Does Baby Go Boom?

The United States and its Western Allies (plus Japan) have been pressuring Iran to give up its quest for a nuclear program that appears in significant part directed at a weapons capacity. China has been in an uncomfortable squeeze – wanting Iranian oil but also a tad nervous as being on the outs with the anti-nuclear policies of much of the world – but Russia has been almost gleeful in its ability to thwart U.S. containment policies by entering into a series of what America has viewed as rogue treaties with a rogue state – ranging from Russian-Iranian mutual defense pacts to an agreement from Russia to begin providing nuclear fuel rods for Iranian reactors.

Russia’s move, which the Western Allies/Japan have sought to delay pending larger nuclear concessions from Iran, is ostensibly aimed at generating nuclear fuel outside of Iran – short-circuiting Iran’s finalizing its own internal capacity to create fissionable material (non-accountable material by treat organizations that clearly could be diverted for weapons purposes). Ever since Pakistan’s Dr. A.Q. Khan – the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program – transferred technology expertise to Iran (and N. Korea) that enabled the building of exceptionally complex centrifuges needed to separate out most active plutonium from lower grade materials, a good section of the world has simply looked on in horror as the nation that promised to destroy Israel and officially denies the holocaust moved towards full nuclear status.

Russia is now ready to begin fulfilling a $1 billion agreement with: “Russia's state atomic agency, which is overseeing the plant near Bushehr [Iran], said low-enriched uranium would be added Aug. 21 but that the power station may not be fully active for months. Work on the facility began in the 1970s, when Iran staked much of its national pride on the development of nuclear energy.” Los Angeles Times (August 14^th). Russia believes that this move is consistent with Western pledges to provide nuclear fuel for power-generating purposes so that Iran does not have to continue its own program. However, without the concessions sought by the West, the timing of this effort appears to send mixed messages and is a slap in the face to American policies.

But there is a more horrific reaction to this Russian effort to provide nuclear fuel for apparently peaceful power-generating purposes. An article written in the September 2010 the Atlantic magazine by political analyst, Jeffrey Goldberg, projects an obvious moment when Israel may deploy a first strike to take out the reactor (and the rest of Iran’s nuclear facilities), since attacking a reactor once the fuel rods are installed would disperse nuclear waste into the atmosphere with unpredictable consequences. With the prospect for a regime change in Iran non-existent and that nation’s standing defiant against all attempts to extract a commitment to dismantle its nuclear program, Israel is addressing the possibility that if Obama doesn’t sanction a military attack – exceptionally unlikely given the failed efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan – it may be incumbent on Israeli forces to take out Iran’s nuclear capacity by force as an act of survival.

Goldberg writes that: “What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It’s so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)”

Regional Arab powers, most Sunni Muslim nations that fear Shiite Iran as a nuclear power as well are equally fearful of any Israeli military efforts, however beneficial they might be to reduce Iran’s threat in the region… at least at the Arab government level; grassroots “pride” at an Islamic nuclear nation seems to be growing. But such an attack would provide rogue Iran with justification, at least in its own eyes, for retaliatory strikes using its own missiles and a greenlight for terrorists funded by Iran to strike targets globally, perhaps even within the United States herself. All hell might break loose, and Iran might even blockade ship traffic in the Persian Gulf, blowing up fully loaded oil tankers headed for the West, sending gasoline prices to levels yet not reached.

These are hard questions for hardened politicians and military strategists, but passions run high on this subject. Will Israel risk burning some big bridges with the United States by warring unilaterally on Iran, loosing a litany of potential horribles on the rest of the world? It just might… if it feared that a nuclear Iran was a direct and immediate threat to its very existence. The world is watching. Some folks think Israel has just under a week to strike. Wow!

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are too many volatile powder kegs on this planet not to be very concerned.