Caroline Glick from Jerusalem Post has written another excellent piece on how to deal with Iran. Just last week Iran rejected calls from the IAEA to cease all uranium enrichment programs. Khatami recently remarked that he will continue with his path of nuclear enrichment "even if it leads to an end to international supervision." This comment was said at a recent parade of the Iranian surface-to-surface Shihab-3 balistic missiles which are code named "Jerusalem."
Glick writes about a recent report published by Henry Sokolski. Sokolski heads the Washington based Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center. Previously he was a US arms control negotiator in the first Bush administration.
Most significantly – and egregiously – Sokolski recommends that in an effort to check Iranian nuclear capabilities, "Israel should announce how much weapons usable material it has produced and that it will unilaterally mothball (but not yet dismantle) Dimona, and place the reactor's mothballing under IAEA monitoring. Israel should announce that it will dismantle Dimona and place the special nuclear material it has produced in 'escrow' in Israel with a third trusted declared nuclear state, e.g., the US." That is, the primary target of Teheran's nuclear arsenal should respond to the emerging threat by disarming itself. If this recommendation were made by a European or an Arab, one could simply laugh it off. But given the respectability of the source, it is necessary to engage it. Adopting such a course would be devastating for three main reasons:
First, it ignores the real danger of Iran using nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, as it has threatened.
Second, it ignores the rationale behind Israel's nuclear program: deterring the threat of physical destruction by both conventional and non-conventional enemy forces. It is not simply a deterrent against nuclear attack. To discuss nuclear transparency for Israel without calling for conventional disarmament of, say Egypt, whose conventional armed forces alone constitute a strategic threat for Israel, is to ignore Israel's strategic vulnerabilities.
Finally, the recommendation makes no distinction between a nuclear-armed, stable democracy and a nuclear-armed, terror-supporting theocracy. Comparing a nuclear Israel and a nuclear Iran is like comparing a housewife in the kitchen wielding a butcher's knife to a murderer in a dark alleyway wielding a butcher's knife. It is both morally obtuse and strategically blind.
(Cartoon by Cox & Forkum Editorial cartoons)
UPDATE
Iran successfully tests 'strategic missile'
Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani announced on Saturday that a "strategic missile was successfully test-fired during military exercises by the Revolutionary Guards and delivered to the armed forces," adding that Iran was "ready to confront all regional and extra-regional threats." In August, Iran said it test-fired a new version of its Shihab-3 ballistic missile. Israeli sources later said it could reach targets more than 1,200 miles away, or 400 miles farther than its previous range.
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