By Yoram Getzler. Week by week, news report by news report we see and hear of the Iranian success at delaying any significant or meaningful modification of their military nuclear program.
The End Game…is the willingness of the western “powers” to refrain from using all their true financial power to compel Iran to conform to the will of the international community. To force Iran to cease and desist from its goal of becoming a nuclear power. That is against what it has convinced itself is its current historical task. To “erase Israel, the Zionist entity from the map”, to save the Muslim world and all mankind from the evil Zionists and Jews. Alongside its destiny to re-order the Muslim world to its Shai’ah beliefs. The international community has so far failed to force Iran away from the nuclear policies it is pursuing which are a grave danger to the total human community. True, it has a basic right, as do all nations to develop an independent capacity to produce nuclear energy and use nuclear isotopes in medical practice. But for either of these endeavors there is no need for the expensive step of additional purification past the 3.5% level. OK, says the international community STOP here ! But Iran is unwilling. They have already purified radioactive materials more than their 3.5% need. So the international community (minus Russia & China) “insist” on compliance to international standards and oversight! Truly meaningful sanctions have finally after years of delays been imposed. It is indeed like the 1930’s all over again. It is historically likely that at the point when Iran like Germany was still weak and far from technological success as well as vulnerable (ten years ago) and the world community would not have had to make a total embargo they could have made it difficult enough for Germany/Iran that demands for total compliance might have been imposed and met. But now, with Iran so close to the goal it would indeed be not rational for them to scrap their investment and comply with the demands of the nations.
And even now…the sanctions are not scheduled to begin for another month when they should have been imposed years ago, or at least yesterday.
It would seem that this entire project has not been undertaken seriously. Could it be that Netanyahu truly managed to impress on the nations that this was an Israeli problem? Therefore, who really cares?
Because other than that how else to explain or understand the sloth like response to the obvious Iranian ploys to stretch out “negotiations” many times over, until there is nothing to negotiate about? A situation we have now reached.
…And the military option? What a horrendous catastrophic development would that make for. As if the worlds economies are in such good shape now that a major energy disruption will not make much of an impression. Will not cost much to anybody, not to the Europeans, the Americans, the Egyptians and Syrians the Japanese etc. What country today can “afford” the disruptions in energy supply and financial credit that are likely to follow the reactions of an outraged Iran? And our dear planet? An attack means a spike in energy usage, gas, diesel, explosives, airplanes, helicopters tanks transport vessels air-craft-carriers etc all belching exhausts into the atmosphere at an accelerated rate.
In addition to the immediate dangers to the entire Middle-East from an Iranian response and/or a nuclear attack it seems to me that at this point in history the ecological structure of the planet is in a state of delicate balance. It seems that it would not take much to unbalance the whole structure of nature that provides all living things with the necessary conditions for survival. A nuclear detonation anywhere on the planet would probably throw into the atmosphere enough particles and dust to cause profound change and disruption in the already shaky natural cycles which make this planet livable.