NEOGNOSTIKOS

Monday, 5 December 2005

Kick out the Blocks
Via Charles Johnson, I find this in today's Jerusalem Post:

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."

What does el-Baradei mean when he says that Iran would "retaliate" against those who would isolate it? Is he passing along some word from the Party of God to Israel?

Also, there shouldn't be any question that Ahamdinejad is a madman. He and the mullahs can't keep from putting their own country on the fastrack to re-education.

Posted by Toby Petzold at 2:04 AM CST | Post Comment | View Comments (3) | Permalink

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Monday, 5 December 2005 - 6:29 AM CST

Name: Rider

No doubt Iran would love to have nukes. But this is really a game of brinksmanship they are playing for economic purposes only. Since we do not negotiate directly with them, they have been in talks for several years with the EU-3 (Britain, France, Germany). Those nations are responsible for 37% of Iran's imports. Iran is trying to win increased European economic investment, favorable trade deals, and support for its application to join the World Trade Organization. The threat which the EU-3 holds over Iran is to turn the matter over to the IAEA which will recommend UN sanctions. The last thing Iran wants is sanctions. The noises we are hearing are rug shop talk as a deal is being bargained. It's not about anybody attacking anybody with nukes.

Hopefully, Condoleeza Ricin will not, in her role as Bush's hired gun, start shooting off her mouth about possible military action (such as giving bunker-buster bombs to Israel to preemptively attack Iranian nuclear sites). That's absolutely not necessary and would in fact be counter-productive. Nobody believes our intelligence on Iranian nuclear sites is 100% accurate, so if we or Israel bombed even 400 of them, others might be left with which to prepare the retaliatory strikes. It would be stupid to go down that road.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/7730/iran.html

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Monday, 5 December 2005 - 9:46 PM CST

Name: TP

But this is really a game of brinksmanship they are playing for economic purposes only.

Rider, why is it that when an enemy country resorts to some unacceptable move or some flight of rhetoric to force an issue with us, it's a brilliant and altogether legitimate tactic, but when we talk tough, it's this unnecessary and belligerent crime against the Peace of the World? You're worse than Bill Richardson making excuses for the psychotic utterances of Kim Jong Il.

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Tuesday, 6 December 2005 - 6:39 AM CST

Name: Rider

I'm sure it seems that way to you, because you are a child and one who speaks before reading and therefore does not know understand what the grown-ups are talking about. You do not have a clue what diplomacy is nor how it is carried out nor the relation between coercive diplomacy and veiled military threat. Read Waging Modern War by Gen. Wesley K. Clark, esp. pp. 456 ff. His second book is even better, btw.

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