Time's up on Iran

Sep. 3, 2009
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST

Over the past few weeks evidence has piled up that Iran is not years away from
being capable of building nuclear bombs at will. It is months away. As the latest
report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Teheran's nuclear program
makes clear, at its present rate of uranium enrichment, Iran will have sufficient
quantities of enriched uranium to build two atomic bombs by February.

What is most notable about this IAEA finding is that it comes in a report that
does everything possible to cover up Iran's progress and intentions.

Israel responded angrily to the report, alleging that the agency's outgoing
director, Mohamed El Baradei, suppressed information that confirms the military
nature of Iran's program. In a statement released last Saturday, the Foreign
Ministry alleged that the report "does not reflect the entirety of the information
the IAEA holds on Iran's efforts to advance their military program, nor their
continued efforts to conceal and deceive and their refusal to cooperate with the
IAEA and the international community."

Two weeks before the IAEA released its report, the US State Department published
its assessment that Iran won't have the wherewithal to develop a bomb until 2013.
According The Washington Post, this conclusion is based on the State Department's
analysis of Iran's "technical capability."

For all its failures, the latest IAEA report puts the lie to this State Department
assessment.

Moreover, as a recent study by Israeli missile expert Uzi Rubin shows, Iran
already has several delivery options for its burgeoning nuclear arsenal. In a
report published by The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Rubin, who has been
awarded the Israel Defense Prize and oversaw the development of Israel's Arrow
missile defense system, concludes that Iran today has the capacity to develop
solid-fuel-based intermediate ballistic missiles with a range of 3,600 kilometers.
That is, today, Iran has the capacity to attack not only Israel and other states
in the Middle East. Since its successful test of its solid-fuel based Sejil
missile in May, it has the demonstrated capacity to attack Europe as well.

Furthermore, Teheran's successful upgrade of its ballistic missiles to satellite

launchers has given it the capacity to launch nuclear weapons into the atmosphere.
This renders Iran capable of launching an electromagnetic pulse attack from sea
against just about any country. An EMP attack can destroy a state's
electromagnetic grid and thus take a 21st-century economy back to the pre-
industrial era. Such an attack on the US, for instance, would cripple the American
economy, and render the US government at all levels incapable of restoring order
or preventing mass starvation.

THESE LATEST disclosures should focus the attention of Israel's leaders on a

singular question: What can Israel do to prevent Iran from further expanding its
nuclear capacity and block it from emerging as a nuclear power?

The answer to this question is the same as it has been for the past six years,
since the scale of Teheran's nuclear program was first revealed. Israel can order
the Israel Air Force to bomb Iran's nuclear and missile facilities with the aim of
denying Iran the ability to attack the Jewish state.
The necessity for Israel to exercise its one option grows daily in light of what
the rest of the world is doing in regards to Iran. Following the release of the
IAEA report and ahead of the UN General Assembly's opening meeting later this
month, this week US, German, British, French, Russian and Chinese diplomats met in
Germany to discuss the possibility of ratcheting up Security Council sanctions
against Iran. Ahead of the meeting, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel both announced that they support stronger sanctions.

But right on schedule, as the representatives of these countries sat down with one
another, the Iranians told the media they are interested in negotiating. Suddenly,
after stonewalling for more than a year, Teheran is willing to think about telling
us the terms under which it will discuss the West's offer to provide the mullahs
with all manner of rewards in exchange for an Iranian agreement to suspend the
expansion of its of uranium enrichment, (which, as the IAEA report notes, is
already great enough to produce two nuclear bombs by February).

Taking their cue from the mullahs, the Russians and the Chinese are now saying
that there is no reason to be hasty. Far wiser, in their view, would be a decision
to sit down and see what the Iranians would like to do. No doubt, the Russians and
Chinese are arguing that it will take some time - perhaps until February - to
arrange such a meeting. And then, there is the prospect that such a meeting could
end inconclusively but keep the door open for further talks sometime in late-2010
or early 2011. In the meantime, as far as the Russians and the Chinese are
concerned, further UN sanctions would be unfair in light of Iran's willingness to
engage diplomatically.

But then even if the Russians and the Chinese supported stronger sanctions, the
measure now being debated will have no impact on either Iran's ability or
willingness to become a nuclear power. Today these leading nations are discussing
the prospect of banning refined petroleum imports into Iran. Given that Iran, with
its currently limited capacity to refine petroleum, is a net oil importer, for the
past several years, the notion of banning the Iranian imports of refined petroleum
products has been raised every time the IAEA submitted a report on Iran's nuclear
program and every time more information came out describing its spectacular
progress in missile development and uranium enrichment. Inevitably, this talk was
dismissed the moment a mullah approached a microphone and hinted that Iran might
be interested in cutting a deal.

But while the West has consistently postponed imposing such sanctions, the Islamic
republic has taken the prospect seriously. Over the past four years, Iran moved to
reduce its vulnerability to such a ban. It has required citizens to adapt their
cars to run on natural gas, which Iran has in abundance. Furthermore, in a joint
venture with China, Teheran has launched a crash program to expand its domestic
oil refining capabilities. With Chinese assistance, Iran is expected to have the
refining capacity to meet its domestic needs by 2012.

Beyond that, as former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton noted this week in The
Wall Street Journal, even if the West were to impose such sanctions on Iran today,
they would not impact the Iranian military's ability to operate. The only people
who would be impacted by such sanctions are Iranian civilians.

Here, too, it should be noted that the entire rationale of the ban on refined oil
imports to Iran is that oil shortages will turn the public against the regime and
the regime in turn will be forced to stand down against the international
community in order to placate its gasoline-starved constituents. But if the
regime's brutal repression of its opponents in the wake of the stolen June 12
presidential elections tells us anything, it tells us that the regime doesn't care
about what the Iranian public thinks of it. Indeed, in the face of rising domestic
opposition to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the
regime's best bet may be to launch a war against the hated Jews in order to unify
the clerical leadership - which is now split between those supporting the regime
and those supporting the opposition - behind the regime.

Finally, the discussion of sanctions is irrelevant because every move that Iran is
making shows that the regime is determined to go to war. Its massive diversion of
resources to its nuclear and ballistic missile program shows that the regime is
absolutely committed to becoming a nuclear power. Its move to build an open
military alliance with the Lebanese government, together with its expansion of its
military ties to Syria through the financing of the sale of advanced Russian
aircraft to Damascus and the proliferation of nuclear technology, shows that it is
building up the capabilities of its underlings. Then, too, this week's report that
the Hezbollah weapons cache in southern Lebanon which exploded in July contained
chemical weapons indicates that Iran is already providing its terror proxies with
nonconventional arsenals to expand its war-making capabilities against Israel and
the West.

ALL IN all, the totality of Iran's moves make clear that it is not interested in
using its nuclear program as a bargaining chip to gain all manner of goodies from
the West. It is planning to use its nuclear program as a means of becoming a
nuclear power. And it wishes to become a nuclear power because it wishes to wage
war against its enemies.

And all in all, the totality of the UN-led international community's responses to
Teheran's moves make clear that the world will take no effective action to prevent
Iran from gaining the capacity to wage nuclear war. The world today will again do
nothing to prevent the genocide of Jewry.

And that's the thing of it. So long as the mullahs continue to signal that the
Jews are their first target, the world will be content to allow them to build
their nuclear weapons and to use them. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
contention that the US will retaliate against Iran if it launches a nuclear attack
against Israel makes clear, Washington will only consider acting against Teheran
after the US moves to the top of Teheran's target list.

The question then is whether Israel has the ability to effectively attack Iran
even if the US opposes such a strike. Based on open source material, the answer to
this central question is yes, Israel can launch an effective strike against Iran.

Over the past several years, the IAF has demonstrated that it has the power-
projection capability to reach Iran's nuclear installations, strike and return
home. The key nuclear installations have been visited by IAEA inspectors. They are
not hundreds of meters underground. They are not invulnerable to ordnance Israel
already possesses. They can be destroyed or at least severely impaired.

The route to Iran is also open. Various leaked reports indicate that Saudi Arabia
has given Israel a green light to overfly its airspace en route to Iran.

Finally, consistent polling data shows that the Israeli public understands the
need for a strike and would be willing to accept whatever consequences flow in its
wake. The public will support a government decision to strike even if the strike
is not a one-off like the 1981 IAF strike that destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor.
The public will support the government even if the strike precipitates a
condemnation by the US and a resumption of hostilities with Lebanon and even with
Syria.

With each passing day, Iran moves closer to the bomb and closer to initiating war
on its terms. The international community will do nothing to preempt this danger.
Israel must act. Fighting a war on our terms is eminently preferable to fighting
one on Iran's.

caroline@carolineglick.com