There Is No Plan

Iran nukes out. Palestinian State in. No problem.

Struggling with a Middle-East Peace Process that seems to have bogged down in a matter of months, President Obama is probably thinking he needs Iran’s nuclear ambitions like a he needs a Republican filibuster.

But looking a little deeper, it’s possible that Iranian nukes and creating a Palestinian state could be connected, and each helps the other problem go away.

How come?

We’re told that President Obama is a chess grandmaster when everyone else is still getting a handle on checkers. So let’s get some moves going and find out.

There’s no chance an Iranian nuke could be lobbed at the USA, but it’s totally unacceptable to both Israel and Saudi Arabia that Iran gets to nuclear “breakout”.

Neither of these countries has a chance of knocking out Iran’s nuclear facilities alone.

The Saudis are militarily weak and let other people do their dirty work.

Israel acts belligerently, but would have to overfly US controlled airspace to strike Iran, at maximum range, against advanced surface-to-air missile systems, and against hardened underground targets. It’s a stretch that they’d do anything more than enrage the Arab world, and make us Great Satan all over again. People try to suggest that Israel could do the job on Iran just like they did on Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. But Osirak is a first-grade spelling test next to attacking Iran’s hardened bunkers.

The only nation that can stop Iran from reaching nuclear break-out is the USA. From our bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and other long-range bases, the US could bring to bear overwhelming air and naval power, to protect air-delivered special forces that could knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities and then get the hell out of Dodge when the job’s complete.

Are we going to reach that point? It’s not unlikely, it’s probable. Read the rest of this entry »

the russian bear likes a good bargain.

President Obama’s not so secret letter to his counterpart in Russia, President Medvedev, seems like a strong beginning to a new, more robust and directed diplomacy. Applying an unspoken quid pro quo that the serious application of pressure by Russia on Iran to stem Tehran’s nuclear ambitions could mean the removal of the US nuclear shield in Eastern Europe draws a big lesson from history. During the missile crisis, Khruschev seriously overreached when he planted missiles in Cuba. Kennedy didn’t back down, but instead offered to give up some obsolete missiles in Turkey in order to save the world from Armageddon.

Okay, we’re not quite on the edge of the nuclear abyss just yet, but Obama’s clearly done his homework on dealing with the Russians. He shrewdly realizes how important ‘saving face’ is to in the machismo world of Moscow foreign policy, rightly regards the missile shield as an expensive boondoggle, and understands why Moscow is less than enamoured of Bush’s feeble remonstrations that the shield was primarily in place to protect against Iranian missiles headed for the US or Europe (about a thousand times less likely than a briefcase bomb which would bypass the shield altogether). Add to that the very strong likelihood that the shield won’t work even if challenged and the prospect of canning it isn’t exactly a stretch. Read the rest of this entry »

Mullen says Iran has enough fissile material for a bomb on the same day that Gates says they’re not close to getting a bomb. Now it’s true that these two statements are not mutually exclusive on a factual basis, but they are contradictory in terms of their diplomatic intent. Potus, Pentagon and State need to control communications channels a little better. It doesn’t look good.