A Clear Red Line

"I believe that the truth must be said, the international community is not drawing a clear red line for Iran, and Iran does not see international determination to stop its nuclear program.

 "Until Iran sees this clear red line and this determination, it will not stop its advancement of the Iranian nuclear program.  Iran must not have a nuclear weapon." 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The international community, and specifically the United States, is satisfied to sit and to wait out the anticipated effects of the sanctions, economic and diplomatic, imposed upon the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Fears within the international community with respect to a nuclear-arms-owning Iran are real and with reason.  But despite their fears they are not in direct line of fire should Iran decide to prove just how powerfully determined it is to demonstrate its capability of delivering a nuclear-tipped rocket.

Israel's apprehensions are fully understandable.  All the more so with the report of the International Atomic Energy Agency with its conclusions regarding the nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow and the military explosive tests that are certain to have taken place at its secretive Parchin military installation near Tehran.  Which the regime has been assiduously cleaning up to ensure that there remain no fragments that would serve to confirm the IAEA's assessment of a steel container having been used for explosive research.

While Israel's Netanyahu agrees that restrictive measures have successfully caused harm to Iran's economy, they have obviously enough not halted the progress of the nuclear program.  "Neither sanctions nor diplomacy", he said, have had "any impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program."  And it is abundantly clear that he is correct in this assessment.  One that most in the international community agree with, simply because it is obvious.  Which did not impede Iran from claiming at the Non-Aligned Nations summit in Tehran that nuclear power is for everyone and nuclear weapons should be banned.

All but theirs, presumably. 


A panel of experts reported to the UN Security Council in June that sanctions were slowing down Iran's uranium enrichment and ballistic missile efforts.  In August Iran unveiled a new and improved ballistic missile.  In August too, the IAEA confirmed that Iran had added one thousand new centrifuges for a more concerted effort in uranium enrichment at Fordow.  Iran's acceleration of its nuclear program has been verified more than adequately, and its reintroduction to its program of its top nuclear scientist offers yet more proof.


No one, however, really wants to hear that Iran is approaching weapons capability.  Certainly not the Israelis who know that they are in the direct line of fire.  This is not worst-scenario guessing, it is the direct result of hearing  time and again from Iran's president and from its Supreme Leader, that their intention is to destroy Israel, the 'parasite' of the Middle East, the 'cancer' of the international community.


The issue of a 'clear red line' is not popular with the current American administration.  Nor, might it be acknowledged, would it be popular with a war-weary public, fed up with being embroiled in other Middle East and radical Muslim cesspools in Iraq and Afghanistan.  President Barack Obama, his assurances to Israel about having its 'back' aside, has no wish to become involved in yet another conflict, particularly one that the U.S. would initiate yet again by pre-emptively striking Iran's nuclear installations.


Call again, perhaps, after the November election, and let's hope in the meanwhile, that the nuclear proceedings in Iran do not forge ahead with the leaps and bounds they have until now achieved, despite all the 'informed' predictions to the contrary.