FULL ARTICLE

By James Phillips at Heritage Foundation

The Obama Administration, which once pledged to impose “crippling sanctions” on Iran’s hostile regime, now seeks to dilute economic sanctions that Congress is considering against Iran. The proposed sanctions, contained in an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, would penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which is a major financier of Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, and terrorism efforts. By undermining congressional sanctions on Iran, the Obama Administration risks reducing the chances that Tehran can be persuaded to halt its nuclear weapons program and increasing the chances that Israel or the United States will be forced to take military action against Iran.

Urgent Need for Strongest Possible Sanctions

Iran’s uranium enrichment activities continue to accelerate despite four rounds of mild U.N. sanctions and a range of stronger sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies. Tehran has enough enriched uranium to build at least four nuclear weapons, if enriched further to weapons-grade levels, and soon will be ramping up enrichment activities in a hardened site carved deep into a mountain near the holy city of Qum. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report, released on November 8, warned that Iran has made steady progress on its nuclear program and in designing a nuclear warhead for its ballistic missiles. The clock is ticking.

But the Obama Administration has exhibited little urgency on Iran sanctions issues. It has appeared complacent in recent months, promoting the narrative that the mysterious stuxnet virus that infected Iranian computers has dealt Tehran’s nuclear program a devastating setback, despite the fact that the pace of uranium enrichment has actually increased. The Administration has sanctioned only 10 companies under the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act (CISADA) since it was passed by Congress almost 18 months ago. The Administration also opposes some of the penalties incorporated in the Iran Threat Reduction Act, which Congress will soon consider.

Others Moving Forward on Banking, Oil Sanctions

In addition to opposing stronger congressional sanctions against Iran, the White House gave a cold shoulder to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s call last week for an immediate freezing of CBI assets and a suspension of purchases of Iranian oil. Britain and Canada have already banned transactions with the CBI. But the Administration continues to drag its feet, despite promising that it would consider such sanctions as a response to the October revelation of a foiled plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in a Washington, D.C., restaurant.

Imposing sanctions on the CBI could create more international leverage over Tehran by creating problems for Iran’s oil trade. The sanctions would bar foreign banks and companies from operating in the United States if they conduct transactions with the CBI. Fewer foreign customers would purchase Iranian oil and gas for fear of triggering the sanctions, which would constrict the main conduit for Iran’s oil sales. Iran’s remaining customers would seek better terms, which eventually could compel the regime to accept lower prices for the energy exports that provide up to 80 percent of its revenues.

The CBI sanctions would be imposed under an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill co-sponsored by Senator Mark Kirk (R–IL) and Senator Robert Menendez (D–NJ). The Senate approved the amendment earlier this month by a vote of 100 to 0, and there also is strong bipartisan support in the House for CBI sanctions. House and Senate conferees are now hashing out a compromise version of the bill. The Administration has opposed the amendment, arguing that the sanctions could disrupt the world oil market or set back efforts to build an international coalition to pressure Iran by alienating governments whose banks and companies would be affected by the sanctions.

But absent much stronger sanctions, the world oil market is likely to be more severely disrupted by the aggressive policies of a nuclear-armed Iran, if not by Israeli or American preventive air strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.[1] And a nuclear-armed Iran is likely to be a much more disruptive force that poses much greater security threats to the United States and its allies.

The Administration ignores the fact that time is rapidly running out before Iran attains a nuclear breakout capacity. Moreover, China and Russia have consistently delayed and diluted Iran sanctions resolutions at the U.N. Security Council.[2] It makes little sense to hold off on strong unilateral sanctions in a risky effort to gain weaker U.N. sanctions, which are sure to amount to too little, too late.

The Obama Administration maintains that U.N. sanctions have symbolic importance in isolating Iran’s thuggish leaders. But such symbolic wrist slaps are unlikely to impress a regime that has shown a willingness to attempt a terrorist bombing in a Washington restaurant that almost certainly would have resulted in mass casualties of American citizens.

Left Behind on Iran Sanctions

The Obama Administration, which has paid lip service to the need for “crippling sanctions” on Iran, should reconsider its misguided opposition to sanctions on Iran’s central bank. If there is any chance of halting Iran’s nuclear weapons program short of war, then it is necessary to quickly impose the strongest possible sanctions on Tehran. Half-hearted half-steps on sanctions will have little impact on Iran’s theocratic dictatorship, which is unlikely to bend unless it is convinced that the consequences of continuing its nuclear program threaten its hold on power.

Sanctions can help fuel popular dissatisfaction with Iran’s dictatorship, and that eventually could lead to a change of regime. Such a change would be the best possible outcome not only for American counter-proliferation, counterterrorism, and human rights goals, but also for the Iranian people. Such international sanctions are unlikely without strong American leadership. Regrettably, the Administration’s lethargic approach means that it is not even “leading from behind” on Iran sanctions—but is in danger of being left behind.

James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

Keith B. Payne at National Review Online

EXCERPTS:

Iran has a nuclear-weapons program underway and is working on a nuclear warhead for its Shahab-3 ballistic missile — a missile with a reported range of 2,000 kilometers.

Everyone hopes, but nobody knows, that Iran, a state-sponsor of terrorism, will behave prudently if it acquires these deadly capabilities. Numerous statements by Iranian leaders suggest otherwise.

Nuclear weapons aren’t the only concern. Iran is capable of producing chemical weapons of mass destruction, and also of weaponizing them via delivery systems, according to a report from the U.S. deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

While the president attempted to engage Iranian leaders, they reportedly continued marching forward with their nuclear and missile programs, including taking steps to protect them against attack. Consequently, this has not simply been a matter of wasted time: The Iranian nuclear and missile threat appears now to be closer, larger, and more protected than before.

FULL ARTICLE:

Gaffney: Obama policies leading to new ‘horrific’ war for Israel

Obama’s Malignant Obsession with Jews and Israel

Krauthammer – Iran policy irresponsible and short sighted

From Mike “Mish” Shedlock at MISH’S Global Economic Trend Analysis

Does the US have the right to defend itself? If so why doesn’t any nation have the right to defend itself? What is the best way for the US to deal with Iran?

Here is a video in Chinese, with English subtitles, in which China says it will defend Iran.

<code><iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/ugq-KleU8IA?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></code>

Link if video does not play: “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third World War”

Here are a few panels about 2 minutes 15 seconds into the video in which China states an intent to protect Iran, if Iran is attacked, even if it means World War III.

I support the position (a few moments later and shown in the screen shot below) that suggests the Iranian people have little trust in their leaders and the best way to deal with Iran is to let the people rise up against the government as happened in Egypt and Libya.

With the US threatening Iran at every turn, and with the needless war in which the US destroyed Iraq killing or ruining the lives of hundreds-of-thousands of Iraqis, it is no wonder Iran wants to protect itself. Any country would want to do the same.

The US has no business instigating another war, yet that is exactly what economic sanctions are. The downright scary policies of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich go even further, and would have the US marching off to World War III before we know it.

The best way for the US to deal with Iran is to support the Iranian people (not the leaders). Nearly all the private citizens of Iran would have no grudge against the US if we would simply stop our policies of aggression in the region.

We do not need another war and certainly cannot afford one. Ron Paul offers the best hope of stopping yet another disastrous, and needless march to war.

In case you missed it, please consider President Obama and Mitt Romney are Nearly One and the Same!

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

By Alan Caruba

The world hasn’t seen this much turmoil since the years leading up to World War II. By contrast even the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991 did not cause this much uncertainty.

The Middle East currently holds the greatest prospect for a hot war as Iran and its close ally, Syria, struggle to maintain control over their populations. Iran’s proxies in Syria and Lebanon, Hezbollah, and, in the Gaza, Hamas, are being told to get ready for a war on Israel. Meanwhile, the Arab League has turned on Syria and is hostile to Iran. Turkey is stationing troops on its border with Syria.

The Syrian dictator, the second generation Bashar Assad, is fighting for his life in much the same way as Libya’s former dictator, Moammar Gadhafi did. In Egypt, the people are occupying Cairo’s Tahir Square demanding that the military step aside for a government composed of elected representatives. An election is being held with the likely outcome that the Muslim Brotherhood will acquire political power there. This pattern will be repeated elsewhere.

The dictatorial regimes of Iran and Syria are using Israel in an attempt to divert the attention of their people from their efforts to remain in power. Anti-Semitism in the Middle East is as rabid as anywhere on Earth; but it is not working its old magic. An all-out war on Israel could, in fact, bring the regimes down, but these are desperate men in charge.

The real news is the covert efforts being used to undermine the military power of Iran and Syria. Iran just claimed it had captured twelve CIA spies. Additionally, Israel’s famed covert service, the Mossad, it also being blamed for recent events that must surely terrify the mullahs and the Assad regime.

DEBKA File, an Israeli news agency, in a November 25 analysis noted an “explosion which wiped out Iran’s entire missile command, including Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, at the secret Revolutionary Guards base in Aghadir near Tehran on October 12.” Apparently it was not so secret!

On November 27 there was a tremendous explosion that rocked Isfahan, home to one of Iran’s main facilities for refining uranium for its nuclear program and Iran’s largest facility for research and development of ballistic missiles. Some reports say neither was affected, but speculation persists that one of them was.

On November 23, an illegal Hezbollah arsenal in Siddiqin housing Iranian-made missiles was blown up. These missiles were intended to be used in a war against Israel, but the explosion was credited to the anti-regime Free Syrian Army. “Graffiti left at the scene of the blast said it was revenge for Hezbollah’s aid to the Assad regime’s crackdown in Syrian cities and promised more.”

The DEBKA analysis concludes that “Both Iran and Hezbollah are gearing up for war” noting that Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Basji military units “began organizing in battle array in the various theaters assigned to them in the country.” The old order in the Middle East has been overthrown in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and is under attack in Syria. There is unrest in Bahrain and Yemen as well.

Both the U.S. and Russia have positioned aircraft carriers off the coast of Syria. A U.S. carrier fleet stands at the ready near the Persian Gulf. It is doubtful Russia wants to be drawn into a conflict. The drubbing it took in Afghanistan led to the downfall of the former Soviet Union. The U.S., bleeding money in all directions, withdrawing from Iraq, and isolated in Afghanistan, is unlikely to engage militarily in a land war, though air power remains an option.

As the DEBKA File analysis makes clear, the U.S. and Israel are having considerable success with covert attacks in Iran and Syria, either directly or by proxies receiving intelligence and other assistance.

When Syria falls—as it surely will—it will leave Iran further isolated. Any admission that it has nuclear-equipped missiles would seal its fate. Its desperation is seen in a recent threat to unleash hundreds of missiles against Israel and, indeed, a northern Israeli city sustained a brief rocket attack from southern Lebanon on Monday, perhaps in an effort to lure it into a response.

The news of the day is an Iranian attack on the British Embassy in Tehran which mirrors the 1979 attack on the U.S. embassy that put the ayatollahs in command and led to the present crisis sparked by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran is running out of friends and its Islamic tantrums only speed the process. This is a rogue nation that does not play by the rules. It seems to be inviting an attack and that fits its apocalyptic view that includes the sacrifice of large portions of its population, chaos, to secure the return of the mythical Twelfth Imam.

No matter how this plays out, it will have a serious affect on the price of oil, a global commodity. It may remind Americans of the failure and refusal to permit access to our own vast reserves of oil and natural gas in Alaska, North Dakota’s Bakken area, and of course the offshore reserves along our Eastern and Western coasts. The delay of the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline will be felt. And then there is the Obama administration attack on coal producers and users.

The fact that a new U.S. oil refinery has not been built since the 1970s is testimony to a massive national failure to anticipate and prepare what is occurring in the Middle East. We are a decade or more behind the curve.

It is a common error to believe that the leaders of Iran and Syria think like their western counterparts. Baghdad is beginning to have more bombings. Pakistan is in a state of panic. In Turkey, a group of NATO and Arab officers have quietly established a command post for possible intervention in the Syrian crisis.

No one in the West, nor Russia or China, wants to participate, but the rabid dogs of war are loose and history has a nasty way of repeating itself.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

By Alan Caruba

By Alan Caruba

During the long years of the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union faced off against each other, both having an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Only once, during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, did the prospect of a real threat to the homeland arise. After a U.S. naval blockade was imposed, the Russians took their missiles home.

The key factor was that the Russian leaders were not suicidal. They were not crazy. They fully understood what it would mean to actually use nuclear weapons or be on the receiving end of them.

The Iranian ayatollahs are a different case entirely. Over the years, they have voiced a rather nonchalant attitude toward being on the receiving end of nuclear weapons because they are a Shiite martyrdom cult. During its eight-year war with Iraq, initiated by Saddam Hussein, an estimated 500,000 Iranians died, including 100,000 children sent to clear mine fields by setting them off.

The failure to grasp the depth and insanity of the current leaders of Iran is pushing the world toward the first nuclear confrontation since A-bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War II in 1945.

Yoram Ettinger, a former Israel consul general in Houston, Texas, warns that “Iran’s geostrategic goals are energized by its current Islamic zeal, viewing jihad (holy war) as the permanent state of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, while peace and cease-fire accords are tenuous.”

So, when the Israelis shared intelligence with President Obama in mid-November that the Iranians “will already have five nuclear bombs or warheads” by late March 2012, it raised the stakes for President Obama and the nation.

We already know Obama wants a reduction in nuclear arms. He signed a treaty with the Russians to achieve this. He refused to permit missiles to be based in Poland, presumably for the same reason. The surface to air missiles, however, could have deterred any missiles headed toward Europe.

I have absolutely no confidence in Obama when it comes to the preemptive action that must be taken against Iran’s nuclear and military facilities in order to end a threat that even the President acknowledged in a recemt Hawaii press conference would be directed not just at Israel, but at the United States as well.

The stakes just don’t get any higher and this President has not demonstrated any backbone except to okay the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the man behind the attack on 9/11. That was a no-brainer.

I don’t know what military assets and options we have in the Persian Gulf, but if an attack to deter an Iranian nuclear threat is undertaken either by Israel or together, we will likely need a lot of them.

Military observers have concluded that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz

Strait of Hormuz

that provides access to and from the Persian Gulf, thus putting enormous strain on the provision of Middle East oil that flows through the Straits on a daily basis, not just from Iran, but from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq. An estimated 40% of all seaborne oil passes through the Strait, the equivalent of 20% of the total amount of oil traded worldwide. If closed, it would drive the cost of oil to stratospheric heights.

The failure of the U.S. to develop its own extensive oil reserves will prove to be a massive strategic error. The delay of a proposed Canadian oil pipeline to deliver oil to the U.S. is just one small element of this failure.

In an August 6, 2009 Jerusalem Post article, Anne Bayefsky of EyeontheUN.org wrote, “The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 20 this way: ‘The Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran…they have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran. Their strategy consists of begging us to talk to them.”

Ultimately it will be Israel’s call if U.S. leaders fail to step up to the task and, in the judgment of the Iranians, the U.S. will not. The Israelis have no choice.

In February 2010 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, addressing a crowd celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran,said  “Iran is now a nuclear state.”

The world is rapidly running out of time to prevent an Iranian Armageddon.

© Alan Caruba, 2011