“By the end of these next two days,’ one senior administration official in Washington said, ‘we’ll know if the Iranians are serious and whether we have time” to pursue further diplomacy with Iran without fearing that it could race ahead to produce a weapon.’” So reports David Sanger from the talks in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program. These are bold words and indicative of the fact that patience with the mullahs is not infinite, at least as far as the US Administration is concerned. But what about American public opinion?
Have a look at the latest poll from the Washington Post and ABC News here. What’s striking, in my view, is that while a majority of respondents are opposed to military action, the numbers are not overwhelming. What is overwhelming is the support for further sanctions - a sign that Americans simply do not trust the Iranian regime to defuse the situation of its own volition. As they embark on a new round of cat and mouse games with their P5 interlocutors, the mullahs should keep these numbers in mind - and ponder the prospect that further deceit may well swing more Americans toward, rather than away from, a military strike on their nuclear installations.
I’m afraid western liberals including most Obama supporters have happily bought a bill of goods. Obama has zero intention of limiting Iran’s access to nuclear technology and will do nothing in fact to stop them from acquiring or developing on their own, a nuclear weapons capability. There’s only so much apologizing and bowing and scraping and offering recompense you can do that will have any effect on Iran. They have always maintained categorically that there is nothing which can stop them and Russia and China and most of the EU tend to take them at their word. In Russia and China’s case it serves their own purpose and in the EU’s case they are terrified of telling their voters that there’s anything anywhere worth standing up for which might imperil their social welfare network. Sorry but Obama falls into a third category of world leaders who either naively believe their can beg their way to success, or, he’s merely stalling until he can claim victory on the pretense that once Iran announces their nuclear capability, Obama himself will tell us that his ‘transparency’ worked. You don’t get Nobel Peace Prizes by demanding that tyrants behave themselves.
Even if Iran delivers its uranium to Russia, by now it can produce the same one ton of uranium in 3-4 months, as North Korea did after defusing the 20055 crisis
“Obama has zero intention of limiting Iran’s access to nuclear technology and will do nothing in fact to stop them from acquiring or developing on their own, a nuclear weapons capability.”
I disagree, Several Beagles.
Obama has one limited objective with regards to the IRI, and that is to ensure it doesn’t have the capacity to build nuclear weapons. To this end, the Admin. has taken regime change and democratization completely off the table. It has also reoriented the US’s strategic posture vis-a-vis Russia in order to enlist Moscow in the effort to check Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Now you might disagree with this approach, but you can’t deny that that is what the Admin. is driving towards.
No I believe that what Obama believes is that he can convince Russia to manage Iran’s nuclear weapons for them.