Mark Steyn on Denying the Obvious
Yesterday, I posted a cartoon depicting an ever-moving line in the sand drawn by the UN. Today, in the Chicago Sun-Times, Mark Steyn does the same in words:
The more they claim they’ve gone nuclear, the more U.S. intelligence experts—oops, where are my quote marks?—the more U.S. intelligence “experts” insist no, no, it won’t be for another 10 years yet. The more they conclusively demonstrate their non-compliance with the IAEA, the more the international community warns sternly that, if it were proved that Iran were in non-compliance, that could have very grave consequences. But, fortunately, no matter how thoroughly the Iranians non-comply it’s never quite non-compliant enough to rise to the level of grave consequences. You can’t blame Ahmadinejad for thinking “our enemies cannot do a damned thing.”
Steyn also cites a juicy quote from the New York Times:
The perfect summation of the Iranian approach to negotiations came in this gem of a sentence from the New York Times on July 13 last year:
Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Thursday.
Got that? If we don’t let Iran go nuclear, they’ll go nuclear.
Amir Taheri on Why Iran Wants the Bomb
In his op-ed in The Telegraph, Taheri writes that last Monday, just before Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had joined the nuclear club,
[he] disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à -tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into “grand occultation” in 941.
Before reading Taheri’s column, I knew that the Hidden Imam is the hidden messianic figure who is the true Sovereign of the World. What I didn’t know is this:
In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, . . . naming them the owtad or “nails”, whose presence . . . prevents the universe from “falling off”. Although the “nails” are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmadinejad’s more passionate admirers insist that he is a “nail”, a claim he has not discouraged. For example, he has claimed that last September, as he addressed the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York, the “Hidden Imam drenched the place in a sweet light”.
Now, says Taheri, Ahmadinejad boasts that the Hidden Imam gave him the presidency to provoke a “clash of civilisations” in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the “infidel” West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest.
Taheri adds that Hassan Abassi, Ahmadinejad’s “strategic guru,” views President Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have “run away”. Iran’s current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by “divine coincidence”, corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys. [emphasis added]
This leads Taheri to make the following predictions:
. . . do not be surprised if, by the end of the 12 days still left of the United Nations’ Security Council “deadline”, Ahmadinejad announces a “temporary suspension” of uranium enrichment as a “confidence building measure”. Also, don’t be surprised if some time in June he agrees to ask the Majlis (the Islamic parliament) to consider signing the additional protocols of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
While waiting Bush out, Iran is intent on doing all it can to consolidate its gains in the Middle East. The evidence: Ahmadinejad has reactivated Iran’s network of Shia organisations in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen, and resumed contact with Sunni fundamentalist groups in Turkey, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco.
Iran Readies Suicide Bombers
The Times reports that Iran has formed battalions of suicide bombers to strike at British and American targets if the nation’s nuclear sites are attacked. According to Iranian officials, 40,000 trained suicide bombers are ready for action.
The main force, named the Special Unit of Martyr Seekers in the Revolutionary Guards, was first seen last month when members marched in a military parade, dressed in olive-green uniforms with explosive packs around their waists and detonators held high.
Hassan Abbasi, Ahmadinejad’s strategic advisor and head of the Centre for Doctrinal Strategic Studies in the Revolutionary Guards, said in a speech that 29 western targets had been identified: “We are ready to attack American and British sensitive points if they attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.†He added that some of them were “quite close†to the Iranian border in Iraq.
Evidently, Iran hasn’t recently added any sites to the target list. According to A Daily Briefing on Iran, Abbasi, in May 2004, said that
We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization and for the uprooting of the Americans and the English. The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles. There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them.
Taheri has discussed the “wait Bush out” syndrome before using Democracy rather than Iran’s nuclear program, and he made a very strong case. I do disagree though that Ahmadinejad really cares who is in the White House and it is his belief that he is the one who must pave the path for the return of the 12th Imam that makes me second guess Taheri. As we see in other areas, fanatical religious beliefs cloud judgements. Ahmadinejad is clearly fanatical.
When I hear the “10 year” projections about Iranian nukes, I can’t help but recall the “official” intelligence estimates in the 1990’s that said that the idea of hostile nations suddenly developing ICBMs was preposterous – and so we could go easy on missile defense plans. An independent commission chartered by the Republican-led Congress said that such a development was quite possible in a report issued in the summer of 1998. This was decried as a ridiculous, politically-driven assessment – and then the North Koreans launched a 3 stage missile capable of hitting the U.S. a couple of months later.
Then there was the Pakistani development of nuclear weapons and the Indian threats to respond. The reason given for missing these seminal events was that although the Pakistani and Indian leaders had clearly stated their intentions, in the U.S. it was the Era of Clinton – and the analysts assumed that the foreign politicians were just like the ones in the U.S. – and therefore lied as a matter of course.
“Nuclear Jihad”
Amir Teheri: “Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed “the nuclear club”, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à -tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the im…