THINK-ISRAEL

President Obama's behavior towards Iran is difficult to map on a rational policy that includes if-then statements and time limits. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran plans in decades, not days. Iran's threat is now on the clock. If the Administration has gelled a consequential plan, it isn't visible to anyone outside the White House.

It seems forever since Iran started vowing to destroy Israel, whatever the cost. It slowly has become bolder on voicing the same future for the USA. It's as if we fell out of the 100th floor and it seems we've been going down forever, but sooner than later, we are going to smash. Here the simile stops. It's not the USA that's going to smash immediately. We'll have to wait our turn. First the Middle East will, like iron filings, be attracted to Iran. Not a matter of wanting this. Not a matter of liking it. But Iran will be the master who is proximal. And determined. And we've wishied and washied and hemmed and hawed. We've lost the confidence of countries that may not like us but mostly would toe the line. We will have lost control of them.

We can probably eventually compensate for the oil by drilling onshore and offshore. In a way on the surface -- at least initially -- nothing will have changed. We will still have to take regard of a Muslim country's sensitivities. But the raw, uncloaked viciousness of a demanding Iran rather than the under-the-radar control by Saudi Arabia won't sit well on a country that has seen itself as Number 1 for some 50 years. It will change us. It will sap our confidence. Combined with the termite-like infiltration of sharia already at work on our legal, educational, political, security and intelligence systems, our glory days will be gone. And all our caution in dealing with Iran and hoping for the best will be for naught. Someone else be pulling our chain. A short chain.

Uglier scenarios are also likely, given the hatred Iran and most of the Muslim countries have for Big Satan. A determined Iran, now certain it is doing Allah's will, will likely also attack us in overt ways -- dirty bombs, chemical warfare, germ warfare. As with WW2, it will in retrospect become obvious that we were stupidly negligent in not stopping Iran's ascension when we had the power and they didn't.

For years, if you wanted to believe Iran with its huge oil capacity still needed nuclear energy, you were backed by the (dis)information coming from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reassuring us that Iran's claim to be developing a nuclear capability for peaceful enterprises was true; and anyways, it was far behind in its nuclear efforts. The agency was the UN's nuclear watchdog and entrusted to provide the most accurate information on Iran's progress. Then one day, abruptly, it wrote in alarm that Iranian nuclear program was not all peaceful.[*] That was around the time that Mohamed ElBaradei, who headed the IAEA, resigned. We've since learned that ElBaradei, an Egyptian diplomat, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the man who was in the running to be successor to Mubarak, was an Iranian agent.
israpundit nov 10, 2011.http://www.israpundit.com/archives/41175
Politicians used IAEA's reassurances as an excuse to ignore other evidence that Iran was heavily into making a bomb. It bought Iran time to advance the nuclear bomb project.

After Amadinejad openly vowed to bomb Israel out of existence, the fairy dust tossed in our faces was changed to: are you sure Iran isn't just talking big? This talking doesn't mean it would actually bomb Israel out of existence. To squelch anxiety, the politicos twisted the sanction ropes around Iran a teeny tiny bit more. Later, they twisted a tiny bit more. And then a little more. In the last couple of months, the sanctions have actually had some bite. They might have worked 2 years ago. But will it be effective now? It's doubtful -- not when Iran can taste victory. It has but to tighten its belt for some months and the future belongs to them.

As soon as Iran has a bomb, it will use it, directly or as the Middle East's newest sword of Damocles, an unpredictable, perilous instrument of terror. Perhaps a better image would be the buried bomb that, if allowed out, can devastate any of the Arab countries that doesn't do Iran's bidding.

Obama must know that if Israel is targeted, Israel would be devastated, but, also, the regional oil supply would suffer. Saudi Arabia's oil supply will likely be disrupted. We might be forced to buy from Iran. More likely, depending how wide-spread the damage, there would be an unacceptable gap before we could have a steady supply shifting to Iran as supplier. And our economy would go down the tube.

Even worse for Obama, blame would fall on the Democratic party. So continuing to conduct drag-out negotiations and sanctions against Iran while waging pointless warring in unimportant places makes no sense from the point of view of self-interest.

Are there other possibilities? Sure. Many.

As Caroline Glick points out, Obama is now playing the only game he plays well -- using a crisis to gain a goal. If Israel waits much longer, it will be too late for effective destruction of the nuclear sites. In this case, he's already told us the conditions he will accept from a defeated Israel: shrink into a non-viable state with suicide borders and overload what's left of Israel with 600,000 to 700,000 homeless Jewish refugees from Samaria and Judea and eastern Jerusalem. Making a country decide how it wants to commit suicide is not giving it a choice. To do this to a strong, smart, effective ally would seem to be the height of stupidity.

Obama might have consequence dislexyia -- an inability to gauge consequences properly. He's certainly demonstrated it in his thoughts about oil prices. Oil prices like any other commodity (unless artificially sustained) are subject to supply and demand. He has said that increasing the supply of oil by drilling was a bad idea because of environmental hazards. Obama's policy is to reduce the demand for oil by making it too expensive to buy. Ha. That was an easy decision for our Keystone cop Prez to make.
http://netrightdaily.com/2012/01/obama-says-no-to-keystone-pipeline-no-to-energy-independence-and-no-to-american-jobs

Unfortunately this is very bad for people's pocketbooks, forcing them to cut down on other goods, thus helping to worsen the economy. Maybe he should focus on the fact that millions of people are out of a job and the consequent negative impact on family security might currently be of more concern that the possible loss of marsh birds due to an oil spill. Ya think?

It's become an intriguing question: who is Obama gunning for? The joke around the internet used to be that Obama was our Manchurian candidate. During a war that Islam declared, Americans were so witless or bemused by irrelevant factors such as that Obama was 16% black, we voted for a Muslim president, our own version of the Manchurian candidate. Some were already asking: does Barack Hussein Obama care if Israel is destroyed? Not if he feels he's done what no other Arab has been able to do -- wipe out a major defense against the conquest of the West by Islam.

Recently, he did say something sensible. He didn't see containment of Iran as a workable plan. In point of fact, it's hard to visualize containment of any part of the globally interdependent economy. It's easier to see disruption of any part rippling throughout the system -- impacting some industries more than others, some countries more than others -- but, ultimately, devastating all.

So he talks ok but, intentionally or not, he behaves as if world-wide misery is what he's set out to create. Back in 2008, a few people wondered if he was a Marxist using Muslim money or a Muslim using Marxist tactics. When his defenders substituted birth certificates from other people in lieu of the long official form for Obama's birth, people joked that they weren't sure he was born in Hawaii. But no one suggested he was an alien from outer space, out to destroy human civilization.

Now?

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[*]  The official IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program can be found here. Barry Shaw notes that "this is the report that Western governments decided not to release to the public. Israel has been screaming for years that Iran is hell bent on a full nuclear weapons program. The world has been ducking and diving around confronting this issue. Now the truth is here for all to see, despite the attempts of governments to cover up the full force of the IAEA report."

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