“We will extend a hand if you are unwilling to unclench your fist” President Obama proclaimed in his inaugural address in January 2009. Iran heeded these words and now that President Obama had run the entire gamete and though he won the White House twice, he managed to lose the Congress entirely and the Republicans now hold both houses. That probably is the least of the tactical problems facing President Obama in completing his desired handshake with Iran forging a relationship he sees as lasting into eternity as the two powers divide the world between them. The problem is that Iran never has unclenched their fist. But even this is of no concern as Iran has done the next best thing. Iran has used that clenched fist and pummeled President Obama so severely that he now sees that clenched fist as a hand extended for a warm, friendly handshake as the two nations appear to have reached a surrender scheduled for announcement on or before March 24. This agreement will probably allow Iran to retain at least twelve-thousand operative centrifuges and retain the remaining seven-thousand as spares to replace any that fail. Further, Iran will be permitted to replace these centrifuges in use for newer and faster centrifuges as they develop them. All inspections will be placed in the hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who will set an inspection schedule in cooperation with Iran. That should work out really well.
The big question for President Obama is will he be able to salvage even the slightest victory from this deal. The potential would be better if he had any cards to play and even knew how to play them. Still, he still had hope as the Iranians may very well see allowing the United States to return and reopen their embassy in Tehran to be to their advantage. Such a move would allow President Obama to at last claim his big legacy building event with his signing an agreement for the return of the United States embassy and opening relations with Iran and declaring the possibilities for how together the United States and Iran could work and stabilize the Middle East. Such an alliance would turn the entire current Middle East structure on its head. Such a move would place the United States in Iran’s corner against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such an alliance would probably include Turkey as Erdogan will bend in whichever direction best serves him while still working behind everyone’s back to serve his own purposes, just as he has aided the American efforts against ISIS allowing their use of the airfield in Turkey while also allowing ISIS to run recruitment efforts and resupply efforts crossing into Syria from within Turkey. The real question is whether the rest of the Middle East and potentially beyond can stomach such a deal as President Obama is obviously ready and willing to grant the Iranians pertaining to their nuclear program. Facing what can only be described as President Obama rolling over for Iran, it is no wonder that Israeli Prime Minister has been willing to face the blitz of forces turning against him in blatant support of President Obama.
The real problem and the possible fate that all efforts are already too little, too late is what is facing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as he will be speaking to the combined houses of the United States Congress sometime early in March presenting any information which Israeli intelligence is willing to share and probably even more intelligence later in private meetings before committees and probably some individual meetings which might be requested. The strife and scorn being unloaded on the Prime Minister with the fraudulent claim that he blindsided the President by accepting the invitation by Speaker of the House Boehner before the White House had been notified must be unbearable and only made worse as the New York Times noted that both the Speaker of the House and Prime Minister Netanyahu had spoken with the White House before the invitation was offered and before the Prime Minister agreed to speak. President Obama has spared nothing to try and discredit everybody and anybody in an effort to make the speech of secondary importance to the insult thus voiding anything presented. That leaves the question of what can anybody do to blunt the overt display attempting to make the entire affair, the speech included, disregarded and relegated to the trash bin of irrelevancy, making it all about insulting the President and otherwise meaningless. Meanwhile in Israel, the leftist media and the ill named pairing of Hatnua with Labor as the ‘Zionist Camp,’ two far leftist, post-Zionist, post-modernist, anti-capitalist, redistributionist parties are only exceeded in their leaning by the communists and in a close tie to the far leftist Meretz.
I have rolled ideas around in my head and nothing, absolutely nothing came to mind, until I got a flash which has to be one of the most ridiculous lines the Prime Minister might use at the start of his speech and then hope he gets either a fair amount of laughter or at least some meager appreciation from what will potentially be a rough house; he might try saying, “I have not come here to bury President Obama but to praise him.” After that, should he not get a response, then the only thing left is the old Henny Youngman line which was later used to great fanfare by Rodney Dangerfield, “I don’t get no respect, I tell ya.” After that the Prime Minister will need to rely on the facts and a somber telling of the potentially dire results if Iran is permitted to reach breakout level as before they could be prevented from going fully nuclear they could easily make their breakout by building ten, twelve or even more devices, all of which would be deliverable on their ballistic missiles including their newest ICBM capable of striking anywhere on the globe. The numbers of weapons they might originally make is dependent only on the amount of LEU (lowly enriched uranium) at about 3% they had accumulated which they would be permitted to enrich under current agreements and would very likely continue with only the amount under debate, providing the monitoring could actually track the amount and none was stashed beyond inspection sites. It is believed that the latest centrifuges Iran is currently putting into service they can reach HEU (highly enriched uranium) of above 90%, which is easily made into weapons without further enrichment, in one cascade easily within their current capabilities. What the United States also needs to consider is that the Iranians have also launched suborbital devices which traversed an orbital vector from Iran which would place their satellite if placed on a more powerful launch system, such as the one recently pictured by Israeli surveillance satellites, would approach the United States mainland from the south and taking it on the perfect trajectory to avoid the United States antimissile systems and at a height perfect to deploy a nuclear EMP device, one similar to the device tested by the North Koreans and suspected of being a test carried out on an Iranian device to test its yield and potential as an EMP device. The device in question was detected and assessed to have reached a yield of approximately 16 kilotons, a higher range EMP capable measurement. This piece of information need not be interjected by the Prime Minister as these facts have been readily available and suspected though unprovable for quite some time.
The presentation and reception for Prime Minister Netanyahu will define the options and possibly the necessities of Israeli actions in the near future and beyond. It is probably already too late to prevent Iran from having the wherewithal and the technology mastered to produce nuclear weapons, the only debate left is how to minimize their abilities to actually produce such weapons. Everything being debated and covered is performed assuming that Iran did not manage to produce and stash any nuclear devices already and are also being pursued without any knowledge of how far and how deep the cooperation and collaboration between North Korea and Iran has developed not to mention potential assistance from China or Russia, all of which would not be beyond question. Perhaps the only thing that is in question is not whether or not Iran will break into the nuclear armed nations club uninvited or invited, depending on your assessment of President Obama and the P5+1 negotiations actual aim, but how soon and how they will be received. Much of that will depend on the Iranians themselves. If they continue their rhetoric calling for the annihilation of Israel and of every Jew on the planet and holding annual conventions titled, “A World Without Zionism and America” and continue to be the largest terror facilitating nation on Earth, then there will be great trepidation and uncertainty. Many nations will be looking for somebody else to take whatever intervention which will end the Iranian threat before Iran decides the time is right to force their hand and hegemony over the Middle East.
The question everybody will be asking themselves and discussing in hushed tones in back rooms and with quick furtive glances and knowing winks and nods, nervously pondering when will the first shoe drop knowing that after that the second shoe will fall right behind. The debates will be where the first Iranian move will be, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United States? Who will they empower to possibly utilize nuclear terrorism and where would such terror strike? Will it be Hezballah, the Houthis tribal fighters, or providing some assignment in the Americas deployed out of the Tristate Area in South America where a terror city sits adjoining the borders of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina and none of the three security forces dare intervene? It was from here that the attacks in Buenos Aries in 1992 where the Israeli Embassy was struck by a pickup truck driven by a suicide bomber and loaded with explosives destroyed the Israeli Embassy, a Catholic church, and a nearby school building killing four Israelis and twenty-five Argentinian civilians making it the worst terror attack in Argentinian history until when a second terrorist attack was launched on the AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) which murdered eighty-five people making it the worst terror attack in Argentina and over which the prosecutor Alberto Nisman was recently murdered (More can be read about his murder in the articles, The Death of Alberto Nisman, Prosecutor’s Fate Mirrors Western Culture and Hezballah Cross Border Attack Threatens to Elevate Conflict). There have been intelligence reports which claim that Hezballah from the Tristate Area have made agreements arranging for gaining access into the United States with the aid of the drug cartels. These reports also claim that this agreement has allowed terror cells to have already been implanted within the United States who would be ready to assist in any plans communicated to them and would even be capable of assisting any new force and weapons provided such as explosives or worse. Whatever the choice a nuclear armed Iran chooses, even should they decide to use conventional weapons likely in a terror bombing attack relying on their nuclear threat to prevent any retaliation against their terror interests such as Hezballah or other forces even including the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps), in what they decide to do once they have attained nuclear weapons capability and production they will have an entire new set of avenues, as other nations, if not nuclear armed, will have little recourse against Iranian hegemony.
This will very likely press the rest of the Middle East and other Muslim nations to research and produce their own nuclear weapons armaments in order to even the military leverage thus removing the Iranian advantage as soon as possible. Once the Iranians gain nuclear weapons production, the amount of time that Iran will be capable of forcing their will due to their nuclear threat will be short as Saudi Arabian wealth and agreement with Pakistan would result in their attaining nuclear capability within weeks, not years. Egypt and Turkey would also not take an extended amount of time to reach nuclear weapons capability and Jordan might do the unthinkable, reach an agreement with Israel in the form of a mutual defense pact, and if Israel was not willing, then Jordan would definitely seek admission to the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) seeking the protection of Saudi Arabia. A fully nuclear armed Middle East and North Africa would present a certainty of an eventual nuclear exchange, the sole question being between which two nations initiate the conflagration and what the further conflicts and spread of nuclear fallout would be spawned by such aggressions. Whatever the future holds, a nuclear armed extended Middle East would be the most dangerous situation ever seen in Earth’s history, a very dangerous situation which would be playing the most dangerous standoff of nuclear armed nations who have little knowledge or history of the destructive and horrifying nature of nuclear warfare and its aftermath. Some of the leaders of these newly nuclear capable nations have no concern of consequences and only their victory by any means necessary, the most dangerous kind of nation to have nuclear capability. The world will be looking at an unknown but dangerous future which all but guarantees a holocaust of unpredictable numbers and incalculable ramifications should oil fields be made unusable, maritime channels made unpassable or simply carnage and ramifications unthinkable and unknown in all of history until that fateful date. Perhaps the question which needs to be asked of us for consideration is what happens in the immediate aftermath and on into the future, if there is a future?
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 