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U.S. Allows Iran Its Nuclear Vision
(The Australian) - Greg Sheridan President Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation. Obama and his cabinet secretaries still make speeches saying they will try to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. But if you look at the statements closely you see a steady weakening of resolve, a steady removal of any threat of any consequence for Iran. The troubling realization that the Americans have given up, or are in the process of giving up, the fight to prevent Iran going nuclear is backed by the best informed security sources in Washington, London, Jerusalem and Canberra. The most senior U.S. officials would agree that a nuclear-armed Iran represented an existential threat to Israel. Iran's rulers not only deny the Holocaust, but have made militant anti-Americanism, confrontation with Israel and even anti-Semitism, defining ideologies of the Iranian state. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. By isolating Israel, by irresponsibly unleashing a global wave of anti-Israel sentiment, especially in nations which normally support Israel, Obama has made the possibility of Israel considering unilateral action against Iran much more unlikely and has made the potential cost to Israel of action against Iran much greater. There is no chance Obama will produce a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in his first term in office, which is how he would like to be remembered by history. There is every chance history will remember him as the American president on whose watch Iran became a nuclear-weapons state. The writer is foreign editor of The Australian.