Bent Notes

Iran hangs an Israeli spy.

Iran has enough fuel for one nuke.

Ari Larijani - trotted out by Western media as the “moderate foil” to Ahmadinejad - says it’s about time for Iran to send suicide bombers into action against the US.

Claudia Rosett in Forbes on how six-way-talk diplomacy with North Korea has brought us to the same damn juncture every earlier attempt at acting like we were dealing with reasonable, decent human beings did.  The unique aspect of this time around is that rogue regimes with nuclear ambitions - and there’s one regime in particular that is very close to having nukes - have every reason to feel encouraged by the precedent set.

Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post details what the uranium missing from Isfahan indicates about how far along Iran’s nuclear-bomb program is.  It’s too late for ecoonomic pressure, of either the governmental-sanctions kind or the capital-markets-disinvestment kind, to work.  Israel will have to bomb Natanz.

What this will do, says Glick, is buy the world a couple of years to get serious about the above measures, plus covert measures to undermine the mullahs’ regime.

Her column is one of those in which the last line is key to all that has come before.  She says, “Too bad Israel doesn’t have a  government.”

At Pajamas Media, there is an article by, and interview with, a man who for years was simultaneously a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the CIA.  He still lives under an assumed name and with lots of protection.  If you ever wanted exhaustive detail of Iran’s involvement in most of the world’s significant terror activity over the last thirty years, or confirmation that the twelfth-imam gang is unwaveringly determined to force apocalypse on the West, it’s here.

We don’t have years to deal with this.  We have months.

In Iran, you can’t get more supreme than the Ayatollah Khameini.  Three days ahead of the deadline for Iran to say how it’s going to respond to the West’s latest offer - something called “freeze for freeze” - he once again, for the gazillionth time reiterates his regime’s determination to keep enriching uranium.

Does anyone still doubt where this is headed?

It was less than a week ago when Ahmadinejad annunced that Iran had 6,000 centrifuges up and running.  But a couple of days later, when he told NBC News that if the U.S. were to change its attitude, there might be a way forward in the search for constructive dialogue.  (Nothing about suspending uranium enrichment, mind you.) That was enough to get our State Department all wet in the britches - or “encouraged,” or whatever.

Now it seems the Non-Aligned Nations, that body that got started during the Cold War as a way for Third-World countries to side with the Soviet Union while still looking independent, is meeting in Tehran, and Ahmadinejad has told the assembled masses that “the big powers are going down.”

Enough with the search for hopeful signs, already.  Let’s understand what we’re dealing with here. 

In a sane world, W would replace Condi Rice with John Bolton this afternoon.

The much-ballyhooed sit-down between Undersecretary of State Wiliam Burns and chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was a dud from the get-go.  This whole line of effort is so stupid.  We’ve had three rounds of sanctions, numerous incentives packages and now a high-level meeting.  The upshot:  Iran has told the West, “Go pound sand.  We’re going to keep right on enriching uranium, and we still envision a world without that filthy Zionist regime or the Great Satan America.”

Our State Department is a very sick institution.  It lets North Korea make a mockery of the notion of honoring its deadline obligations  in the Six-Way Talks agreement, it sees a constructive partner for talks on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians even when that partner, Mahmoud Abbas, sends “blessings” to the family of released child-killer Samir Kantar, and it keeps prattling on about what Iran needs to do to “avoid further isolation” and quit being “unhelpful.”

There is no such thing as a “way forward” in any of these situations.  It’s time - it was time three years ago - to quit talking to any of these enemies and instead demonstrate adherence to some principles, state clearly what will not be accepted and what we understand we may have to do and experience to to stop any crossing of that line.

The mixed bag that is our current juncture is very mixed indeed.  Just as Iraq is looking like a stable, unified country ready to take its place as a player in its region and in the struggle against jihadism, the danger from its neighbor to the east, Iran, looks like it’s reaching critical mass.  Domestically, productivity and employment remain high, while bank failures blemish the landscape and inflation, a negligible factor for years, has come roaring back.

America is screaming for clarity and leadership.  Or maybe the problem is that it’s not screaming for clarity and leadership,at least en masse in sufficient numbers.  There is nothing plaguing us that adherence to the time-honored principles that have paved our way out of every similar past situation wouldn’t cure.

You do see little glimpses of it here and there.  Thank God W finally said that we need to drill for oil.  If the man who hopes to succeed him as a GOP president can find a graceful way to put his previous pristine-ANWR statements behind him (I guess I am calling for McCain to flip-flop, which isn’t per se a bad thing, if your previous position was stupid) and point out the stark difference between the corporation-bashing of the Freedom-Haters and the overwhelming obvious good sense of turning loose oil companies anywhere it seems likely that there’s oil, he and the congressional candidates of his pary may have a chance.

There are hopeful signs that the public is likewise beginning to see that the core of the banking and mortgage mess is likewise fairly simple: easy credit and shaky responsibility met head-on and shareholders, depositors and taxpayers were left holding the bag.  A little of that is sufficient to make the vast majority of timely bill-payers say, “Now hold on, here.  Why am I taking a whuppin’ for someone else’s failure to live up to his obligations?”

What I do not understand is this sudden overture the W administration is making to Iran.  Sending Under-Secretary of State William Burns to meet with his theocratic counterpart?  How does that jibe with the recent stories about W giving Israel an “amber light” to take care of business regarding a nuke program?  It may be that there is some highly sensitive factor at play here, some consideration that must be kept tightly under wraps for the time being, but I feel that W owes the American people at least some kind of statement along the lines of “I know this looks like an abrupt turnabout, but if it leads to the favorable changes we anticipate, I will explain it thoroughly in due course.”

Yes, it’s a complicated world.  That’s all the more reason to have a consistent set of bedrock principles that guide us as we encounter all manner of wacky twists and turns and some real threats.  In a sense, it’s like having a chart in front of you when you’re playing music.  If you get lost in the tune, you can’t blame the piece of paper on the stand.

Is this new Mediterranean Union a real breakthrough in mideast and southern European developments, and is Sarkozy some kind of paradigm-shifting visionary?

You do have to hand it to him.  He got Israel and Syria to sit at the same table and bandy about the term “normalization.”  The whole thing bears continued observation, and tempered optimism isn’t unwarranted.  Many questions have to be addressed, though.  Syria has much explaining to do in the mater of the string of Lebanese political assasinations over the past few years, as it does for the nuclear reactor it was building with North Korean help last year (and which Israel zapped).  And it’s still hard to see what kind of security guarantees it could give Israel that would be worth banking on should a transfer of Golan Heights possession proceed.

You do kind of have to wonder if this sudden flourishing of goodwill isn’t fueled by a motivation to be on the side with the most allies in the escalating tensions between the West (and much of the Arab world) and Iran.

The EU, the IAEA, various Islamic/Arab-community bodies, and, indeed, the US State Department, have spent decades hoping that one more conference or agreement or back-channel thread of communication was going to avert the fruition of hatred harbored for us by a regime that has been sworn to at least our harm and humiliation if not our subjugation or destruction since 1979.  We’ve known for at least three years that this regime was about to have the means to deliver apocalyptic horror to the West, and still we’ve believed in sanctions and incentives and “strong diplomacy.”

Now we see starkly the stakes that will be involved if either of the two Western states most relied upon to do something - Israel or the United States - takes forceful action against Iran’s nuclear program.

A year from now, Iran will have a nuclear arsenal and a state-of-the-art delivery system.  Most likely, both the US and Israel will have clueless and worthless clowns as leaders.

It was a nice run our species had.

This photo was making the cyber-rounds yesterday, but those posting it were reluctant to claim its authenticity.  It has now been confirmed and some other photos of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s wife have surfaced, taken in state-ceremony situations in which visiting heads of state were with their spouses.

What a charming regime.

Nancy Pelosi spits in the eye of the courageous American military and blows a kiss to our main enemy (Iran, for your sprout-munchers).

 Memo to the American people:  Before you return this slug posing as a human being to the Speaker ofthe House postion, remember that whether you deserve a secure, free and happy future depends on whethr you come to your senses.

He Who Definitely Doesn’t Walk On Water in Oregon, pronouncing on Iran and Venezuela and environmental leadership.

Oh, and on Good Morning America, he tries to  delare his wife untouchable.

Ahmadinejad says the “Zionist entity” is celebrating its 60th to whistle past the fact of its impending “annihilation.”

In a nice MSM touch of moral equivalence, AP sees fit to say that “threatening exchanges betwee Iran and Israel have intensified since 2005.”

Blogging has been light the past few days.  That’s because life is good, professionally speaking.  I’ve knocked out a couple of things for Indie-music.com’s May issue - a review of a lackluster CD, but also a very cool interview to which I’ll link when it comes out.  Also doing some copywriting for a PR / marketing guy I’ve worked for over the years.  I also had to do next Sunday’s Republic column (on why nuclear proliferation isn’t a bigger issue this political season).  I’ve also been lining up musical associates for several upcoming gigs.  Also grading papers and getting ready to administer tonight’s final exam.

I have been paying attention to the world around me, though.  It’s wacky out there, ain’t it?

Were you like me when you heard about Miley Cyrus’s Vanity Fair photo shoot?  I immediately thought, “Oh, no, our sordid, rotten culture nabs another Disney kid.”

I doubt if Obama’s denunciation of Rev. Wright yesterday ends the matter.  That would depend on the Trash Talker from Trinity not shooting his mouth off any more.  How likely is that?  Plus, He Who definitely Doesn’t Walk On Water sounded, shall we say, less than resolute when he said, “I mean it.”  Not the man he met twenty years ago?  Oh, please.  And if he’s that poor a judge of character, we sure as hell don’t want him sitting down one-on-one with Kim, Ahmadinejad and Chavez.

Iran looks to be a front-burner issue.  There’s yet another warning-shot-to-a-speedboat incident in the Persian Gulf, another American aircraft carrier sailing into that body of water, more proof of Iranian weapons and Iran-trained bad guys turning up in Iraq, and, of course, Dennis Ross’s warning to that Toronto congregation that the West has less than a year to prevent Iran from having nukes.

Gas prices won’t be coming down any time soon, for two main reasons: Mideast tensions and Congress’s refusal to allow drilling in places like ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico.

Environmentalists aren’t just dweebs; they’re agents of misery.  Riot-causing food shortages are menacing the entire world, in no small part because of the diversion of perfectly edible grain into biofuel production.

Zimbabwe’s oppostion is bravely trying to see that political justice and national stability prevail.  Robert Mugabe is showing us how evil dictators operate when they have no more ability to dress up their motives as anything civilized, like “the national interest.”

As I say, it’s wacky out there, ain’t it?

Iran, you may have heard by now, is firing up 6,000 centrifuges, certainly enough to make nukes.

Charles Krauthammer says that, since the W administration has utterly failed to stop Iran in its quest to get nukes, the next president is going to have to institute a deterrent policy, which Krauthammer calls the Holocaust Declaration.  Basically, it would assert that a nuclear atack on Israel would be regarded as the same thing as an attack on the US.  Krauthammer says the focus needs to be on Israel, because Iran isn’t capable of hitting a Western target any farther away.

It’s a sound policy, but he may want to rethink his formulation in light of this development.

In the comment thread under my post “Very late in the day,” I assert that the likeliest scenario for the Iranian nuclear threat being addressed is for the US to give Israel permission to fly through Iraqi airspace so it can strike all the Iranian nuclear facilities it knows about.  (And Mr. Dings, do reconstruct your last comment there and resend it.  Sorry I accidentally deleted it.  It was buried in the middle of a septic tank full of spam.  I’ll post it pronto if you can do that.)

Given the sharp escalation in menacing Iranian rhetoric directed towards Israel, the website Infidels Are Cool - and some others to which it links - are taking the position that, December NIE notwithstanding, W is morally obligated to remove this threat breathing down Israel’s neck before he leaves office, given the too-strong possibility that a Freedom-Hater will succeed him.  It would be the honorable thing to do for our only real friend in the region.

Neither the IAEA nor the European Union are known for hard-headed, steely-eyed realism when it comes to the current threats on the world stage.  That makes the latest pronouncements from each (here and here) on Iran’s nuclear program all the more eye-brow-raising.

And know this: no one in this entire world is doing anything to stop what’s going on.