posted on May 16, 2007 04:33:43 PM
I would fully support doing so IF Iran doesn't start abiding by stopping their nuclear weapons program.
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We must attack Iran before it gets the bomb
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 7:48pm BST 16/05/2007
A nuclear Iran would be as dangerous as “Hitler marching into the Rhineland” in 1936 and should be prevented by Western military strikes if necessary, according to a leading hawk who recently left the Bush administration.
John Bolton has close links to the Bush administration
John Bolton, who still has close links to the Bush administration, told The Daily Telegraph that the European Union had to "get more serious" about Iran and recognise that its diplomatic attempts to halt Iran's enrichment programme had failed.
Iran has "clearly mastered the enrichment technology now...they're not stopping, they're making progress and our time is limited", he said. Economic sanctions "with pain" had to be the next step, followed by attempting to overthrow the theocratic regime and, ultimately, military action to destroy nuclear sites.
Mr Bolton's stark warning appeared to be borne out yesterday by leaks about an inspection by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Iran's main nuclear installation at Natanz on Sunday.
The experts found that Iran's scientists were operating 1,312 centrifuges, the machines used to enrich uranium. If Iran can install 3,000, it will need about one year to produce enough weapons grade uranium for one nuclear bomb.
Experts had judged that Iran would need perhaps two years to master the technical feat of enriching uranium using centrifuges - and then another two years to produce enough material to build a weapon.
But the IAEA found that Iran has already managed to enrich uranium to the four per cent purity needed for power stations. Weapons-grade uranium must reach a threshold of 84 per cent purity.
Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA's head, said the West's goal of halting the enrichment programme had been "overtaken by events". Iran had probably mastered this process and "the focus now should be to stop them from going to industrial scale production".
Mr Bolton said: "It's been conclusively proven Iran is not going to be talked out of its nuclear programme. So to stop them from doing it, we have to massively increase the pressure.
"If we can't get enough other countries to come along with us to do that, then we've got to go with regime change by bolstering opposition groups and the like, because that's the circumstance most likely for an Iranian government to decide that it's safer not to pursue nuclear weapons than to continue to do so. And if all else fails, if the choice is between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to look at the use of force."
President George W Bush privately refers to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has pledged to wipe Israel "off the map", as a 21st Century Adolf Hitler and Mr Bolton, who remains a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, said the Iranian leader presented a similar threat.
"If the choice is them continuing [towards a nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you're at a Hitler marching into the Rhineland point. If you don't stop it then, the future is in his hands, not in your hands, just as the future decisions on their nuclear programme would be in Iran's hands, not ours."
But Mr Bolton conceded that military action had many disadvantages and might not succeed. "It's very risky for the price of oil, risky because you could, let's say, take out their enrichment capabilities at Natanz, and they may have enrichment capabilities elsewhere you don't know about."
Such a strike would only be a "last option" after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed but the risks of using military force, he indicated, would be less than those of tolerating a nuclear Iran. "Imagine what it would be like with a nuclear Iran. Imagine the influence Iran could have over the entire region. It's already pushing its influence in Iraq through the financing of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizbollah."
Although he praised Tony Blair for his support of America over the Iraq war, he criticised the Prime Minister, who is due to visit Washington today to bid farewell to Mr Bush, for persisting with supporting EU attempts to negotiate with Iran that were "doomed to fail".
"Blair just didn't focus on it as much as [Jack] Straw [former Foreign Secretary] did, and it was very much a Foreign Office thing because they wanted to show their European credentials, wanted to work with the Germans and the French to show 'we'll solve Iran in a way differently than those cowboy Americans solved Iraq'."
Mr Bolton, a leading advocate of the Iraq war, insisted that it had been right to overthrow Saddam Hussein and that the later failures did not mean that military action against rogue states should not be contemplated again.
"The regime itself was the threat and we dealt with the threat. Now, what we did after that didn't work out so well. That doesn't say to me, therefore you don't take out regimes that are problematic.
"It says, in the case of Iraq, and a lot of this I have to say we've learned through the benefit of hindsight, was that we should've given responsibility back to Iraqis more quickly."
The Bush administration has moved some distance away from the hawkish views of Mr Bolton and Mr Cheney, which were dominant in the president's first term, towards the more traditional diplomatic approach favoured by the State Department.
But his is still a highly influential voice and Mr Bush remains adamant that he will not allow Iran to become armed with nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon has drawn up contingency plans for military action and some senior White House officials share Mr Bolton's thinking.
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"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
Ann Coulter
[ edited by Linda_K on May 16, 2007 04:38 PM ]
posted on May 16, 2007 05:54:33 PM
Our Nation is going to have to choose VERY carefully come Nov. '08. We'll need a VERY strong leader, one with a backbone to do what is necessary to prevent a nuclear armed Iran.
And imo, there is NO democrat who will do that. They'll continue 'talking' for years....allowing Iran to become a world power with nuclear weapons.
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Inspectors Cite Big Gain by Iran on Nuclear Fuel
United Press International, via Newscom
United Nations inspectors found 1,300 centrifuges running smoothly at the Natanz nuclear plant on Sunday, having overcome previous problems.
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 15, 2007
VIENNA, May 14 — Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to the agency’s top officials.
The findings may change the calculus of diplomacy in Europe and in Washington, which has aimed to force a suspension of Iran’s enrichment activities in large part to prevent it from learning how to produce weapons-grade material.
In a short-notice inspection of Iran’s main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday, conducted in advance of a report to the United Nations Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors, according to diplomats and nuclear experts here. Until recently, the Iranians were having difficulty keeping the delicate centrifuges spinning at the tremendous speeds necessary to make nuclear fuel, and often were running them empty, or not at all.
Now, those roadblocks appear to have been surmounted. “We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the energy agency, who clashed with the Bush administration four years ago when he declared that there was no evidence that Iraq had resumed its nuclear program. “From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.”
It is unclear whether Iran can sustain its recent progress. Major setbacks are common in uranium enrichment, and experts say it is entirely possible that miscalculation, equipment failures or sabotage could prevent the Iranian government from reaching its goal of producing fuel on what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasts is “an industrial scale.”
The material produced so far would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be transformed into bomb-grade material, and to accomplish that Iran would probably have to evict the I.A.E.A. inspectors, as North Korea did four years ago.
Even then it is unclear whether the Iranians would have the technology to produce a weapon small enough to fit atop their missiles, a significant engineering challenge.
Iran says its nuclear program is intended to produce energy, not weapons.
While the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend all of its nuclear activities, and twice imposed sanctions for its refusal to do so, some European nations, and particularly Russia, have questioned whether the demand for suspension still makes sense.
The logic of demanding suspension was that it would delay the day that Iran gained the knowledge to produce its own nuclear fuel, what the Israelis used to refer to as “the point of no return.” Those favoring unconditional engagement with Iran have argued that the current strategy was creating a stalemate that the Iranians are exploiting, allowing them to make technological leaps while the Security Council steps up sanctions.
The Bush administration, in contrast, has argued that it will never negotiate while the Iranians speed ever closer to nuclear-weapons capacity, saying there has to be a standstill as long as talks proceed. In a telephone interview, R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for policy, who is carrying out the Iran strategy, said that while he had not heard about the I.A.E.A.’s newest findings they would not affect American policy.
“We’re proceeding under the assumption that there is still time for diplomacy to work,” he said, though he added that if the Iranians did not agree to suspend production by the time the leaders of the largest industrial nations meet next month, “we will move ahead toward a third set of sanctions.”
Dr. ElBaradei has always been skeptical of that strategy, telling European foreign ministers that he doubted the Iranians would fully suspend their nuclear activities, and that a face-saving way must be found to resolve the impasse.
“Quite clearly suspension is a requirement by the Security Council, and I would hope the Iranians would listen to the world community,” he said. “But from a proliferation perspective, the fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension — keeping them from getting the knowledge — has been overtaken by events. The focus now should be to stop them from going to industrial scale production, to allow us to do a full-court-press inspection and to be sure they remain inside the treaty.”
The report to the Security Council next week is expected to say that since February 2006, when the Iranians stopped complying with an agreement on broad inspections around the country by the agency, the I.A.E.A.’s understanding of “the scope and content” of Iran’s nuclear activities has deteriorated.
Inspectors are concerned that Iran has declined to answer a series of questions, posed more than a year ago, about information Iran probably received from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer. Of particular interest is a document that shows how to make uranium into spheres, a shape suitable for use in a weapon.
1 2 Next Page http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/world/middleeast/15iran.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
Ann Coulter
[ edited by Linda_K on May 16, 2007 05:55 PM ]
[ edited by Linda_K on May 16, 2007 06:03 PM ]
