Will the U.S. attack Iran?
Well... Thisis kind of reassuring:
Make no mistake: boring as it was, the president's speech to the UN today was one of the most important of his presidency. It marks the final fizzling out of his Iran policy of the past three years.
Since 2003, the Bush administration has pursued a diplomatic track against the emerging Iranian nuclear program. The tough talk of the "axis of evil" speech of 2002 faded into the background. Instead, the US would await the investigations of the International Atomic Energy Authority. While waiting, it deputed its allies Britain, France, and Germany to negotiate directly with Iran to discover whether any package of incentives might persuade the mullahs to reconsider their determination to acquire nuclear weapons.
Both those policies have reached their dead end. Iran has repeatedly deceived and rebuffed the IAEA. The direct negotiations have likewise failed, victims of Iranian intransigence and duplicity. Now the whole matter has been referred to the Security Council. And the Security Council is doing and will do ... precisely nothing. President Chirac of France just this very morning announced that he would not support any comprehensive Security Council sanctions program against Iran. Russia and China can be presumed to oppose even more firmly.
Did the president call on the Security Council to reconsider? Did he challenge the Iranian bomb program before the world? He did not. He said nothing about it. There will be no UN action, no Security Council sanctions, nothing. Not that they necessarily would have done any good, but they are out of the game. America's dwindling list of Iran options has dwindled further to just two: unilateral military action without any semblance of international approval to pre-empt the Iranian bomb program - or acquiescence in that program.
And I'm guessing that the option to emerge will be: acquiescence.
But since the guy who had written it has been wrong about almost everything, could he also be wrong again?
Apparently so if you read this shortPodwar:
A Manhattan friend recently attended an exclusive neocon gathering. The lowlight came when Norman Podhoretz reassured a worried group that Bush would assault Iran.Perhaps the Pod got it straight from his son-in-law?
And this provides some great ideas about how to resolve the crisis with Iran. But don't expect anyone in the Bush Administration and/or Capitol Hill will adopt them anytime soon.
On a related subject. One upon a time being the Washington correspondent of Haaretz was considered one of the most pretigious jobs in Israeli journalism. Amos Elon served in that job in the early 1960's. Now occuppying that position is a neocon-for-poor-people type who has been propagating the Bush line for the Israeli and foreign readers of the newspaper. His latest project has been convening a panel of "experts" to decide who is the "best" presidential candidate for Israel. And the Winner is....Rudy Giuliani. Perhaps the New York Times will convene now a group of experts to decide who would be the "best" Israeli Prime Minister for the US? A neocon wet dream: U.S. President Rudy Giuliani meets Israel PM Bibi Netanyahu.
Comments
All over the world - the phrase "axis of evil" is know to Bush's friens and enemies.
Dave Frum invented that phrase - in fact, it's worth speculating that he is just being modest when he says he only invented part of it.
Can't he just rest on this - you see Frum does not even try to prove Iran has a weapons program - that , in fact, is debated by many - Just as people debated whether or not Saddam had program.
Politics aside - both are decent people and that's most important.