December 5, 2005
Iranian Nukes
Move along, nothing to see here.
- 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.
If anything, this calls for another round of strongly worded international resolutions condemning Iran for defying the will of the nations who were signatories to the LAST strongly worded resolution.
- 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."
Yep. That's what would happen alright.
Here's what's going to happen.
Israel somehow found out that Iran is as far along as they are. It was merely Mr Magoo who confirmed it. They know what Iran is up to. Israel is going to do an Osirak style bombing run to all of the Iranian sites.
There will be much consternation and condemnation from the Middle East and Europe, but mostly private sighs of relief from those same Europeans.
The only snag is that to get to Iran from Israel, they will need to cross over Iraq. I would find it pretty hard to believe that the United States is not blanketing Iraq with radar from border to border. We'd see them sneaking over. Even if we didn't the usual suspects would think we did. That's a little trouble.
Update: Call me master of the obvious.
- Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that he could consider a pre-emptive air strike against Iran's nuclear installations if he were to be re-elected. Netanyahu, who is widely expected to regain the leadership of the right-wing Likud party later this month, said Israel needed to "act in the spirit" of the late premier Menachem Begin who ordered an air strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.