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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morris16-2010apr16,0,6295075.story
When Armageddon Lives Next Door
(Los Angeles Times) Benny Morris - I take it personally: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people. Day in, day out, he announces the imminent demise of the "Zionist regime," by which he means Israel. And day in, day out, his scientists and technicians are advancing toward the atomic weaponry that will enable him to bring this about. President Obama, when not obsessing over the fate of the ever-aggrieved Palestinians, proposes to halt Ahmadinejad's nuclear program by means of international sanctions. But the wider Obama casts his net to mobilize as many of the world's key players as he can, the weaker the sanctions and the more remote their implementation. Yet even if severe sanctions are imposed, they likely won't have time to have serious effect before Iran succeeds at making a bomb. At the end of 2007, the U.S. intelligence community, driven by wishful thinking, expediency and incompetence, announced that the Iranians had in 2003 halted the weaponization part of their nuclear program. Last week, Obama explicitly contradicted that assessment. At least the American administration now publicly acknowledges where it is the Iranians are headed.