(Times of Israel) David Horovitz - We know where the negotiations to regulate Iran's nuclear program are heading. Iran pours its energies into mastering the technology for nuclear weapons. From its "supreme leader" on down it makes crystal clear its hegemonic regional ambitions, its contempt for the West, and its aim to bring about the demise of Israel. And the U.S.-led international community willfully closes its eyes and ears to the dangers, wishing them away. What the U.S. administration would like to have perceived as a new generosity of spirit emanating from Washington, a desire to conquer past animosities, to build new bridges, to play fair, is regarded in this brutal region, by the purveyors of that brutality, as weakness. Statecraft in the face of an extraordinarily dangerous regime required mustering the international resolve to reverse Tehran's drive for the bomb; it required maintaining the unity of purpose to ensure sanctions were kept in place and ratcheted up as required; it required making plain that there would be no deal at all unless the necessary terms were reached, with the combined threat of more sanctions and a military readiness to underpin that stance; and it required the dismissal of arguments such as the one that holds that the Iranians have the knowhow anyway. As Emily Landau, an expert on nuclear proliferation at Tel Aviv University's INSS think tank, points out, Syria's scientists did not suddenly lose the knowhow to build chemical weapons, but their leadership no longer risks having them utilize it. If only the Iranians had been forced into a similar capitulation. Whether the deal now taking shape ostensibly keeps Iran six months or eighteen months from the bomb makes no significant difference. An arrangement that depends on verifying Iranian good behavior and taking speedy counteraction in the event of bad behavior is simply not workable - and both sides know it. "The United States," says Landau, "has been acting as though it is engaged in a confidence-building effort, showing the other side that it can be trusted, that 'we can reach a common goal.' But there is no common goal. Iran does not want a deal that would require it to back away from its nuclear program. It wants a deal that allows it to become a threshold state that can go for the bomb at a time of its choosing."
2014-11-11 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive