Feedback on the Iranians and the IAEA

Jon asked, “So if Iran does not comply, what are you suggesting be done?”

Ron had an answer. “Israel should direct its efforts towards defensive missiles.”

Jon asked, “So if Iran does not comply, what are you suggesting be done?”

Ron had an answer. “Israel should direct its efforts towards defensive missiles.”

JINSA advocates missile defense as an essential part of an appropriate – and moral – response to the threat of nuclear or non-nuclear missiles, not only for Israel but also for the United States and for our allies. Iran is not the only problem; North Korea, Syria and Pakistan are countries of concern. We were pleased when President Obama told the Russian president that Iran’s provocative behavior determined that we would continue our plans to put missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic. On the other hand, both serious cuts in missile defense programs in the Defense Department budget and recent hints that the Central European sites may be bargaining chips in U.S.-Russian relations are causes for concern.

Steve wrote, “Your article reminded me of the Toshiba case – the illegal transfer of sensitive technology to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. When we went to the Japanese government with hard evidence, they said they wanted photos. We said it was a little difficult to take pictures inside a building that was a secure facility. Luckily we were dealing with the Japanese and they admitted what they were doing. In the case of Iran it is hopeless, like the IAEA (which contributed in many profound ways to the first Iraq war) – a litany of failure wrapped in a style of dissembling.”

The IAEA seeks to share additional U.S. intelligence information with the Iranian regime – in effect blaming American restrictions for its own inability to make Iran come clean. Can the IAEA really think we are so naïve as to further compromise American intelligence sources and methods and thus further enable Iran to hide and disguise its programs? Well, the publication of U.S. interrogation techniques and the attempt to prosecute CIA personnel certainly have given al Qaeda and other terrorists insights into American capabilities and red lines, enabling them to better compensate and train.

Ken raised another issue. “The real problem with Iran is not its nuclear program, but its radical, Islamist, jihadi, “revolutionary” regime installed by Jimmy Carter with the cooperation of France 30 years ago, and allowed to remain in power by the U.S., despite the American hostages, the attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in Buenos Aires and the establishment of Iranian terror satraps in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, along with sleeper cells seeded throughout the world, including the U.S. … [William Ralph] Inge advised, ‘It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion.'”

We would add the apocryphal (?) story of Henry Kissinger at a biblical zoo, observing a lion lie down with a lamb – possible, said the zookeeper, if you brought in a new lamb often enough. And Winston Churchill likened appeasement to feeding a crocodile hoping it would eat you last.

Animal analogies aside, the IAEA has demonstrated beyond a doubt that keeping Iran from completing its plans for nuclear weapons capability is beyond the purview of the agency and the UN, and can only be done with consensus in the West to stop appeasing the Iranian regime. We currently see no such consensus.