have the elements of the destruction of Israel by the Iranians and the so-called Palestinians, a stateless group that have been the pawns of Iran and Arab nations for more than six decades.

In late March, Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) were joined by twenty-five other Senators who sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her to identify specific steps the administration is taking to press the Palestinian Authority to end the “dangerous incitement against Jews and Israel.” The letter was sent in the wake of the terrorist murder of the Fogel family in Itamar and a bombing of a civilian bus in Jerusalem. A school bus has since been attacked.

You don’t have to be a CIA analyst to know that events in the Middle East will be exploited by the Iranians to bring about their apocalyptic End Times aspirations and that the destruction of Israel is, in their view, the trigger. After Israel, the United States and Europe will be next.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Give the Peace Prize Back, Barack

By Alan Caruba

As the Middle East begets one insurrection after another against the oppression that has been endemic to the region for centuries and as Japan faces the worst nuclear energy disaster since Chernobyl, the President of America and Commander-in-Chief is Absent Without a Leave (AWOL).

Barack Hussein Obama is the first President of the United States who received a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up. It is a mark of how debased this once prestigious international prize has become. He should give it up.

In the past, the Peace Prize went to Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for negotiating an end to a Russian-Japanese conflict and to Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for his efforts to create the League of Nations. Its value began to fall off the cliff when it was given to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Obama in 2009. In between, it was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore and the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

It is an ancient axiom that power is lost when power is not exercised. Osama bin Laden seriously misread the U.S. when he referred to it as “a weak horse”, an Arab way of saying it could be attacked with impunity. George W. Bush responded by bombing the hell out of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and then by invading Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden has been in hiding ever since and his top lieutenants keep getting whacked.

Obama’s approach to foreign affairs has been to misunderstand and denigrate the role of America in a dangerous world. Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal calls it “The Collapse of Internationalism” because the failure to lead has demonstrated the uselessness of the United Nations, its Security Council, NATO, the European Union, and the Arab League when it comes to facing down a psychopathic despot like Libya’s Quadaffi and, of course, the same was true regarding Saddam Hussein.

This is how big wars occur.

Recent history bears out the failure to take action against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, against Adolf Hitler prior to his invasion of Poland, to anticipate the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and now the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.

This is what happens when an administration’s policy makers are all “intellectuals” who have spun out hypothetical views of the world that have no relationship to history or present realities.

This is what happens when, despite our present financial woes, the most powerful nation on Earth has reduced its naval and air power, and asks its military to engage in nation-building while fighting our enemies. What is needed are entirely separate, highly trained units devoted to that task.

This is what happens when “foreign policy” involves wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on the United Nations and billions more in so-called “foreign aid” to nations that do not like us, nor support us in times of crisis and need.

Libya, said Henninger, “was a test case, and what we have seen is that a world in which the U.S. doesn’t unmistakably lead is a world that spins its wheel, and eventually the wheels start to come off.”

The U.S. is not, as Obama believes, just one more nation among others or that it is not the single most exceptional experiment in democracy and freedom.

Just as Americans must organize to resist and survive Barack Hussein Obama over the next two years, having come to realize how utterly incompetent he is, other nations are wondering what will occur without the leadership the U.S. has always provided in the past, including two world wars, several smaller ones, and the containment of the former Soviet menace.

The presidency is much more than frequent trips to the golf course, predicting the outcome of the NCAA tournament, and an ill-timed visit to Rio. It is a dangerous place filled with people like Quadaffi and others of his ilk.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

From Hiroshima to Iran

By Alan Caruba

These days it is fashionable to decry the use of not one, but the two atomic bombs that were used to convince the emperor of Japan and his warlords that the United States would destroy its cities if forced to invade. Within days World War Two was over.

America, since December 7, 1941, when it was the victim of a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, had been fighting in the Pacific theatre as well as in the European one. There was no doubt that, just as Germany had been reduced to rubble to achieve victory, so too would Japan if needed. Expectations of American casualties if an invasion was required were huge.

Long before September 11, 2001, war had been declared on America by Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of al Qaeda. The destruction of the Twin Towers shocked Americans. A decade later, however, they were debating whether Muslims have “a right” to build a mosque within a short walk of Ground Zero. That’s blindingly stupid.

Short memories can lead to big defeats. It is worth reminding Americans that our troops did not lose in Iraq. We went there to depose a psychopathic despot who killed his own people with impunity. We went there to see whether democracy could take root in a region where it never had. (Only a secular Turkey was the exception; its military kept the Islamists at bay, but that too is changing.)

In the midst of the turmoil that has taken much of the Middle East and northern Africa, along with the rest of the world, by surprise, it is worth noting that the only thing keeping Israel from being attacked and utterly destroyed and that is its nuclear arsenal.

A people who lost six million of their families, their brethren, whose motto became “Never again”, will not to fail to use them to defeat what has been grandly called “an existential threat.” There’s nothing existential about it.

The U.S. has developed a sophisticated arsenal of weapons in the years since 1945 and has become the world’s policeman, fighting a Cold War with occasional hot outbreaks in Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere. We have tolerated a Communist Cuba just off the border of Florida. We have watched Venezuela go Communist.

We have not used our nuclear arsenal and we presently have a President who wants desperately to reduce it in order to appease the Russians who are not our friends.

I have no doubt that Israel will use its nuclear weapons and I can think of no reason why they should not.

It is the barbaric leadership of Iran that is the enemy, not its people. Israel understands that. Thus, attacks would likely target Iran's nuclear and military facilities, not its cities.

Throughout its sixty-two years, Israel been repeatedly attacked by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Despite a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, both nations find themselves challenged by a largely Islamist movement. Israel watches and waits.

As the first Iranian warships recently passed through the Suez Canal the Iranian puppets, Hamas, celebrated by firing two long-range Iranian-made Grad missiles rockets at Beersheba and Netivot from Gaza . It is a signal of what is to come

Israel, a democracy whose population includes over a million Arabs, has thrived. All around Israel the threat to its existence has continued. In this decade, it has required Israeli military operations against Lebanon’s  Hezbollah and, in Gaza, against Hamas. Absolutely nothing Israel has done to secure peace has been successful and yet it is constantly importuned to do more.

Only the fact that it has nuclear weapons and a trained, dedicated defense force has kept its enemies at bay. However, as the Iranians creep toward nuclear parity, it will demand a Hiroshima to thwart another Holocaust.

The Second World War was one of unimaginable carnage, but the allies were able to rebuild and even our former enemy, Germany, was converted to an integral power in Europe. The American occupation of Japan left it a truly democratic nation and an ally. A South Korea under the protection of America is an economic dynamo. We have embassies in Vietnam.

There are the lessons of history that entire new generations of Americans need to learn and need to understand.

The war to protect, restore, and project Western values was worth fighting. A war against an Iran that has declared itself an enemy is one that Israel will have to fight. Just as in 1945, nuclear weapons will restore clarity and peace.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Iran's Gangster Government

By Alan Caruba

Two hapless Americans, Shane Bauer and Joseph Fattal, have been held hostage in Iran for eighteen months. Hikers, they and Sarah Shourd, were taken prisoner in what is generally described as “an unmarked border area between Iraq and Iran.”

As much as I sympathize with their problem, I keep asking myself how can three Americans, two aged 29 and one 32, have been so oblivious to the danger of hiking anywhere near Iran, let alone in northern Iraq? Their naiveté is appalling. The world is filled with other places to hike.

Ms. Shourd was released by the Iranians on a $500,000 bail in September and you can bet that it was provided by the U.S. via the Swiss ambassador, our go-to guy there.

On Sunday, Bauer and Fattal, charged with illegally entering Iran for the purpose of espionage, were subject to a judicial hearing before Judge Abolghasem Salavati, the Iranian version of Vlad the Impaler. Their lawyer was not given the opportunity to meet with them before the three-hour session to prepare a defense. This is what passes for justice in Iran.

Lawyer Masoud Shafii said that he had requested that “they are freed immediately. We reject all the charges, and I think the 18 months they’ve already served is more than enough.”

This is the equivalent of Iranian kabuki theatre because justice has nothing to do with the fate of the two hikers. They, like every other hostage the Iranians have taken since their 1979 revolution, are just bargaining chips, pawns to be used in their endless war with America and the West.

It began with 52 American diplomats and embassy staff that were held for 444 days until the day Ronald Reagan took the oath of office at his first inaugural.

Does Barack Obama today look any less weak than Jimmy Carter did? The answer is that America and other nations, Great Britain and France for example, have grown so accustomed to negotiating with the Iranians over their hostage nationals that it has become “normal” to do so.

It is a very bad “normal” and it ignores the criminal, fascist nature of a regime for whom hostage taking is routine. Indeed, Iran “is open to a deal, saying the country would be willing to negotiate an exchange for Iranian prisoners held in the U.S.—a notion the U.S. has rejected”, according to The Wall Street Journal.

For now the two hikers will remain in jail before an equally bogus trial is held. Reporting for The Wall Street Journal, Farnaz Fassihi wrote, “Analysts say that the hiker’s case has become caught up in Iran’s internal political rivalries and its standoff with the West over its nuclear program.” You think?

Bauer and Fattal will be set free only if the U.S. agrees to a secret deal with the Iranians and that will be a bad deal for the U.S. If there is no deal, they will rot in an Iranian prison, guilty of extreme stupidity.

No matter their fate, there are far greater future options at stake. The closer the Iranians get to weaponizing nuclear materials, the closer the world gets to running out of options to stop them.

The deal I would offer them is to put those hiking morons on the first plane out of Tehran or expect a couple of guided missiles to arrive at the several known nuclear facilities in Iran.

Even Bill Clinton let fly a few to try to kill Osama bin Laden and managed to blow up a Libyan aspirin factory thanks to bad intelligence. Still, it sent a message.

Think about it. The Iranians don’t have missiles that can hit the U.S. homeland. Their navy would be obliterated by ours in hours. We already have 50,000 troops in Iraq and others in Afghanistan. If you think they are there on “training missions”, you’re dreaming.

Not only do we have nukes, but the Israelis do as well and they need to send a signal to their “neighbors” in the Mideast, most of whom are praying they nuke Tehran anyway.

It’s not like we haven’t been patient and forbearing in the face of years of insults and threats. It’s time to send an “or else” message, but I doubt that day will arrive for at least two more years; say sometime after January 2013 when Barack the Uncertain is sent packing to Chicago.

Like the final days in office of Jimmy Carter, the Iranians have concluded that America has elected a sissy.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Is Ahmadinejad Looking for a Fight or Running Scared?

By Alan Caruba

The only thing we know for sure about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, is that he lies about everything. In that regard, he may not be that much different from other world leaders for whom lying is almost a requirement for the job.

Only international law keeps the United States from seizing Mahmoud as an exchange for the return of two of the American hostages we know are being held by his regime. In a nice suburban CIA safe house, we might even convince him to cough up some state secrets about where the secret nuclear weapons facilities are, but we are far too civilized to do anything like that.

In discussing Mahmoud, we have to separate him from the Iranian people who live in a prison nation. A recent Wall Street Journal article by Karim Sadjapour noted that “nearly three million people, according to the mayor of Tehran, took to the streets to protest the election results.”

At the time, President Obama demurred from commenting on this astonishing outpouring of the Iranian people's anger, preferring not to “interfere.” This is in line with his general policy of getting out of the Middle East under any and all circumstances. Having already betrayed the American people, using thuggish methods to impose unwanted “reforms”, he saw no reason to not betray Iranians as well.

What was Obama’s reward? Reports of Mahmoud’s arrival in New York to attend an annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly were replete with his threats if a possible U.S.-supported Israeli air strike should occur. Given Obama’s antipathy toward Israel, that seems unlikely.

Still, that did not deter Mahmoud from threatening a war with the U.S. that “would know no boundaries”, adding “War is not just bombs.” Since he said this in New York City where the ninth anniversary of 9/11 just occurred, neither New Yorkers nor the rest of America needs any reminder that we and the West are engaged in a war with Islam that is without boundaries.

Reportedly Mahmoud even had the audacity to claim that Iran has no plans to make a nuclear weapon. Perhaps this explains why they recently told International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors familiar with such matters to leave Iran on the next plane. Even the normally tolerant IAEA expressed its annoyance with such behavior.

Three former Iranian diplomats recently defected in Europe, denouncing the regime’s legitimacy, and very likely in danger for their lives because the Islamic Republic is well known for assassinating dissidents living overseas. One must assume that, since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has demanded that all Muslims obey him as the earthly deputy of Muhammad and the Twelfth Iman, he believes he can murder whomever he wants.

I have a theory that Israel will not attack Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities until Obama is out of office. He has proven to be the most anti-Israel President to have ever held the office. The Israelis know that the latest round of White House-sponsored peace talks are the same bad joke they have always been. The Palestinian Liberation Authority has far less to fear from Israel than from Hamas, an Iranian puppet.

Moreover, since the Iranian regime expects an attack any day now, the Israelis will patiently wait until some time has gone by. They have destroyed such facilities in Iraq and Syria and there is no reason to believe they will not rid the region of Iran’s; very likely with the grateful assistance of other Middle Eastern nations that cordially despise the current Iranian regime.

Mahmoud’s bluster and threats sound a lot to me like a line from a Shakespearean play, “Methinks he doth protest too much.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

How I Learned to Love the Bomb

By Alan Caruba

As a child in the 1950s, I learned how to “duck and cover” in order to protect myself from an atomic bomb explosion. Little did I know that the instruction should have been “Kiss your asterisk goodbye.”

The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the Soviets wanted to put nuclear-tipped long range missiles there, led to a confrontation between President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev that had both sides changing their underwear after it was over.

What do the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea in common? They all have nuclear weapons and, of course, Iran has been working toward that goal and is now very close to achieving it.

Some will argue that Israel should not be on the list because it has never acknowledged its nuclear capabilities, but everyone knows they have them. Presumably the Iranian mullahs do as well, but they are a bunch of nuts waiting for the mythical Twelfth Imam to come out of a well and smite the enemies of Islam.

It is instructive that both Pakistan and India acquired their nuclear weapons without anyone being aware of it until after the fact. At CIA headquarters, when India announced its successful test, it came as a very big surprise. These days, the U.S. is busy reassuring Israel that Iran is “at least a year away” from nuclear status and you can imagine how relieved they are to hear that.

North Korea is a wild card and, given the lack of success the U.S. and anyone else has had to get them to abandon their nukes, the same can be assumed for Iran when they make their announcement. Meanwhile they have to content themselves with announcing new missiles, the latest of which they dubbed “the ambassador of death.”

The Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization has designated Sunday, August 29, as “The International Day against Nuclear Tests.” Given the total lack of success in thwarting any nation that wants a nuke, my confidence in the United Nations’ treaty is zero.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN component, has been kicked out of North Korea, Iraq and Iran on several occasions, so one might rationally assume it is useless when it comes to stopping the manufacture of A-bombs.

Olli Heinonen, the former chief of UN nuclear inspections worldwide, told Le Monde, a French newspaper, that Iran has stockpiled enough low-enriched uranium for 1-2 nuclear arms, but he thought doing so made no sense. Betting on the rationality of the Iranian ayatollahs is not a good idea.

Who doesn’t want a ban on nuclear weapons testing? The United States Senate for one.

While the U.S. has “signed” a number of the test ban treaties that have been around since the 1960s, the Senate has not ratified any of them, thus avoiding having to commit the nation to no longer testing new nuclear weapons. For some reason, the U.S. Senate does not trust Russia or the other nuke nations.

In April, our ever-hopeful President Barack Obama journeyed to Russia to sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Dmitry Medvedev dubbed “New Start.” For Obama it was another empty photo opportunity on a par with accepting the Nobel Peace Prize (soon to be available everywhere in boxes of Cracker Jack). For the Russians it was a reason to break out the vodka.

Robert R. Monroe, a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy and former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency from 1977-1980 explains why. “The treaty has many problems from being unverifiable to giving Russia virtual veto power over U.S. missile defense, and more.” That’s bad enough, but it’s worse than that.

Two days before meeting with the Russians, the Obama administration released its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Monroe says, “The NPR is joined at the hip with New Start, and together they take this country down a dangerous path. For 65 years, the very existence of our nation has depended upon a strong nuclear deterrent. The new NPR wipes out this proven policy, substituting one of weakness in its place.”

Liberals love test ban treaties. They love the idea of unilaterally disarming the United States in a world where there are nations who may not love us.

Not surprisingly, the nations with nukes have not signed onto anything that would take away their deterrent factor and, of course, Iran is hell-bent on getting them for itself.

Not a single conflict since the U.S. dropped two A-bombs on Japan in 1945 to end a war they started has used nuclear weapons. Rational people, even if they have nuclear weapons know that using them is probably suicidal. Irrational people like the Iranian ayatollahs are probably the exception.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

A New Deadline for War with Iran

By Alan Caruba

The world has a new deadline for war. It is August 21, 2010 when the Russians activate Iran’s first nuclear reactor by loading fuel.

Both the Russians and the Iranian regime have concluded that President Obama is weak and they have plenty of reason to think this. They have taken his measure since he was inaugurated in 2009. Obama has been incredibly naïve, eager to accommodate, and clearly reluctant to do anything in the Middle East other than LEAVE.

The United States has been at war with Iran since our diplomats were seized on November 4, 1979 and held hostage for 444 days.

Just because presidents since then have not wanted to say so, a state of war exists. The Iranian regime’s leadership have never lost sight of the fact that they have been at war with us.

Reportedly fearful for the fate of the hostages, President Carter never threatened the full military power of the U.S. if they were not returned and, when they were, it was on January 20, 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office.

Perhaps the presidents were counseled that Iran could, if it wanted, close the straits of Hormuz, effectively cutting much of the flow of oil out of the Middle East. To put it in stark terms, 40% of the world's seaborne oil shipments flow through the straits.

In contrast to Carter, Reagan did not hesitate to put the full moral weight of the United States behind regime change when he could. When he called the Soviet Union “an evil empire” it encouraged its satellite captive nations and its internal dissident community. He called for the removal of the Berlin Wall and it fell. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Words, however, are not enough and the absence of words sends a message, too. The failure of President Obama in June 2009 to voice support for the uprising of Iranians when they protested the rigged election of Mamoud Ahmadinejad told the ayatollahs they had nothing to fear from him.

The United States, Israel, Europe and all other Middle East nations have plenty to fear from Iran.

The essential error that administrations have made with Iran was to assume that the regime leaders are rational men who can be influenced by the standard diplomatic practices such as sanctions or inducements to play nice.

The men who lead Iran believe that they must bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam, a figure who lives at the bottom of a well and from which he will emerge on a white winged horse to scourge the world of unbelievers. It is a triumphant Shiite belief and it demands chaos in the world, unrest everywhere, and wars that kill millions to satisfy the blood-lust so central to Islam.

To assume that once they achieve their long-sought goal of being a nuclear power they will not use it will bring about the deaths of millions---starting with the Israelis.

We are dealing with mad men, lunatics, religious fanatics and they will not be dissuaded from their goal.

The Shiites are a minority among Muslims but they are the majority in Iran. The next largest group of Shiites can be found in southern Iraq. Beyond them in the greater Islamic world community are the Sunnis and they regard the Shiites with contempt and always have.

August 21 is the day to fear. The ayatollahs have been looking for signs to ensure that the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, is getting ready to return. The massive flooding in Pakistan, the dislocation of millions there, is surely seen as one such sign. Perhaps, too, the vast forest fires in Russia. The financial destruction of the United States is surely another sign. The Obama administration has run up debt beyond anything in the history of the nation and millions are unemployed.

In an August 15 commentary, “Obama Is Colluding with a New Fascist Imperialism”, James Lewis warns that “Nothing is more like the fascist Axis of the 1930s than Islamist expansionism today. Like the Hitler-Tojo-Mussolini Axis of the 1930s, Islamic fascists are fundamentally imperialistic, with an explicit order from on High to subjugate civilized people or turn them to ashes.”

Stop thinking like rational Christians and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists.

The Islamic Nuclear Bomb is about to become a reality and unlike Pakistan that wanted it as a defense against India, the Iranian ayatollahs want to use it against Israel and the West. That’s us!

© Alan Caruba, 2010

U.S. Looks Weak as Iran Flips Off the World

By Alan Caruba

For months now, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, has been writing increasingly desperate pleas for the Obama administration to do something about the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and the world, Iran.

“When Barack Obama became president, Iran had perhaps several thousand centrifuges enriching uranium. Now it may have thousands more,” wrote Zuckerman in the August edition. “What’s at stake here is too menacing for the world to delude itself that Iran will somehow change course. It won’t.”

It must be very frustrating to be a multi-millionaire media mogul and yet unable to do much about an impending disaster other than warn about it. My sense is that it falls on deaf ears at the White House.

Anyone as dense as Obama should not be allowed to be Commander-in-Chief, but he is and, worse for America and all other nations, he likely has no idea of the dangers involved in reducing the nation’s military capabilities at a time when Iran is closing in on becoming a nuclear threat to the Middle East and beyond.

“So, if Iran succeeds,” warns Zuckerman, “it would be seen as a major defeat and open our government to doubts about its power and resolve to shape events in the Middle East. Friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington; foes would aggressively challenge U.S. policies.”

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Kay, the man who led the U.N. inspections after the Persian Gulf War and later led the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group following the 2003 invasion, dismantled the Obama administration claims that either economic sanctions or a weapons inspection program in Iran will deter the Iranians. “As a former weapons inspector, I have very bad news: A weapons inspection regime in Iran will not work.”

Don’t look to the United Nations to do anything. “Even after Iran’s 20-year-long clandestine program started to be revealed the IAEA inspectors have had a hard time getting United Nations authority to confront the Islamic Republic.”

“The blunt truth,” said Kay, “is that weapons inspections simply cannot prevent a government in charge of a large country from developing nuclear weapons.” It didn’t even stop a small country, North Korea, from doing so.

Does anyone believe that President Obama will support an Israeli attack on Iran to degrade its ability to complete its goal of acquiring nuclear weapons?

Does anyone know the extent to which the President is trying to reduce the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons? Or the capability of the U.S. Air Force to respond to a threat to the peace anywhere in the world?

The only time this president has shown any “leadership” was in response to criticism by the former head of the forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McCrystal. Meanwhile, the cost cutting in the Pentagon continues relentlessly.

All this reeks of the weakness shown by Great Britain and European leaders in the face of the obvious aggression by Hitler’s Nazi regime in the 1930s.

A January 31, 2008 article in The Economist, “Has Iran Won?” asked, “Who would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies.”

The answer is that it’s easy when nations display the same gutless response of earlier generations and the weakness of the present administration.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

This Week's Quote

“Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran."

-- Burt Prelutsky
http://burtprelutsky.com

That Should Scare Them!

Obama's Incremental Surrender

By Alan Caruba

Since taking office on January 20, 2009, President Obama has engaged in one form of incremental surrender and betrayal after another, letting our allies know the United States is not to be trusted to protect them and our enemies know they need only wait for our troops to depart.

The latest tiny surrender was Obama’s pledge that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against none-nuclear countries no matter what weapons they choose to use against us. In plain terms, our nuclear weapons may well be the only thing restraining the bad intentions of any number of despots worldwide.

It should be noted that Obama’s new policy leaves our strategic nuclear weapons in place, but limits further development and testing. As The Washington Times noted, “American is taking a pledge to pursue nuclear obsolescence.”

Obama’s policy ignores the fact that our current enemies are not states, but stateless terrorist Islamist organizations with state sponsors. They have made it clear that they would love to get their hands on a small nuclear weapon or on biological/chemical weapons with which to inflict death on the scale of 9/11 or larger.

This kind of empty and stupid posturing may make Obama feel like a great global leader, but in practical terms it does nothing to assure our allies that he has the stomach to retaliate against their enemies and ours.

There’s a reason there has not been a World War Three. It begins with the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. It kept the Soviets mindful of their own destruction until their system collapsed under the failure of communism.

To fail to understand that America has been the global policeman since the end of World War Two is to ignore the benefit this has brought to the world despite the difficulties encountered in Vietnam in the 1970s and Iraq in this decade.

The U.S. armed forces, its Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard, represent more than three million personnel on active duty, the vast bulk of whom are stationed within the U.S. with others in Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The rest are at sea protecting the vital lanes of commercial traffic around the world and showing the power of the U.S. to those who might think about challenging it.

Deployments include, of course, those in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but the U.S. also has more than 56,000 in Germany, 33,000 in Japan, and around 30,000 in South Korea. There are fairly sizeable units in England and Italy. There are units through East Asia, North Africa, the Near East and South Asia, as well as sub-Saharan Africa.

When Obama made his speech regarding the decision to increase our presence in Afghanistan he used West Point cadets as the photo backdrop. He used the return of a casualty of war as a photo opportunity showing him saluting military-style.

It is all symbolism without substance and it is obscene.

This president gives every indication of having no real heart for combat. He has demonstrated a knack for picking the wrong side in a fight whether it’s a Fidel Castro- wannabe legally exiled from Honduras or the decision to withdraw a nuclear umbrella from former Soviet satellite nations in Eastern Europe.

He is utterly clueless regarding the lessons previous U.S. presidents have discovered. The Middle East only responds to power and force.

Diplomacy produces nothing but stalemate in the Middle East and that is often the best outcome one can accept.

A case in point is our traditional and most reliable Middle East ally, Israel, whose prime minister was recently treated in an extraordinarily shabby fashion by Obama as if to deliberately signal the Palestinians, the Iranians, the Syrians and others whose “side” he’s on.

Since 1947 no amount of negotiations and diplomacy have moved Israel’s Palestinian and Syrian enemies any closer to peace though, after having been thoroughly defeated in war, both Egypt and Jordan did accept peace terms.

Apparently, only after Iran nukes Tel Aviv will the new Obama doctrine be debated for several weeks concerning an appropriate level of retaliation. This is a president who, even though a bi-partisan Congress has passed tough sanctions against Iran, hasn’t found time to sign off on them.

It you want World War Three, you need only wait for Obama to force Israel’s hand to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities for lack of any other option. They have previously done this in both Iraq and Syria.

Obama has proven to be a disaster for the nation on so many levels and in so many ways that observers can only watch and wonder what this demented socialist flower child and his cronies will do next.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Iran Still Holds America Hostage

By Alan Caruba

While Americans celebrated Valentine’s Day with chocolates, flowers, and other expressions of love, others with long memories were thinking about February 14, 1977.

In his book, “A World of Trouble”, Patrick Tyler, noted that “On February 14, a heavily armed band of revolutionary guerrillas staged a full-scale assault on the American embassy compound” in Tehran, Iran.

“The young Iranians, some of them wearing the checkered kaffiyehs of the PLO, set up firing positions on the rooftops of neighboring buildings that overlooked the compound. At 10:30 a.m., they opened up with thirty-caliber machine guns, raking the embassy from two directions.”

That was an act of war. It was not, however, treated as such in that it did not provoke a military response until later and it was too little, too late, and so poorly executed it surely marked America as too weak to be taken seriously.

On that day, however, it only took two hours for the “students” to take 66 American diplomats and staff hostage. They would be held for 444 days and released, according to Tyler, only after a heavy ransom was paid.

“This episode would reverberate through the region for decades,” wrote Tyler, “suggesting to potential foes that America would not vigorously defend its interests in the Middle East.”

There are three young American hikers being held hostage as this is written. They accidentally strayed across the Iranian border last summer and currently face charges of espionage which is punishable by the death penalty in Iran. Hostage taking is the lowest form of criminal behavior and Iran thrives on it, whether it is these three or previously, a number of British sailors who were taken at gunpoint.

President Carter’s hopes for a second term were dashed by his tepid response to the hostage taking. At the time it occurred, he had been focused on getting a Camp David agreement between Anwar Sadat of Eqypt and Menachem Begin of Israel. The two received a Nobel Peace Prize, the Sinai was returned, and Carter had his singular achievement. By then, however, he had lost the confidence of most Americans.

The unanswered question about the embassy in Tehran was why it was not shut down in the wake of attacks a few days earlier on the British embassy in Tehran. In its wake, our embassies in Islamabad, Pakistan, and in Libya were attached and torched. When the Iranian revolution unfolded, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, many westerners and Iranians bailed out of Iran, seeing the writing on the wall.

Carter, however, could not conceive that Shah Reza Pahlavi was already in deep trouble in Iran. He had long been a trusted ally of the United States, but anti-Americanism had been on the rise in Iran for years as the result of our interference in that nation’s internal affairs. When Carter paid a state visit in 1977, he had toasted the shah saying that Iran under his leadership “was an island of stability in one of the most troubled regions of the world.”

The shah, however, would flee Iran and, already ill from cancer, suffer the indifference of the Carter administration, more intent on political correctness than compassion for the former ally who had spent billions on U.S. arms and other contracts.

As the Iranians celebrated the 31st anniversary of their revolution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged that they were on the verge of becoming a nuclear state. Sanctions will not work against a nation that has already committed a serious act of war against the U.S. and for whom the U.N. is a mere echo chamber.

There is something embarrassing about the hope that little Israel will somehow rescue the whole of the West from the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. It is wishful thinking. It will require a preemptive attack with the full military capabilities of the United States.

It is highly unlikely that Barack Hussein Obama will authorize such an action. The Iranian leadership does not respect and does not fear Barack Obama, nor should they.

Deadly Earth, Deadly Humans

By Alan Caruba

The earthquake in Haiti is a perfect example of the arrogance of environmentalists who are always running around crying “Save the Earth” or making claims that any or all forms of life are going extinct.

For three decades we have listened to these charlatans claim that the Earth was heating up to a point where, if we didn’t cut back or replace all forms of energy, oil, natural gas and coal, it would become a vast desert devoid of life.

Then, in 1998, the Sun began yet another of its eleven year cycles of low sunspot activity, a diminution of magnetic storms on its surface, and the completely predictable result was a new, perfectly natural cooling cycle, a prelude perhaps to a predictable new ice age.

When I do radio, I like to remind listeners that Mother Nature has a message for humankind. It’s “Get out of the way. Here comes an earthquake, a volcano, a flood, a forest fire, a mudslide, a blizzard, a hurricane, et cetera.”

In an excellent book, “Devastation! The World’s Worst Natural Disasters” by Lesley Newson, she starts by noting that “The Earth is a rocky sphere nearly 8,000 miles in diameter. It is surrounded by a shroud of gases more than 60 miles deep. Sandwiched in between is a fragile layer, only a few miles thick, where humans are able to survive. It is perhaps not surprising that in this tiny zone of life there are occasional upheavals that make survival impossible.”

Haiti is the perfect definition of devastation. As bad as the earthquake’s damage has been, the aftermath will be testimony to the way those not killed in the initial quake will fall victim to the diseases that will ravage the area as well as the difficulty to provide immediate medical care. There are an astonishing number of ways humans can die and Mother Nature is utterly indifferent.

What makes matters worse, however, is the indifference of environmentalists who would deny everyone access to the energy sources needed to fuel a complex, technological, global society beginning with the provision of electricity. The Earth is not running out of coal or oil, only the right to mine it and drill for it.

The first thing to go in Haiti was its communications system. The next was the capacity to fuel means of transportation. The lack of a government was nothing compared to the long-standing failure to provide clean water and, worse, the failure to educate Haitians to compete in a world where literacy and modern skills are vital to survival.

Another factor that will kill many Haitian survivors is the spread of disease by insect and rodent pests. Environmentalists have striven to deny Americans and all others access to one of the greatest developments of the modern era, pesticides with which to control the mosquitoes, the ticks, the fleas, the rats and all the other creatures that constantly threaten humanity.

In April 2005, I wrote a commentary, “The Black Plague and its descendants” that was published in The Washington Times. It noted that the Black Death made its way from inner Asia and, in 1347, Yersina pestis arrived in Europe. What followed was the second greatest catastrophe in the human record. By the time it ended around 1352, a quarter of Europe’s population was dead.

Only World War II killed more people. And yet, as this is written, millions die of malaria in Africa and Asia because some bureaucrat in the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT.

History gives ample evidence that the Earth is a dangerous place, in addition to earthquakes, it is ringed by volcanoes and, in the U.S. the beloved Yellowstone National Park is one giant volcanic caldera which, when it explodes, will alter life as well as take it in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Scientists track the nation’s “hurricane season” and all manner of effort is made to anticipate them and warn residents, but even that was not enough when Katrina hit the Gulf States on August 29, 2005.

It is stupid to politicize this event, blaming former President Bush as if he either caused it or failed to respond effectively. No President and no government are prepared for a Category Five hurricane. It was just as stupid not to flee when told it was coming.

It is not for nothing that we call such events “an act of God”, but in reality they are an act of a huge planet, unique among all others in our galaxy because it has spawned all manner of life, including our own.

It is a planet subject to the action or inaction of the Sun. Nothing we do alters that simple fact. It is a planet that must hope to dodge any of the thousands of asteroids that threaten it. It is an Earth whose tectonic plates shift unpredictably. Its interior is unimaginably hot and whose circulation of molten rock carries the heat to the surface, allowing its mantle to keep the core stable.

What I am arguing for is a bit of humility, something that humans are not famous for.

There are six billion of us and the world’s intelligentsia scorns us and seeks ways to ensure as many as possible will die by thwarting the development of genetically modified crops to feed us, by stopping the building of more power generation plants, by making war in the name of a misguided belief in the superiority of a religion like Islam, or the evil desire to grow rich and powerful by ruling vast populations.

In Iran, ruled by certifiably insane ayatollahs, the people are in the streets to overthrow a brutal regime that is determined to create its own nuclear weapons and the world is standing by instead of uniting to destroy their means to do so. A so-called international organization, the United Nations, is shot through with corruption and both unwilling and unable to assert the sanctions to stop the inevitable outcome of doing nothing.

And here in the United States, we have fallen victim to a regime so dedicated to the destruction of the nation’s economy that we wait on the election process to save us from ourselves.