Wednesday, May 03, 2006
1914
Operation Iranian Freedom coming soon?
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America and the Europeans have co-drafted a UN Security Council Resolution with some teeth and have written into the resolution the trigger for economic sanctions against Iran if it fails to cease its nuclear program.
This is serious.
Previously, all John Bolton and Nick Burns had been able to push out of the Security Council was a declaration, which was not binding.
On the military front, Sy Hersh's sources tell him that we are planning for an invasive hot strike against Iran. My sources do not confirm the Hersh assertion that a strike against Iran will occur this summer but do suggest that there is a great deal of operations/logistics planning underway. My sources also say that if a large scale operation against Iran looked likely, we would see scores of generals in the military elect to resign rather than participate.
....
On the diplomatic front, Burns and Bolton are pushing for the imposition of sanctions against Iran -- as a way to further isolate Iran in the hope that some players in the Iranian political scene will see that they might tie an end to sanctions as well as potentially normalized relations with and security guarantee from the U.S. to standing down on Iran's nuclear program.
The problem with the sanctions track is that China and Russia are opposing, and though Europe has drafted the resolution with the U.S., many believe that Japan and Europe will be highly porous in economic flows to Iran. Thus, any sanctions regime has serious implementation flaws, and America may once again find itself (with or without Europe) mostly isolated in an effort to impose unilateral sanctions.
The toxic mix is that Iran believes that America is weak right now and will wilt when oil prices shoot higher, while on the other hand, George Bush intends to make sure that Iran and other nations don't underestimate American strength and resolve, tilting towards force when he can afford it to demonstrate power.
This mess is looking increasingly like 1914 -- when nations fell into war because of ego, attitude, poorly thought strategies regarding basic strategic interests, and miscalculation
