North Korea thumbs its nose at Obama

N. Korea tells the U.S. to change policy

from The Korea Herald
May 17, 2009

North Korea will not come back to the negotiation table unless the United States and South Korea give up their "hostile policy" toward the communist nation, North Korean state media said Sunday, according to Yonhap News.

"No matter what nonsense the Lee group may say under the clutches of the U.S., the DPRK remains unchanged in its determination and declaration made to protect the dignity and sovereignty of the nation," North Korea's Cabinet newspaper, the Minju Joson, said in a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

It also said the North will never attend the six-party talks aiming to end Pyongyang's nuclear program, and will strengthen its nuclear power no matter what other nations have agreed in the six-party talks that also include the U.S., China and South Korea.

Since its rocket launch last month, the North has pledged to carry out its second nuclear test despite U.N. sanctions. It has also threatened to shut down an industrial complex run jointly with the South, a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation achieved by former liberal South Korean governments.
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Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will

The message from Israel's new prime minister is stark: if the Obama administration doesn't prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, Israel may be forced to attack.

“The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,”- adviser to Netanyahu

from The Atlantic
by Jeffrey Goldberg
April 1, 2009

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.”

But Netanyahu also said that Iran threatens many other countries apart from Israel, and so his mission over the next several months is to convince the world of the broad danger posed by Iran. One of his chief security advisers, Moshe Ya’alon, told me that a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. “This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region—Washington or Tehran?”

Netanyahu said he would support President Obama’s decision to engage Iran, so long as negotiations brought about a quick end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “How you achieve this goal is less important than achieving it,” he said, but he added that he was skeptical that Iran would respond positively to Obama’s appeals. In an hour-long conversation, held in the Knesset, Netanyahu tempered his aggressive rhetoric with an acknowledgement that nonmilitary pressure could yet work. “I think the Iranian economy is very weak, which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.” When I suggested that this statement contradicted his assertion that Iran, by its fanatic nature, is immune to pressure, Netanyahu smiled thinly and said, “Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

He went on, “Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest. People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?”

Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.”

He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation at the hands of Israel or America. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said.

Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me.

Both Israeli and American intelligence officials agree that Iran is moving forward in developing a nuclear-weapons capability. The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, said earlier this month that Iran has already “crossed the technological threshold,” and that nuclear military capability could soon be a fact: “Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.”

American officials argue that Iran has not crossed the “technological threshold”; the director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, said recently that Israel and the U.S. are working with the same set of facts, but are interpreting it differently. “The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view,” he said. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, recently warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would undermine stability in the Middle East and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf.

The Obama administration agrees with Israel that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to Middle East stability, but it also wants Israel to focus on the Palestinian question. Netanyahu, for his part, promises to move forward on negotiations with the Palestinians, but he made it clear in our conversation that he believes a comprehensive peace will be difficult to achieve if Iran continues to threaten Israel, and he cited Iran’s sponsorship of such Islamist groups as Hezbollah and Hamas as a stumbling block.
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BIG LIES:Demolishing The Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel

THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS TEXT
by David Horowitz
from The Free Republic

The War in the Middle East is nearly sixty years old. Most people alive today are unfamiliar with its history and origins and lack knowledge of its facts. This state of ignorance provides a fertile ground for the unscrupulous to create myths that will justify their destructive agendas. The political propaganda machine has created many such myths to fuel their war against the Jewish state.

Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East that elects its lead­ers in free elections and guarantees rights to its citizens, and honors those rights. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to be fighting for “human rights.” There are about a million and a half Arabs living as citizens in Israel who elect representatives to Israel’s parliament and who have more rights than the Arab citizens of any Arab state. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to be fighting for “social justice.” Israel’s very creation is referred to by its Arab enemies as "the Nakba", or the “catastrophe,” the clear implication of which is that Israel should not exist. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to support self-determination and oppose genocide. Israel was the victim – at its very birth -- of an unprovoked aggression by five Arab mon­archies and dictatorships. It has been the target of an Arab war that has continued uninterruptedly for nearly sixty years because the Arab states have refused to make peace. Yet Israel is the target of those who say they want “peace.” Israel is the victim of terrorist attacks – sui­cide bombings – which along with the Jews they mark for extinction, kill Palestinian women and children as well. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to speak for humanity and a future that is “free.”

How is this possible? How can evil be dressed in the garments of justice? How can a genocidal war to destroy a democratic people be justified as a struggle for “national liberation?”

They can through the creation of political myths that rationalize aggression and justify war against civilian populations.

In George Orwell’s futuristic novel, 1984, the Ministry of Truth for the totalitarian state proclaims: Knowledge Is Ignorance; Freedom Is Slavery. The nature of political doublespeak never changes and its agenda is always the same: Obliteration of historical memory in the service of power. “The struggle of man against power,” wrote the Czech writer, Milan Kundera, “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Only a restored memory can demolish totalitarian myths and make men free.

David Meir-Levi has written a text that restores the memory of the facts that lie at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East. These facts are crucial not only to the restoration of the history that politics has obscured, but to the survival of a people who live in the shadow of their own destruction. Everyone interested in justice will want to read this little book.
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The "Iran Lobby" Moves Into The White House - Not a Big Surprise!

from the blog MERE RHETORIC

I was a little worried that the Saudis would use their long-time lobbyist Chas Freeman - now comfortably ensconced as NIC - to buy up the Obama administration. Then I read this report from the Center For Security Policy. Turns out that's not really a possibility because the Iranians won't sell it to them:

A complex network of individuals and organizations with ties to the clerical regime in Tehran is pressing forward in seeming synchrony to influence the new U.S. administration's policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. Spearheaded by a de facto partnership between the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other organizations serving as mouthpieces for the mullahs' party line, the network includes well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world. This report-- documenting the rise of what can accurately be described as the "Iran Lobby" in Washington, D.C.--is derived entirely from unclassified open sources and describes in detail the activities, linkages, and objectives of this alarming alliance between NIAC, CAIR and others that is aimed at co-opting America's foreign policy in the Middle East and specifically with Iran... Of special concern is the growing penetration of the Obama Administration by a number of individuals with such associations.

The full report [PDF] names names, many of which will be known to longtime MR readers. In fact, the entire thrust of the paper should seem uncomfortably familiar:

Despite Iran's obvious and increasing intransigence during the 1990s, foreign policy experts were sure that reformists were just about to sweep to victory. And then when that didn't happen they insisted that newly categorized "conservative pragmatists" were going to take the day. Wrong and wrong. Despite Iran's obvious role in linking Hezbollah and Mugniyah, these same experts insisted for decades that Mugniyah was anything but a Hezbollah operative. Laughingly wrong. Despite a broad consensus across the Iranian regime that the Islamic Republic should nuclearize, the foreign policy left focuses on subtle intrigues that may or may not exist. Not really important. Despite Iran's obvious progress toward the bomb, they came up with the suggestion that we didn't have to worry because Iran could never get enough of their Pakistani-bought centrifuges to work. Problem solved. And then of course there's the whole "Sunnis and Shiites don't work together" smugness with which the left greets any suggestion that Iran is backing terrorism against Israel. Right.

See also here and here.

Isn't it strange that Mearsheimer, Brzezinski, and their ilk - usually so quick to ferret out foreign influences on US policy-making - have been silent as CAIR infiltrated the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party? I'm not suggesting that they're part of a deliberate conspiracy to exert Iranian on the US's ruling party. Really. That's not how it happens. It happens around the CSIS watercooler with an exasperated one-liner about Israeli influence, conveying to a new intern what counts as sophistication. It happens in a Foggy Bottom office with a well-timed cringe about Iranian intransigence, telling a low-level bureaucrat what to excise. And it happens on academic panels with glowing reviews, signaling to young scholars what gets published. Outside of actual lobbies like NIAC and CAIR, actual lobbyists like Freeman, and genuinely execrable academics like Juan Cole - anti-Israel and pro-Iranian foreign policy expertise is institutional.

That doesn't make the Iran Lobby's influence any less real. It doesn't matter whether the politicized State Department washouts who hijacked the NIE were doing it in good faith or not. They still committed a quasi-putsch that allowed Iran to run out the clock until their nuke program became undeniable. Ditto for the academics - and the future Democratic President - who picked up the report and ran with it.

Though Brzezinski's shrill campaign to undermine Israeli self-defense by leveraging his vaunted foreign policy credentials - that's getting a little suspicious.

Also suspicious: how lifetime politicians and political scientists, knowing how institutions work, could conclude that there's a shadowy pro-Israel cabal secretly controlling the US. It's almost as if there's something driving them other than objective concerns about foreign influence. Levelheaded analysis couldn't cause Mearsheimer to become physically disturbed when railing against "Jewish activists," "major Jewish organizations" and the "Israel lobby." And it couldn't cause Carter to become physically nauseous at the thought of Jews living in the West Bank. That's a different kind of concern about a different kind of problem.

Incidentally, I was just kidding about Chas Freeman trying to buy the White House for the Saudis. He wears at least a couple hats and is among the more prominent members of the diffuse Iran Lobby. Of course he is.

References and previously after the jump (h/t: MR reader CB)...

References:

* Former Ambassador To Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman To Be Appointed To Top Intelligence Post, Join Obama's Anti-Israel Intel Team (Plus: He Blames US-Israel Ties For 9/11) [MR]* Obama's New Saudi-Funded Spy Chief: "The Lobby" Controls US Publishing, Shuts Down Arguments About How The "Brutal Oppression Of The Palestinians" Caused 9/11 [MR]* Rise of the 'Iran Lobby': Teheran's front groups move on-- and into-- the Obama Administration

[Center For Security Policy]* Obama Discovers That Iran Has Nukes, Circa 2011 (Plus: Sophisticated Foreign Policy Expertise About Iran Is Very Sophisticated) [MR]* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran [MR]* Obligatory Post About Iran's "Hezbollah Radiation Will Destroy Israel" Threat (Plus: Mugniyah Assassination Dramatically Demonstrates Absurdity Of Liberal Foreign Policy Sophistication) [MR]* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]* Iran Misses Memo About How Sunnis And Shiites Don't Cooperate, Gives Syria Cutting Edge Offensive Missiles (Plus: Expert Sophistication Wrong On Iranian Nuclearization. Again) [MR]* Hezbollah Outreach To "Sunnis Who Are Loyal To Hezbollah" Not So Kind To Expert Expertise Of Foreign Policy Experts Who Deny Sunni-Shiite Cooperation [MR]* Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions [MR]* Iranian Cleric: Put A Bullet In Livni's Head (Plus: Smug Liberal Sophistication Unperturbed By Spectacularly Wrong Iran Predictions, Failed Anti-Iran Efforts) [MR]* Video: Obama Outreach Coordinator Meets With CAIR Reps, Terrorist-Endorsing Preachers (Plus: FBI Testimony Links CAIR To Terrorists) [MR]* So, About Those Unindicted Co-Conspirators That Democrats Are So Cozy With... [MR]* WaPo: NIE Conclusions Were Engineered By Easily Identifiable, Hysterically Anti-Bush State Department Washouts [MR]* Bolton calls report on Iran 'quasi-putsch' [LAT]* US Spy Agencies: Actually, It Turns Out That Iran Is Developing Nukes (UPDATE: Obama On The NIE: "Bush Continues To Not Let Facts Get In The Way Of His Ideology") [MR]* Q&A: McCain, Obama on Iraq, Iran, Putin [USA Today]* Brzezinski: Israeli Campaign Against Iran Will Detonate US-Israel Relations [MR]* We're Considering the Possibility that Walt and Mearsheimer Might Not Be Faking Their Ignorance [MR]* Carter "Nauseated" By Jewish Settlements [MR]

Previously:* No New Sanctions On Iran. Sophistication On Display.* State Department Sophistication Very Close To Triggering All-Out African War* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears

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Presidential Bait-and-Switch - What Obama once promised, and what he's delivering.

This is a great article.
Rees

from The Wall Street Journal
By KARL ROVE

Barack Obama won the presidency in large measure because he presented himself as a demarcation point. The old politics, he said, was based on "spin," misleading arguments, and an absence of candor. He'd "turn the page" on that style of politics.

Last week's presentation of his budget shows that hope was a mirage.

For example, Mr. Obama didn't run promising larger deficits -- but now is offering record-setting ones. He'll add $4.9 trillion before his term ends and $7.4 trillion if given a second, doubling the national debt in five years and tripling it in 10. Mr. Obama's deficits will be much larger than he admits because he relies on rosy economic assumptions and gimmicks that mask spending and debt (like assuming popular new programs he supports won't be renewed).

Nor did Mr. Obama run promising more earmarks. Instead, he said he'd reform the earmark culture and "scour the federal budget, line by line, and make meaningful cuts." Now he wants to wave through a $410 billion omnibus spending bill with about 8,500 earmarks. This is on top of the $787 billion stimulus bill signed into law two weeks ago.

His justification comes to us from the White House's budget director, Peter Orszag, who recently called the omnibus spending bill "last year's business." But it will fund the federal government for the next six months. Mr. Obama could veto the legislation or push congressional Democrats to ditch the earmarks. But he has given little indication that he will do either.

Nor is it credible to claim that the spending spree on Mr. Obama's watch is someone else's responsibility, as Mr. Orszag did by saying the president had "inherited" these deficits.

Mr. Obama ceded authority to congressional appropriators, who wrote the stimulus bill that is history's largest spending increase. Then Mr. Obama got behind the pork-laden omnibus-spending bill. And Mr. Obama has also proposed $4 trillion in outlays this fiscal year and $3.6 trillion next fiscal year.

Mr. Obama cannot dismiss critics by pointing to President George W. Bush's decision to run $2.9 trillion in deficits while fighting two wars and dealing with 9/11 and Katrina. Mr. Obama will surpass Mr. Bush's eight-year total in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt. If America "cannot and will not sustain" deficits like Mr. Bush's, as Mr. Obama said during the campaign, how can Mr. Obama sustain the geometrically larger ones he's flogging?

There is more. Mr. Obama pledged "no tax hikes on any families earning less than a quarter million dollars." What he didn't draw attention to was $600 billion in higher energy taxes he wants to impose through a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions. These taxes will hit everyone who drives, flips a light switch, or buys anything manufactured, grown or shipped.

Mr. Obama devoted four times as much space in his campaign stump speech to cutting taxes as he did to talking about raising taxes on the wealthy. In the election's most widely watched speech, his Denver Convention address, he didn't even mention raising taxes, instead stressing he'd "cut taxes -- cut taxes -- for 95% of all working families." Yet higher taxes are what every American is going to get.

Today's White House health-care summit should also remind us of one of Mr. Obama's most popular ads, which declared, "On health care reform -- two extremes. On one end, government-run health care, higher taxes. On the other, insurance companies without rules, denying coverage. Barack Obama says both extremes are wrong."

Mr. Obama's plan will lead us to the extreme of government-run health care. And in an effort to reach that goal, Mr. Obama's budget proposes, as a starting point, a $630 billion fund to expand government-run health care. And that $630 billion comes not from reduced spending, but higher taxes.

Mr. Obama's personal popularity remains higher than support for his proposals. A raft of opinion surveys show Americans take the conservative side on issues ranging from the efficacy of government spending, to nationalization of banks, to bailouts for auto companies, to whether tax cuts or government spending will create more jobs. Packaging Mr. Obama's proposals is easier than rigorously defending them. Team Obama will find this out as the details of their budget and other plans are scrutinized.

Barack Obama has been president for a little more than five weeks. During his speech to a joint session of Congress last week, he showed what a skilled speaker he is and how persuasive he can be. But words delivered from a teleprompter, while important, have to line up with actions. Promises have to be met. And a president who promised to be one thing cannot be another. At some point, the gap between good feelings and results, between perception and reality, closes.

Eloquent words and "spin" work better in a campaign than they do while governing. And as Mr. Obama is discovering, the laws of economics won't change, even for him.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
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Uh oh: Matthews sounding fed up with Obama’s earmark hypocrisy

Flying Pig Alert!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

posted at 8:24 pm
on March 4, 2009
by Allahpundit @ Hot Air

Buckley turning on him was predictable, Brooks turning on him was a pleasant surprise if not unthinkable — but Mr. Leg Thrill? This isn’t the first time he’s expressed exasperation with The One’s performance lately, either. If he’s losing Matthews, whither the rest of the media’s Hopenchange sycophants?

As Ace notes, Obama’s not indifferent to all extravagant spending. Just the kind that might improve America’s defense.

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Iran can develop a nuclear weapon within a year and has access to enough fissile material to produce up to 50 nuclear weapons

By James Rosen
FOXNews.com
Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Iran can develop a nuclear weapon within a year and has ready access to enough fissile material to produce up to 50 nuclear weapons, according to a panel of current and former U.S. officials advising the Obama administration.

William Schneider, Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board and a former under secretary of state in the Reagan administration, offered those estimates Wednesday during a news conference announcing the release of a new "Presidential Task Force" report on Iran by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The report, entitled "Preventing a Cascade of Instability: U.S. Engagement to Check Iranian Nuclear Progress," was signed by a team of policymakers, former officials and Iran scholars that included Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind..

Also signing on to the early draft form were two individuals expected to play significant roles in the development of the Obama administration's foreign policy: former Ambassador Dennis Ross, named last month by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a special envoy on the Iran issue, and Robert Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of state who is expected to accept a senior position dealing with non-proliferation issues.

The "cascade" refers to a set of 164 high-speed centrifuges used to enrich uranium to the high levels necessary to produce a nuclear weapon. The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently reported that Iran has enough low enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon, and currently has 5,600 centrifuges operating at its pilot enrichment facility in Natanz. Iran has declared its intention to add another 45,000 centrifuges over the next five years.

But Schneider said Iran has already "perfected the industrial aspects of enriching uranium," and can easily develop a nuclear weapon long before 2014.

"The ability to go from low enriched uranium to highly enriched uranium, especially if [the Iranians] expand the number of centrifuges, would be a relatively brief period of time, perhaps a year or so, before they'd be able to produce a nuclear weapon," Schneider said at the news conference. "So it's not a long-distance kind of problem."

Moreover, Schneider warned that the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Tehran -- which has threatened to wipe Israel off the map and equipped and funded regional terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah -- has access to significant amounts of the raw fissile material that would be the core ingredient in such a nuclear arsenal.

These indigenous natural resources include "yellowcake," the raw uranium ore that is converted to gas and then fed into the cascades of centrifuges. "Iran has enough yellowcake in the country to perhaps produce enough highly enriched uranium, if they go to that length, to produce perhaps fifty nuclear weapons," Schneider said.

Neither of the other two panel members who appeared alongside Schneider at the news conference -- Eugene Habiger, a retried four-star general and former commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, and Nancy Soderberg, a former ambassador to the U.N. and National Security Council staffer during the Clinton administration -- disputed Schneider's claims.

The Washington Institute's nine-page report also warned that Israel "may feel compelled" to take military action to try to destroy or retard the Iranian nuclear program if Russia sells the S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Iran.

"Israeli leaders seem convinced that at least for now, they have a military option," the report states.

"However, Israelis see the option fading over the next one to two years, not only because of Iran's nuclear progress and dispersion of its program but also because of improved Iranian air defenses, especially the expected delivery of the S-300. ... Israel therefore may feel compelled to act before the option disappears."

Schneider, who along with Habiger and Soderberg conferred with high-level officials from Israel, Jordan, Qatar, and Bahrain during a trip to the Middle East last December, reported that the Israeli military still believes it can hold the Iranian nuclear apparatus "at risk," but will no longer hold that view if Tehran acquires more sophisticated air defense technology from Moscow.

"It is the transfer of the S-300 that is likely to be a trigger for Israeli action," Schneider said.

"The time frame is getting compressed and we need to act quickly if we are going to be successful [in resolving the issue peacefully]."

"Time is not on our side," agreed Habiger. "We've been mucking about on this issue for years now."

Habiger and Soderberg said it remains possible for the U.S., by working with Russia, China and Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, to persuade Iran not to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Upcoming BS statement is highlighted in red

"They are a rational actor," Soderberg said of the Iranian regime. "They are deterrable." If the costs of pursuing the nuclear program are made sufficiently high, the panel said -- particularly through the imposition of sanctions on Iran's oil and gas sector -- Tehran's "cost-benefit analysis" could be changed.

Iran's defense minister visited Moscow last month to press for the Russian state-controlled arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, to sell Iran the S-300 system. Russian officials, at least publicly, were non-committal.

However, Iran signed a $700 million contract with Russia in 2005 to purchase 29 low-to-medium altitude surface-to-air missiles, which were delivered the following year and became operational in early 2007.
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Nancy Soderberg believes in never ending diplomacy and 'consensus building'. Yup, that will sure deter Iran from building their nuclear weapsons. These people are out of touch with what Islam is, what Islam plans to do and why they won't be stopped by 'consensus-building'.
Rees

Obama Advisors: Nuclear Iran Wouldn't Be The End Of The World

Monday, February 23, 2009
From the blogspot Holger Awakens
Obama Advisors: Nuclear Iran Wouldn't Be The End Of The World

Good grief - if this article here at the Los Angeles Times doesn't encapsulate the dove-like nature of the Obama administration, I don't know what does. It appears that the feeling among Obama's security advisors is that it's going to be impossible to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons but hold on everyone, hold the phone....these same advisors are saying that the Iranians will be responsible with those nukes! Whew! What a relief, huh? We've all been worried about the crazy lunatic mullahs in Iran have access to nuclear weapons and now, the omnipotent advisors of President Obama are here to assure us it just won't be that bad! Here's some of the details:

If diplomacy fails, another Obama advisor wrote in the same report, the alternative "is a strategy of containment and punishment." That was the conclusion of Ashton B. Carter, Obama's reported choice as an undersecretary of Defense, who also warned: "The challenge of containing Iranian ambitions and hubris would be as large as containing its nuclear arsenal."Most (and maybe all) of Obama's advisors see the costs of attacking Iran as outweighing the benefits. If Iran gets closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, they've warned, military action won't look any more appetizing than it did under George W. Bush.

And there is some optimism among administration officials that a nuclear Iran would practice restraint. Gary Samore, Obama's top advisor on nuclear proliferation, and Bruce Riedel, who is running Obama's review of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, wrote last year that a nuclear-capable Iran, while undesirable, would not be the end of the world. For example, they argued, it seems unlikely that Tehran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists."If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is likely to behave like other nuclear weapons states, trying to intimidate its foes, but not recklessly using its weapons," Samore and Riedel wrote in a report for the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations. "As such, Iran will be subject to the same deterrence system that other nuclear weapons states have accommodated themselves to since 1945."

So there you have it folks...a strategy of "containment" for those nasty nukes with mullahs at the end of the big red button - the same mullahs who have vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Oh, and you gotta feel a great sense of peace by this statement:

Obama might declare that a nuclear attack on Israel would be treated as an attack on the U.S. homeland.

Enouraging, huh? I mean, I'm sure it is comforting to the Israeli people to hear that if 1.5 million of their people are murdered by an Iranian nuclear attack, the mighty United States under President Obama will consider that bad and might just make Iran pay for it.
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'Israel assassinating Iranian officials'

And I applaud Israel for their effort. At least someone is trying to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Obama's 'talk-till-you-drop' diplomacy sure isn't going to make any difference. Oh, wait a minute. Did I actually criticise Obama? (doorbell rings in the background)
Rees

Feb 17, 2009 8:13 Updated Feb 17, 2009 12:58
By JPOST.COM STAFF

Israel has launched a covert war in an effort to disrupt Iran's nuclear program, the British Daily Telegraph quoted US intelligence sources as saying.

According to the article published on Tuesday, sabotage, front companies and double agents, as well as the assassination of top figures involved in Iran's atomic operations, were being used to interrupt the program.

"Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don't realize what's happening. You are never going to stop it," a former CIA officer on Iran told the Telegraph. "The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach. We certainly don't want the current Iranian government to have those weapons.

The newspaper quoted Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, a US private intelligence company with strong government security connections, as saying that the strategy was to assassinate key figures.

"With cooperation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear program and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain," she said. "As US-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration's outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result."
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