Deter Iran? HAH!

Iran ran away with the bomb
By Arnold Beichman
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20041018-093515-7883r.htm

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U.S. in talks with Europeans on a nuclear deal with Iran
-- New York Times, Oct. 12.
G-8 nations to meet on Iran
-- The Washington Post, Oct. 15.

Well, the talks and meetings will go on and on to the next Ramadan and the
Ramadan after that and Iran will go on working on its nuclear arms program
until it has the Bomb. There will be no deal with Iran no matter how costly
nuclear bomb manufacture might be. With oil prices going through the roof,
money is not a problem now nor in the foreseeable future.

The Washington Post report said the Group of Eight countries -- the United
States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia and Canada -- would
threaten punitive measures if Iran refused to abandon its nuclear arms program.
The New York Times reported the U.S. was talking with its European allies on "a
possible package of economic incentives for Iran" if only Iran would suspend
its uranium enrichment activities.

Incentives? Hah. Iran is the second-largest producer in the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and holds 10 percent of the world's proven
oil reserves and the second-largest (after Russia) natural gas reserves.

Incentives? Hah. Iran earns an estimated $900 million for every $1 per
barrel increase in the price of its oil. And with oil up in the $50+ per barrel
range, Iran is awash in cash and can do what it wants as bomb maker and bomb
supplier.

Incentives? The only incentives that might matter would be the threat of
sanctions. Who has the will to push for sanctions? France, Germany? Hah. Who
has the power, let alone the will, to enforce sanctions if they ever came to a
Security Council vote?

There will be no deal with Iran no matter how much they talk the talk and
promise the promise. Iran is awash in money that Western Europe, particularly
France, covets.

As far as I can see, it's all going Iran's way. Iran is stronger today than
a decade ago. Iran emerged bloody and very unbowed in 1988 from its eight-year
war with Iraq, a war that cost 1 million lives. Henry Kissinger supposedly said
during that war "too bad they can't both lose." It didn't work out that way.
Iraq lost and Iran won right up to this very minute.

Iran is today the dominant land power in the Middle East militarily and
economically. As leader of Shi'ite Islam, Iran must be delighted at the war in
Iraq, which is killing off the rival Sunnis. With its new missiles, Iran has
shown it could project its power far from home, and not only by financing the
Hezbollah terror squads. The Iranian people may be unhappy with the clerical
dictatorship but there is little they can now do about it.

Far more serious, Iran undertook its nuclear program in September 2002
under a decree of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and is on its way to being a nuclear
power if not one already. And as far as I can see, nobody can stop Iran despite
a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted last
September which called upon Iran "immediately [to] suspend all
enrichment-related activities."

According to an Iranian exile resistance group, Iran has secret sites all
over the country engaged in nuclear activity. One secret site at Arak, about
154 miles southwest of Tehran, produces heavy water and plutonium. A
sufficiently powerful heavy water reactor can be used to turn uranium into
bomb-usable plutonium without requiring enrichment facilities. In Isfahan,
there is the Center of Nuclear Research. There are other sites about which
little is known. These plants are capable of producing three nuclear weapons a
year.

Iran seems unstoppable. It has lots of scientific talent at home and abroad
for hire, lots of theological-imperial ambitions, lots of money, lots of eager
sellers and money lenders in the European Union and in Russia.

And that's how wars begin.


Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for
The Washington Times.