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Sanctions against Iran – Not an Option

The term “effective sanctions” against Iran on the one hand and global political reality on the other hand, constitute an oxymoron, playing into the hands of Iran.

Effective sanctions require the full cooperation of Russia and China, two strategic rivals of the US, as demonstrated by their UN Security Council double-veto of the October 2011 and February 2012 anti-Assad resolutions. They do not fully cooperate with sanctions invoked against Iran, and assist the Tehran regime, as do some European countries. Furthermore, Japan, India and Turkey have subordinated compliance with sanctions to their trade relations with Iran, as have some countries in Latin America and Europe.

Each new sanction against Iran requires several months for effectiveness assessment. Thus, it extends the time available to Iran to develop its nuclear capabilities, as well as to acquire critical technologies and systems from North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or China.

Forty years of US economic sanctions against North Korea – which does not harbor Iran-like megalomaniac aspirations – have failed to topple the regime or prevent its nuclearization. Fifty years of sanctions against Cuba has, also, reaffirmed the constraints of sanctions against rogue regimes, which subject their people to ruthless dictatorships and ideological brainwashing.

Sanctions have, usually, been employed in order to avoid the tougher – and more effective – options, which are required to produce regime-change or dramatic policy-alteration. Sanctions express loudly and clearly disapproval of certain regimes and policies, but generally fail to achieve their goal.

The preoccupation with “effective sanctions” and diplomacy ignores the gravity and immediacy of the clear, present and devastating threat to the US, posed by a nuclear Iran, independent of Israel’s existence and policies.

Just as Bin-Laden, who had ample opportunities to hit Israel, but preferred to hit the US and Western Europe, so does Iran consider the US and NATO (and Saudi Arabia) its top enemies, and most formidable obstacles in the way of assuming domination of the Persian Gulf, and therefore its top targets.

A nuclear Iran would cause a meltdown of pro-US Gulf regimes through a violent regime change, and/or via a dramatic policy change by the currently pro-US Gulf regimes. Iran’s nuclear intimidation of Central Asian (former USSR) countries would tilt them toward Teheran or Moscow and against the US.

A nuclear Iran would accelerate nuclear proliferation in the Mid-East, the role model of instability, unpredictability and violent regime change – a nightmare scenario for global sanity. According to former Vice Chairman of the US Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff Marine Corps General James Cartwright, and such a scenario would be “my number one proliferation concern globally…extremely, extremely dangerous.” Saudi Arabia is currently registering its Iran-driven panic with US Senators and House Representatives, pleading for military preemption, while expediting its own nuclear initiative. It could acquire nuclear capabilities from Pakistan, which has been a closely-aligned beneficiary of crucial Saudi financial support for its own nuclear facilities. Hence, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Founding Father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, has recently visited Saudi Arabia, which has concluded a series of civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with China, France, South Korea and Argentina. Egypt would not lag behind Saudi Arabia, its intra-Arab rival, stepping-up its already advanced nuclear program, as would Turkey, which aspires to hegemony in the Muslim World.

A nuclear Iran would intimidate Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Gulf States, threatening the normal operations of their oil infrastructure, dramatically influencing oil quota and price, interfering with – and possibly disrupting – the supply of oil, directly impacting the price at the pump and the level of unemployment in the US and the West.

A nuclear Iran would bolster its existing beachheads in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Mexico, which host Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran’s elite extraterritorial Quds Force. It could transfer some nuclear systems to its Latin American allies, which recently hosted six visits by Ahmadinejad, who is systematically enhancing Iran’s security profile on the American continent.

A nuclear Iran would provide a significant tailwind to scores, or hundreds, of sleeper cells in the US and Canada, as well as to anti-US global Islamic terrorism.

The highly exaggerated cost of military preemption – by the US or by Israel – would be dwarfed by the aforementioned threats of a nuclear Iran, in addition to the nuclear threat which would hover above US soldiers in the Gulf and above the US mainland. A regime which sacrificed 500,000 of its own children in order to clear minefields, during the 1980-1988 war against Iraq, is capable of launching nuclear warheads, irrespective of the cost.

An effective preemption should not be limited to critical nuclear facilities, but should simultaneously devastate Iran’s missile and air defense capabilities, thus minimizing the scope of Iran’s retaliation. An effective preemption would not include the occupation of Iran, thus distinguishing itself from Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran, which coalesced all Iranians against the threat to their sovereignty. An effective preemption is a prerequisite to regime-change through domestic opposition, which was disillusioned by the lack of Western support in 2009.

Refraining from preemption would gravely destabilize the Mid-East and beyond. The only effective way to prevent (Iran’s nuclearization and its devastating cost) is to preempt!




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US-sponsored anti-Israel UN Security Council statement – acumen

*The US’ co-sponsorship of an anti-Israel UN Security Council Statement reflects the return of the State Department’s worldview to the center stage of US foreign policy-making. This was the first time, in six years, that the US enabled the UN Security Council to act against Israel.

*This is not merely a worldview, which is highly critical of Israel, as has been the case since 1948, when Foggy Bottom led the charge against the re-establishment of the Jewish State.

This worldview has systematically undermined US interests, by subordinating the unilateral, independent US national security policy (on Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian issue, etc.) to a multilateral common denominator with the anti-US and anti-Israel UN and international organizations, as well as the vacillating and terrorists-appeasing Europe.

*It has sacrificed Middle East reality on the altar of wishful-thinking, assuming that the establishment of a Palestinian state would fulfill Palestinian aspirations, advance the cause of peace, reduce terrorism and regional instability; thus, enhancing US interests.

*However, the reality of the Middle East and Jordan and the rogue Palestinian track record lend credence to the assumption that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River would doom the pro-US Hashemite regime east of the River, yielding traumatic ripple effects, regionally and globally:

^Replace the relatively-moderate Hashemite regime with either a rogue Palestinian regime, a Muslim Brotherhood regime, or other rogue regimes;
^Transform Jordan into a chaotic state, similar to Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which would be leveraged by Iran’s Ayatollahs to intensify their encirclement of the pro-US Saudi regime;
^Convert Jordan into a major arena of regional and global Islamic terrorism;
^Trigger a domino scenario into the Arabian Peninsula, which could topple all pro-US, oil-producing Arab regimes;
^Imperil the supply of Persian Gulf oil, which would be held hostage by anti-US entities, catapulting the price at the pump;
^Jeopardize major naval routes of global trade between Asia and Europe through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal;
^Intensify epicenters of regional and global terrorism and drug trafficking;
^Generate a robust tailwind to US’ adversaries (Russia and China) and enemies (Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS) and a powerful headwind to US economic and national security interests.

*The State Department assumes that Palestinian terrorism – just like Islamic terrorism – is driven by despair, ignoring the fact that Palestinian terrorism has been driven (for the last 100 years) by the vision to erase the “infidel” Jewish entity from “the abode of Islam,” as stated by the charters of Fatah (1959) and the PLO (1964), 8 and 3 years before the Jewish State reunited Jerusalem and reasserted itself in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

*Aspiring for a Palestinian state, and viewing Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria as an obstacle to peace, ignores the Arab view of the Palestinians as a role model of intra-Arab subversion, terrorism, corruption and treachery. Moreover, the State Department has held the view that the Palestinian issue is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a central to Arab interests, which has been refuted by the Abraham Accords. The latter ignored the State Department, sidestepped the Palestinian issue and therefore came to fruition.

*The State Department overlooks the centrality of the Palestinian Authority’s hate education, which has become the most effective production-line of terrorists, and the most authentic reflection of the Palestinian Authority’s worldview and vision.

*The State Department has also taken lightly the Palestinian Authority’s mosque incitement, public glorification of terrorists and monthly allowances to families of terrorists, which have documented its rogue and terroristic nature (walk), notwithstanding its peaceful diplomatic rhetoric (talk).

*The State Department’s eagerness to welcome the Palestinian issue in a “red carpet” manner – contrary to the “shabby doormat” extended to Palestinians by Arabs – and its determination to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state, along with its embrace of Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood, have been interpreted by rogue regimes and organizations as weakness.

Experience suggests that weakness invites the wolves, including wolves which aim to bring “The Great Satan” to submission throughout the world as well as the US mainland.

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The post-1967 turning point of US-Israel cooperation

Israeli benefits to the US taxpayer exceed US foreign aid to Israel

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Exposing the myth of the Arab demographic time bomb