Iran fantasy and the 10 week deadline to more meaningless talks

NY Times Editorial:

The world’s wealthy nations have given Iran until late September to agree to restraints on its nuclear program. If there is no progress, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France declared at this week’s Group of 8 summit, “we will have to take decisions” on imposing tougher sanctions.

We hope Mr. Sarkozy and the other G-8 leaders mean it. For seven years, the world powers have pursued a feckless strategy that failed to halt Iran’s efforts to master nuclear fuel production, the hardest part of building a weapon. More deadlines, without any real follow-through, will send a dangerous message to nuclear wannabes who already see Iran and North Korea defying repeated demands from the United Nations Security Council to cease and desist.

We don’t know if there is any mix of incentives or sanctions that would work. Certainly President George W. Bush, for all his tough talk and bullying ways, never tried to find it.

We also know that if any strategy has a serious chance of success, it must be fully embraced not only by the Europeans but also by Russia and China. So it was disheartening to hear Russian officials boasting in Italy about watering down the G-8 statement on Iran.

Dealing with Tehran is even harder after last month’s bogus presidential election sparked weeks of protest and repression. President Obama and the other G-8 leaders were right to deplore the violence. But Mr. Obama is also right to stay open to engagement, even if it’s a long shot.

Iran’s political tug of war is far from over. There are signs that Mr. Obama’s offer of direct talks may have helped deepen fissures inside the political establishment. The bad news is that American hard-liners — outside the administration — are still encouraging Israeli hard-liners to fantasize about a military strike.

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The Europeans engaged in serious talks with Iran for much of the Bush administration's and the the only result was Iran ran the clock and never agreed to anything of substance. Adding the US or the UN to mix is not going to change that. There were serious offers made to provide Iran with nuclear fuel and help them build their facilities that were all rejected because Iran really wants to build a bomb. John Hannah exposes the liberal myths about Bush and Iran.

The Israels, correctly see that as an existential threat, that has been confirmed by the rhetoric of Iran's leaders. They do not need any encouragement from those in the US to want to do something about this threat. They are also not going to give anyone in the US a veto over their actions.

I have my own misgivings over an Israeli attack. They do not have the capacity for the kind of sustained attack needed to wipe out the threat as well as the inevitable Iranian reaction. That reaction is very likely to lead to Iranian attacks on US forces.

I don't think the Obama administration is prepared to put the US assets in the area needed to respond to the Iranian reaction to an Israeli attack. We would need more carriers in the area as well as air superiority planes like the F-22. It would also require the firing of Tomahawk cruise missiles for ships and subs.

US ships would need to also deal with swarm attacks from small Iranian boats. A coordinated attack could be used to wipe out most of these Iranian assets before they could strike, but it is highly unlikely that Israel would notify us of its attack for enough in advance to deal with this threat.

The best that we can hope for out of the September talks is the the Europeans will finally get serious about sanctions and stop their trade with Iran. The Russians and the Chinese will not go along with UN sanctions, but with our European partners we could impose limits on Iran's ability to use the international banking system that might cause the regime some financial pain. That is unlikely to change their objectives, but it could make it harder for Iran to achieve them.