Belligerent Iran

The Jerousalem Post:

Aug. 14, 2005 23:31 Updated Aug. 15, 2005 3:13

This week – when the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board convenes in Vienna – the EU will publish its response to Iran's breaking of UN seals at its Isfahan nuclear plant and making it fully operational again, in blatant violation of earlier undertakings. It is taking the EU an inordinate amount of time to express displeasure with Teheran, while not even going so far as calling for Iran's galling conduct to be referred to the UN Security Council.

None of us should be holding our breath. Nothing will come of European verbiage, because nothing is meant to come of it. All this should make Israelis exceedingly wary, since unabashed Iranian nuclear ambitions are perhaps the most potent existential threat to Israel just now.

President George W. Bush warned this weekend that the use of force remains an option. Europe, while hemming and hawing about the prospect of atomic bombs in the hands of fanatic ayatollahs, lost no time in lashing out at even the suggestion that Iran's arm be twisted to prevent it from wielding the most deadly weapons it can obtain.

The Iranian threat isn't a matter of intelligence analysis or speculation, as may have been the case with Iraq in recent years. Iran itself proudly proclaims that it is intent on going nuclear. Moreover, there's no doubt about its hostile objectives and support for international aggression, including terrorism.

"Its stated policy," as US Vice President Richard Cheney observed last January, "is Israel's destruction." Earlier in the year Mossad chief Meir Dagan assessed that "the Iranian nuclear threat is very tangible. They are a step from the point of no return in which they will be able to enrich their own uranium without foreign assistance. The international community may express concern, but it's not doing much and is in fact offering the Iranians the respite in which to forge ahead with their program."

The world's attitude is all too reminiscent of its pre-World War II attempts to appease an undisguised dangerous aggressor, allow him to arm himself and gear for attack. The Iranians are just as cocky and in-your-face as the Axis powers were. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman even threatened the US directly, saying, "I think Bush should know that our options are more numerous than the United States."

After Iran had brazenly reneged on its own undertaking to allow international supervision and suspend its uranium conversion work while dialogue with the EU was ongoing, it then had the temerity to caution that it would be "a grave miscalculation" for the US and EU to refer Teheran to the UN Security Council and impose sanctions over its decision to go ahead with the production of nuclear fuel.

All this is part of a shameless shakedown by Iran to extort more perks from the free world in return for fewer, weaker and patently worthless promises regarding its nuclear plans. At this point the Iranians, in the custom of the Middle Eastern bazaar, tell the EU they're not interested in what's on offer, or as Iran's chief negotiator Cyrus Nasseri called the proposed economic and political concessions from Europe, "a package of lollipops."

Europe has yet to admit that it is being blackmailed or acknowledge that its staunch opposition to any hint of using force is effectively leaving no option but resorting to force.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that European carrot-waving is aimed less at stymieing Iran's nuclear schemes than it is at impeding the barely raised American stick. American action appears to outrage Europe as much as, if not more than Iranian nukes.

Were Europe to join America in imposing effective sanctions, it is likely that Russia and China would not dare breach such a united front and that Iran would get the message. In any case, there is nothing stopping the US and Europe from jointly imposing sanctions outside the UN framework if nothing can be achieved within it.

Time is running out while the world's single greatest sponsor of terror is coming closer to gaining nuclear capability. Before long, the military option may be the only remaining viable option. Failure to take minimal measures against a clear menace could well ignite the very conflagration Europe professes to fear.