The Redhunter

Following are a few excerpts from the rest of her column, but you should follow the link and read the whole thing yourself.

Iran is just a heartbeat away from the A-bomb.Last Friday the Daily Telegraph reported Teheran has surreptitiously removed a sufficient amount of uranium from its nuclear production facility in Isfahan to produce six nuclear bombs. Given Iran's already acknowledged uranium enrichment capabilities, the Telegraph's report indicates that the Islamic Republic is now in the late stages of assembling nuclear bombs.

It would be a simple matter for Iran to assemble those bombs without anyone noticing. US spy satellites recently discovered what the US believes are covert nuclear facilities in Iran. The mullocracy has not disclosed these sites to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with inspecting Iran's nuclear sites.

As to the IAEA, this week it presented its latest report on Teheran's nuclear program to its board members in Vienna. The IAEA's report claimed that Iran has taken steps to enable its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads. With their range of 1,300 kilometers, Shihab-3 missiles are capable of reaching Israel and other countries throughout the region.
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Russia has made clear that it will reject any further sanctions. Indeed it is intensifying its military and financial ties to Teheran. Moscow has pledged to have the Bushehr nuclear plant up and running by the end of the year. And Iran is already suspected of diverting plutonium from the plant to develop still more nuclear weapons.

Germany, too, has evinced no interest in curtailing its financial ties to Teheran. To the contrary, German trade with Iran expanded 12% in the last year, from $2.7 billion to $3b.

So the US will fail to pass additional sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. And this is a shame. But even if a miracle occurred and Russia, China and Germany agreed to adopt and enforce stiff sanctions against Iran, those sanctions would come too late to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The uranium that the Iranians took from their Isfahan plant will be weapons grade and attached to Shihab-3 missiles or transferred to Hizbullah, al-Qaida or Hamas terrorists for use long before such hypothetical sanctions would even be noticed.

I found the Daily Telegraph article referenced above, so you can follow the link and judge for yourself.

Of course, Iranian progress toward nuclear weapons should not really be news. Just last Monday AFP reported that that IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) just released a report saying that "Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities," which puts it (once again) in defiance of the Security Council.

Can more diplomacy succeed? Reuel Marc Gerecht reported last month in The Weekly Standard that

On July 30, Ali Khamenei demolished what was left of George W. Bush's Iran policy. Iran's clerical overlord also put paid to Senator Barack Obama's dreams of tête-à-tête, stop-the-nukes diplomacy. Ten days earlier the Americans, British, French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese had gathered in Geneva hoping to convince Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment. True to form, Khamenei told them all to stick it. The Islamic Republic will not cease and desist: "Taking one step back against the arrogant powers [the West] will lead them to take one step forward," Khamenei replied.

Now, yes I know that Gerecht is part of the evil neocon conspiracy, and Glick is Israeli. But the questions still need to be asked:

Should Israel strike Iran?

Should the United States support Israel in this endeavor, and if so, how much?

The answer to the first is what you balance an Israeli strike against. If you balance it against what you think is a stable status quo, then it looks foolish. If you believe that reports of Iranian progress toward nuclear weapons is the result of bad intelligence similar to what we experienced with WMD in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, you would also not want to strike. Lastly, if you think that a nuclear Iran could be contained you would be against a strike.

But if you are like Caroline Glick and myself, and believe that Iran is on the fast track to obtaining nuclear weapons and that they will most likely use them once they get them, then you balance all of the bad things that would happen in the wake of an Israeli strike against the millions of deaths from a nuclear war, and the balance tips the other way.

So if you accept the latter view, what should the U.S. do?

It's not an easy question to answer. There are a whole range of things that we could do to help. We could supply "bunker buster" bombs. We could allow an air route so as to reduce the need for refueling and enhance entry and exit routes. We could supply intelligence vital to making the strike more effective. And we could run cover for Israel diplomatically around the world, including at the UN.

We could try to do all but the latter clandestinely, but we have to work on the assumption that sooner or later the world will get out about whatever we do to help.

We also have to take into account that an Israeli strike will inflame Shiite passions in Iraq, a place were we hardly need trouble. Overt American support will make our task there all the more difficult. It is this, I think that holds us back the most.

Oh, that and the fact that Iran will no doubt retaliate by trying to close the Straits or Hormuz, and it would fall to to the U.S. Navy to keep them open, which would mean a shooting war with Iran. We would win, but it could get very messy. And the price of oil would skyrocket.

In the end we have to support Israel. I don't have the answers to the details, but I fear that doing nothing will be worse than doing something.