Iranian Cleric: Put A Bullet In Livni's Head (Plus: Smug Liberal Sophistication Unperturbed By Spectacularly Wrong Iran Predictions, Failed Anti-Iran Efforts)
The Iranians regularly get away with calling for genocide against all Israelis...
Iran's president says the fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Israel has shown that it is "not feasible" for what he calls Israel's "Zionist regime" to continue to live in the region. During a press conference Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the fighting in Gaza has been "a great lesson for all," and that it shows "the absolute defeat and desperation of this (Israeli) regime." He added that "even for the supporters of the occupying regime and its leaders, it has become clear that the continuation of the Zionist regime's life in the region is not feasible."
... so what's the big deal about specifying just the Foreign Minister?
A high-level Iranian cleric has called for the shooting of the Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in a speech before worshippers, it was reported Saturday. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said during Friday prayers that he wanted someone to shoot Livni. "Every time the picture of this woman is shown, I really wish that somebody would expend a bullet on her," he said according to a recording of the sermon obtained by the Associated Press.
That WSJ story from a few days ago outlined in excruciating detail how Iran has set up front companies to smuggle weapons material. It's not just through Dubai either: the sanctions regime is so hollow that Iran has been using US companies to move billions of dollars and to acquire lethal technology.
Proliferation experts are using lines like "there doesn't seem to be any real doubt or debate whether Iran is going for the bomb or whether Iran is using front companies to import things. Everyone agrees on that." Which is almost exactly true except it leaves out the politicized State Department washouts who hijacking the 2007 NIE and the CIA analysts who are still unsure whether Iran will build a bomb.
At the time the NIE was so clearly an anti-Bush powergrab that most of our allies said so out loud. But it was perfect for the "just say stuff" brand of liberal faux sophistication: gather enough ethos to make a politically expedient pronouncement, run out the clock while establishing irreversible facts on the ground, then when you're proven wrong just move on. For years Iran foreign policy experts promised that Iranian moderation was just around the corner. Not so much. Then sanctions were supposed to box in the regime. That obviously wasn't happening. So the NIE was a particularly convenient answer to conservatives who were concerned about Iranian nuclearization. It also happened to be wildly, spectacularly wrong. Not a problem:
The "key judgments" of the [NIE]... emphasized the suspension of the weapons work. The public version made only glancing reference to evidence described at great length in the 140-page classified version of the assessment: the suspicion that Iran had 10 or 15 other nuclear-related facilities, never opened to international inspectors, where enrichment activity, weapons work or the manufacturing of centrifuges might be taking place. The Israelis responded angrily and rebutted the American report... Secretary Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the report had presented the evidence poorly, underemphasizing the importance of Iran's enrichment activity and overemphasizing the suspension of a weapons-design effort that could easily be turned back on. In an interview, Mr. Gates said that in his whole career he had never seen "an N.I.E. that had such an impact on U.S. diplomacy," because "people figured, well, the military option is now off the table."
Even so, Bush refused to green-light an Israeli attack on Iran. Instead he opted for covert actions that - unfortunately - won't work:
The covert American program, started in early 2008, includes renewed American efforts to penetrate Iran's nuclear supply chain abroad, along with new efforts, some of them experimental, to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies. It is aimed at delaying the day that Iran can producethe weapons-grade fuel and designs it needs to produce a workable nuclear weapon... inside the Bush administration some officials are skeptical about its chances of success, arguing that past efforts to undermine Iran's nuclear program have been detected by the Iranians and have only delayed, not derailed, their drive to unlock the secrets of uranium enrichment... one American official dismissed the latest covert operations against Iran as "science experiments." One senior intelligence official argued that as Mr. Bush prepared to leave office, the Iranians were already so close to achieving a weapons capacity that they were unlikely to be stopped. Others disagreed.
No worries though. Obama's tough diplomacy - to be launched on Day 1 and to include Iranian involvement in Israeli-Arab negotiations - will fix this. In addition to "real carrots" he's going to make clear that there are "real sticks." Like more sanctions. Because the Iranian regime - there's nothing they're more afraid of than sanctions.
Not more than a few months left to go.
References:
* Iran: It is not feasible for Israel to live [YNet]
* Iranian cleric calls for shooting Israeli FM [JPost]
* Fresh Clues of Iranian Nuclear Intrigue [WSJ]
* New Iranian Reactor Online Within Months (Plus: This Week's List Of Useless Sanctions And Talks) [MR]
* Iran Moved Billions via U.S. Banks [NYT]
* Iran Using Fronts to Get Bomb Parts From U.S. [WaPo]
* WaPo: NIE Conclusions Were Engineered By Easily Identifiable, Hysterically Anti-Bush State Department Washouts [MR]
* Hayden: Iran near nuke decision [YNet]
* British intel source on new NIE: You got suckered, Yanks; Update: NIE was a "quasi-putsch," says Bolton [Hot Air]
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions [MR]
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran [MR]
* U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site [NYT]
* Obama: I'll move quickly on Iran, Palestinians [Rosen]
* IAEA: Iran Could Have A Nuclear Bomb--In Months [Daled Amos]
Previously:
* Bad News: 70,000 Iranian Suicide Bombers Ready To Blow Themselves Up In Israel
* Iranian Mullahs Wringing Their Hands As IDF Dismantles Hamas's Army (Plus: NPR Wonders About "Real Connection" Between Iran And Hamas)
* Obama: Yup, I'm Going To Immediately Reach Out To Iran And Syria
