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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Around the World, Distress Over Iran
2010-11-29
From the NYT Wikileaks dump this weekend. The NYT undoubtedly thinks the document dump harms the U.S., which is why they were eager to publish the documents. We know better. Americans will read articles like this and understand that Bambi isn't defending us the way he needs to.
More to the point, this will remind Americans that there actually is a need to defend ourselves.
In late May 2009, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, used a visit from a Congressional delegation to send a pointed message to the new American president.

In a secret cable sent back to Washington, the American ambassador to Israel, James B. Cunningham, reported that Mr. Barak had argued that the world had 6 to 18 months "in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable." After that, Mr. Barak said, "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."

There was little surprising in Mr. Barak's implicit threat that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear facilities. As a pressure tactic, Israeli officials have been setting such deadlines, and extending them, for years. But six months later it was an Arab leader, the king of Bahrain, who provides the base for the American Fifth Fleet, telling the Americans that the Iranian nuclear program "must be stopped," according to another cable. "The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it," he said.

His plea was shared by many of America's Arab allies, including the powerful King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time.

These warnings are part of a trove of diplomatic cables reaching back to the genesis of the Iranian nuclear standoff in which leaders from around the world offer their unvarnished opinions about how to negotiate with, threaten and perhaps force Iran's leaders to renounce their atomic ambitions.

The cables also contain a fresh American intelligence assessment of Iran's missile program. They reveal for the first time that the United States believes that Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could let it strike at Western European capitals and Moscow and help it develop more formidable long-range ballistic missiles.

In day-by-day detail, the cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations, tell the disparate diplomatic back stories of two administrations pressed from all sides to confront Tehran. They show how President George W. Bush, hamstrung by the complexities of Iraq and suspicions that he might attack Iran, struggled to put together even modest sanctions.

They also offer new insights into how President Obama, determined to merge his promise of "engagement" with his vow to raise the pressure on the Iranians, assembled a coalition that agreed to impose an array of sanctions considerably harsher than any before attempted.
Slightly less ineffective sanctions, in other words.
When Mr. Obama took office, many allies feared that his offers of engagement would make him appear weak to the Iranians. But the cables show how Mr. Obama's aides quickly countered those worries by rolling out a plan to encircle Iran with economic sanctions and antimissile defenses. In essence, the administration expected its outreach to fail, but believed that it had to make a bona fide attempt in order to build support for tougher measures.
The article continues for a long time from here. The NYT attempts to slurp its way into Bambi's good graces by noting his 'tough' diplomacy. But the bottom line is that Iran continues to make progress on all the technologies required to deliver a nuclear warhead by IRBM and shorter-range missiles. They have not been stopped, they have not been deterred, and they have not been contained.

Bambi has failed. Only the NYT thinks otherwise.
Posted by:Steve White

#1  The NYT attempts to slurp its way into Bambi's good graces

Gak! My eyes!
Posted by: gorb   2010-11-29 00:24  

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