Well, it's been a while since I last reported on the impending Persio-American War. There have been several new developments to show that this war, while considerably postponed, is not going away. Remember, the rumblings of World War Two began at least two years before the commencement of actual hostilities. Once Mussolini got away with invading Ethiopia, and Tojo with invading Manchuria, and Hitler with militarising the Rhine, a global war was inevitable--it just wasn't yet immanent.Will Iran get away with developing a nuclear weapon? It might yet, but at this point it still doesn't look like it. Consider:
1. The Stuxnet Virus was a qualified success, causing Iran to replace an entire 6-cascade network of 984 Siemens-controlled uranium centrifuges at Natanz. More evidence has come out, first of all implicating Israel in the testing of the virus, and secondly indicating that the project is still ongoing. Both American and Israeli officials have all but admitted to involvement in hatching the virus; apparently one designed the delivery package, and another the payload. Stuxnet itself has pretty much played out as a threat to Iran's nuclear program, but even this was anticipated: the virus has encoded within itself instructions to self-destruct on June 24, 2012. That sunset provision alone is almost certain evidence of an American hand behind the design of the virus.
2. Duqu is the name of a new virus, evidently designed by the same team that brought us Stuxnet. The scary thing about Duqu is that is capabilities have not yet been identified, but its very existence shows that the Cyber Warfare Command is still seeking to engage targets.
3. The International Atomic Energy Agency disclosed on Tuesday, Nov. 1, that a spinning factory built in the northeastern Syrian town of Hasaka in 2003 was in fact an enriched uranium site. DEBKAfile's intelligence sources report that Syria procured the enriched uranium and equipment for the plant in early March 2003 from Iraq when its ruler Saddam Hussein decided to dispose of the bulk of his nuclear plant and weapons of mass destruction by spiriting them out to Syria, then his closest ally.
4. The International Atomic Agency in Vienna is due to publish next Tuesday, November 8, a more revealing report than ever before on the advances the Islamic Republic has made toward producing a nuclear weapon.
5. On Wednesday, November 2, Israel carried out a successful test launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, Jericho 3, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead 7,000 kilometers; the IDF released photographs of Israeli Air Force squadron leaders on Italian air base runways reporting to the media on joint exercises in long-range maneuvers carried out with the Italian air force "and other NATO nations" to familiarize the IAF with NATO military tactics.
Putting all this together, it seems that the US, along with select NATO nations, are on board with Israel to keep Iran from going nuclear. At this point is appears to be all bark and no bite, in hopes that Iran will get the hint and back down. Alas, the Islamic Republic will do no such thing, and it looks like we are headed for an inevitable confrontation that will entail "suicide by cop" of the Persian throne.
One thing is for certain, we can count on the arabs never being reasonable, and man's desire to control others.
ReplyDeleteCome on, Gorges, you don't think I'd let a racist comment like that slide by, do you?
ReplyDeleteIf certain arabs can be counted on to be unreasonable, at least go ahead and name them. But we aren't even talking about arabs here, but Twelver persians.