Category Archives: foreign policy

Iran, Nuclear Weapons, and Sanctions

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Our intel suggests that Iran can build a nuclear weapon in about a year.  The Obama administration that that’s time for economic sanctions to work and to convince Iran not to go ahead.  This week, President Obama implored Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to go through with a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear development facilities.  But is it true?  If Iran is within a year of building a nuclear weapon, can sanctions work at all anymore?

Consider: for sanctions to work, the Iranian government must agree that the costs of those sanctions are greater than the gains from possessing nuclear weapons.  Stipulate, arguendo, that the latest round of sanctions work insofar as oil sales are cut off, that Russia and China don’t continue to trade with Iran, simply bypassing the global financial network.  What are those costs?  Economic dislocation.  High prices.  Scarcity of goods.  But no one dies.  Everyone is safe.

Think about the sanctions that have been in place all these last several years: the Iranians don’t have any gasoline for their cars, for instance—and this one is largely self-inflicted.  They’re major oil exporters, but they’ve made a conscious decision not to do any refining domestically.  Food is expensive, the transportation network undermaintained and cumbersome to use.  Internet, cell phone, etc. contact with the outside world for the general population is hard to achieve.  Most goods beyond bare necessities are hard to come by, and their prices are very high.  Yet their nuclear weapons development program is proceeding apace and has been all along.  What are the gains?  I’ll come back to these below.

Consider: why does Iran want nuclear weapons?  It isn’t only for the status of being a nuclear power.  There are three primary purposes for nuclear weapons.  On the occasion of their first use, the reason was to hold down total casualties—both friendly and enemy—associated with invading a mountainous island nation.  Later, the weapons’ purpose was in their existence: to deter attack by others, whether those others also were nuclear powers  or not.  The third reason for having nuclear weapons is to use them, and/or to give/sell them to surrogates who will use them.

In a 2005 interview with an American journalist, the then leader of Hezbollah (an Iranian proxy terror organization), Hussein al-Moussawi, said

We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to destroy you.

Moreover, the Iranian government is on record, repeatedly, as saying that they want to see Israel wiped off the map.  They want to kill the Great Satan (i.e., us).  It’s clear that Iran wants nuclear weapons to use them and/or to pass them to others who will use them.

For sanctions to have the effect on the Iranian government we expect them to have, the Iranian government has to think like we do.  But they don’t think like us.  Moreover, their tolerance for pain is higher than ours.

What will Iran gain from obtaining nuclear weapons?  The destruction of Israel.  Weapons to pass to surrogates for use within the United States—and Europe—to kill as many of us and them as can be done—even to destroy us.

Will sanctions work on Iran?  Can Iran be dissuaded without military force, in this environment and with this mind set, from obtaining nuclear weapons?

Hypocrisy

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Fox News is reporting that the People’s Republic of China is claiming that

it was forced to veto a United Nations vote on Syria because it was called before differences in the proposal were bridged, but denied playing spoiler and said it wants to see an end to violence there.

Forced.  Poor babies.  The resolution that the PRC (and Russia) chose to veto would have been a move toward ending nearly a year of Bashar Assad’s killing—to the tune of 5,400—of his own people since last March.

The PRC justifies itself by insisting that the resolution, as written, unduly pressured…the Syrian government.  This is a strange, but strangely consistent, objection coming from a country with similar problems in Tibet, and in its Xinjiang province (which is populated with all those uppity Uighurs.  Oh, yeah, and that also is the PRC’s largest natural gas-producing region).  This also comes from a country that still maintains it has a right to conquer the Republic of China.

Liu Weimin, a spokesman for the PRC’s Foreign Ministry, insisted that that too-early Security Council vote was forced before suitable (Chinese diluting) amendments had been agreed.   This, though, ignores the fact that the PRC never would have accepted a resolution that had actual teeth for ending the Syrian government’s butcherybloodshed.  Just as it had consistently demanded watering down earlier versions of the resolution.

Liu also denied that the PRC was favoring Assad, in particular.  Yet this is exactly the outcome of the Chinese veto.

The People’s Daily  opined

The present situation in Syria is extremely complicated.  To naively back one side, while attacking the other side, might look like bringing about a favorable turn, but is actually just laying up trouble ahead.

No.  It’s not complicated at all.  Either the PRC supports Assad and his behavior, or it does not.  In the meantime, people are dying today.  But that’s no trouble at all.

We don’t need to keep taking the PRC seriously on the political stage; we can ignore and bypass them—and we should ignore and bypass them, so long as they continue to side with bloody despotism.

These Chinese are not just on the wrong side of history—they’re on the wrong side of morality.

Resetting with Russia and China

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Given Russia’s and the People’s Republic of China’s veto of an Arab League motion before the UN’s Security Council “aimed at ending the violence in Syria that called for Mr. Assad to hand over his powers to his vice president and allow creation of a unity government,” vetoes that came hours after Assad’s murderous artillery bombardment of the Syrian city of Homs with an estimated 200 civilian deaths )about which Russia and the PRC surely knew), it may be time to “reset” relations.

Plainly, these vetoes are motivated by either, or both, of two things.  Others have written of Putin’s reluctance to admit that a dysfunctional, even dishonest, much less a murderous government should be susceptible to abolishment by the people: for one thing, Syria is important to a Russian naval presence in the Med, for another, Putin doesn’t want to encourage the Russian people along the same lines, and so on.  Other Chinese motives also seem apparent: Iran is a convenient source of needed oil, and Syria is an important, if not critical, ally of the Iranians.

Another motive is much more stark.  A butcher in charge of Syria hurts the US.  American impotence in dealing with this butcher, especially after the benign (compared to the Syrian situation) affair of Gadhafi, hurts the US.  Vetoes of American-backed (if Arab-led in the present instance) public initiatives demonstrate that impotence.

Following these vetoes, we’re getting some unusually strongly couched statements from President Obama’s State Department.  UN Ambassador Susan Rice has said of the vetoes

The United States is disgusted that a couple of members of this Council continue to prevent us from fulfilling our sole purpose.

and

The people of Syria…have been slapped in the face by several members of the Security Council today.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said

What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty.

and

Faced with a neutered Security Council, we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations….

and

We will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons to be used against defenseless Syrians, including women and children….

The question becomes, then, is this a sign that resetting is beginning?  Or is it just more idle chit-chat and firm finger-shaking from the Obama administration?

Sanctions and Trust

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Does his own party trust him anymore on sanctions against Iran—or anything else?

In a letter to President Obama (formally to his Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner), two Senators, Robert Menendez (D, NJ), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Global Narcotics Affairs, and Mark Kirk (R, IL), Member of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, felt constrained to remind Obama and his administration of Congress’ intent when it passed (and Obama signed into law) the recent Menendez-Kirk Amendment to the Comprehensive Iran Sanction, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISAD).  This amendment authorized oil and financial sanctions against Iran should Iran insist on continuing on their course to obtaining nuclear weapons.

We understand that the administration is drafting rules to guide the implementation of the law and we hereby seek to convey the legislative intent underlying certain terms and phrases in the amendment and to ensure that the positive developments that have occurred as a result of the amendment are buttressed  by the administrative rules[.]

The Senators opened their letter with the above.  Their concern arises from Obama’s attempt to eviscerate the amendment to CISAD while it was being developed, even though it was an amendment that Obama had urged and to which Menendez and Kirk had agreed, and then after that agreement, Obama’s repudiation of it (interestingly, following that repudiation the amendment passed the Senate by a 100-0 vote).  Menendez has separately advised Obama that, as a result of Obama’s…behavior, “This certainly undermines your relationship with me for the future.”

The Senators, via their letter, laid out the specifics of some of their concerns.  These included the administration’s definition of the “significant reductions” other nations might claim as a means of continuing to do business with Iran’s Central Bank and to trade for Iranian oil while avoiding the US response mandated by CISAD—the cutting off of those nations’ banks from the US economy.  The strict definition was laid out in that underlying law; the Senators do not trust the administration to hew to that definition in its new implementing rules.  The Senators spelled it out in their letter:

To ascribe more variable terminology to the definition of “significantly reduced” would diminish the ability of countries to understand and comply with the amendment.  An unevenly applied interpretation would also call into question the seriousness of the sanctions policy and send mixed signals to both Iran and our allies.

Menendez and Kirk also are concerned that Obama will use the “national security” waiver in the sanctions law to completely weasel out of applying the sanctions: they fear he won’t apply any waiver on a case-by-case basis, as the amendment requires, attempting instead a blanket waiver that prevents any sanctions anywhere.

It was not our intent that the term “waive the imposition of sanctions under paragraph (1)” as meaning only one waiver is needed to waive the imposition of all sanctions.  In other words, with one report to Congress, the President could decide that not institution will be subject to sanctions….

They concluded,

We would welcome an opportunity to discuss these points with you prior to the publication of the final rule for the Menendez-Kirk amendment.

The Senate no longer trusts this President; his own party no longer trusts him.  Where is the basis for trust on the part of anyone else?  In any event, Obama’s rules are due out this week.  Maybe we’ll see the effect of the Senators’ letter.

The Caliphate

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Is it being established after all, and with the present administration’s acquiescence through ignorance?

There’s this from the Pittsburgh post-gazette (h/t to BLACKFIVE):

The war in Afghanistan may end this year in thinly disguised surrender.

“The Taliban per se is not our enemy,” Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with Newsweek magazine Dec. 15.

We went to war in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime because it had sheltered al-Qaida. Perhaps Mr. Biden forgot.

and [link added]

A story in an Indian newspaper Dec. 29 suggests the reason for the vice president’s memory lapse.  The Obama administration apparently is conducting secret negotiations with the Taliban and has recruited Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate them.  “Earlier this month, Mr. al-Qaradawi helped draw a road map for a deal between the Taliban and the United States aimed at giving the superpower a face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is due to begin in 2014,” wrote reporter Praveen Swami, citing “Indian diplomatic sources.”

Mr. al-Qaradawi seeks the establishment of a worldwide caliphate ruled by Islamic law.

(Mr Swami also goes on at some length about al-Qaradawi and the threat he poses to India as well as to the West.)

BLACKFIVE points out this:

The bottom line is we have been severely weakened by Obama….  We can start w/ losing one war and one peace [respectively, Afghanistan and Iraq],…the Arab Spring installing Islamists in Egypt, Libya and much of the rest of the Middle East….

Spain surrendered to the Islamists some years ago when it was driven from Afghanistan with its tail between its legs after a series of train bombings followed by instructions from the bombers’ handlers to depart forthwith.

Withal, we have the Umayyad Caliphate being rebuilt from the Middle East west across north Africa and back onto the Iberian Peninsula to the Pyrenees, and east through Pakistan and back into Afghanistan.  The lone holdouts seem to be Portugal and the Sarkozy French in and above Iberia, and a seemingly abandoned Israel in the heart of the redeveloping Caliphate.  It’s true enough that the present reconstruction is no more monolithic than were the Umayyads, but that doesn’t reduce the present threat any more than it did with the Umayyads.  Especially given the current Islamist goals.