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Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/17/AR2006011700893.html
The Iran Charade, Part II
(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - * Britain, France, and Germany admitted that their two years of talks to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program had collapsed. This negotiating exercise, designed as an alternative to the U.S. approach of imposing sanctions on Iran for its violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, gave Iran time to harden its nuclear facilities against bombardment, acquire new antiaircraft capacities and clandestinely advance its program. * Instead of being years away from the point of no return for an Iranian bomb, as we were before we allowed Europe to divert anti-proliferation efforts into transparently useless talks, Iran is probably just months away, and now led by a president who fervently believes in the imminence of the apocalypse. * Having delayed two years, we now have to deal with a set of fanatical Islamists who we know will not be deterred from pursuing nuclear weapons by any sanctions. Even if we could get real sanctions. Which we will not. * The Chinese in particular have secured in Iran a source of oil and gas outside the American sphere to feed their growing economy and are quite happy geopolitically to support a rogue power that - like North Korea - threatens, distracts, and diminishes the power of China's chief global rival, the United States. * The Europeans have no appetite for real sanctions either. A cutoff of investment and high-tech trade from Europe would be a minor irritant to a country of 70 million people with the second-largest oil reserves in the world and with oil at $60 a barrel. It is the Iranians who have the world over a barrel. On Jan. 15, Iran's economy minister warned that Iran would retaliate for any sanctions by cutting its exports to "raise oil prices beyond levels the West expects."