Investors.com  |  September 16, 2008

Kneeling Before Iran

Foreign Policy: The U.N. is complaining about Tehran keeping inspectors from monitoring the regime's uranium enrichment program. Sadly, complaining is about the only thing the U.N. will ever do about the situation.

What was it — 17? — resolutions the U.N.'s own Security Council passed against Iraq's Saddam Hussein before the U.S. acted to rid the world of that deranged and dangerous dictator? It doesn't look like Iran's equally deranged president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the mullahs who pull his strings are going to be any more responsive.

Throughout its enrichment process, Tehran has maintained its atomic program is for peaceful purposes only. But if that were true, why has the regime consistently stonewalled international inspectors? Why has Ahmadinejad said "the Iranian nation could not care less about the (U.N.) sanctions" and that its defiance of U.N. sanctions "has brought all big powers to their knees"?

The big powers haven't sunk that low as of yet. But the day Iran builds a nuclear weapon, the kneeling will begin. With one atomic bomb, Iran can terrorize and control its neighbors. And even without one, an Iranian general crowed Tuesday, "responsibility for defending the Persian Gulf has been handed over to the naval forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps." Iran's military, said Rahim Yahya Safavi, is "able to control the Strait of Hormuz."

Iran has increased the efficiency of its uranium-enriching centrifuge process to 80% from 50% and added several hundred more centrifuges for a new total of 3,800. It has also announced plans to eventually run 54,000 — more than enough not only for nuclear-powered electricity but also to make weapons-grade material.

Considering all this, it didn't help on Monday when former secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Warren Christopher, Henry Kissinger and (fresh off his anti-surge recommendation) James Baker advised the next president to negotiate with Iran.

More heartening was word out of the Pentagon that the U.S. will indeed sell bunker-buster bombs to Israel, the nation with the most at stake if Iran goes nuclear. This contradicted reports out of the Middle East last week that the U.S. was withholding such weapons for fear they would be used to take out Iran's nuclear facilities.

But the reality is that bunker-busters may be the only thing standing between the civilized world and a country that is openly hostile.

It's unfortunate, but pre-emption is looking like the only choice. To hold back, or to talk futilely to an Islamist wall, would likely bring only tragic consequences.

Original article here.