Iran Benefits from Obama's Timidity and Indifference

The International Atomic energy Agency IAEI) has published its quarterly report, with the conclusion that Iran has doubled its production capacity at the Fordo nuclear site buried deep in a mountain near the holy city of Qu’um. The number of enrichment centrifuges at Fordo has gone from 1,064 in May 2012 to 2,140 today, although the IAEA says these new centrifuges are not yet in operation.
Iran says that it is producing uranium enriched to 20%, while the IAEA says it has found traces of uranium enriched to 27% at Fordo in May.
The IAEA also reported that the other Iranian enrichment site, Parchin, was “sanitized” so that an adequate inspection was not possible.
It is at the Parchin site that the IAEA and the international community suspect Iran of trying to produce nuclear weapons. The overall Parchin complex is one of Iran's leading munitions centers for the research, development and production of ammunition, rockets and high explosives.
Iran says its uranium enrichment program is aimed at producing nuclear materials for energy and medical needs. The international community has offered to supply to Iran all the enriched materials it would need for these purposes but Iran has refused.
Today on BBC International TV, two Iran experts, one a nuclear scientist and the other an expert on Iran, said that Iran is stonewalling the IAEA for two reasons.
First, Iran believes that Obama will win the US presidential election and that he will not go beyond sanctions, e.g., will not use military force to stop Iran’s program. So if Iran simply drags its feet until November, its nuclear program will then be able to go forward with relative ease.
Second, because the Iran nuclear sites are so far underground, and with Iran now preparing sites even deeper underground, it is unlikely that Israel alone could destroy the capability without American military aid. But, Iran believes that if Obama is re-elected, Israel-US relations will further deteriorate and this aid would not be offered.
The scientist added that if Iran is enriching uranium to 20% and slightly above, it will be able to reach the 90% enrichment level required for nuclear weapons in a matter of one year, perhaps 10 months. He said that at 20%, the climb to 90% is geometric.
Yesterday, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the guest for a half hour program on the Bloomberg Channel. She talked about Iran’s nuclear capability as part of her analysis of the state of America’s foreign policy and image.
Rice said that the US is not now part of the key group in the Middle East, and that the international conference of “so-called unaligned” nations in Teheran this week proves that. She was critical of the presence of UN Secretary General Ban-ki-Moon at the Iran-sponsored conference, calling it “too bad.” The implication was that America should have been able and willing to stop him.
But, Condoleezza Rice’s most critical comments were saved for the US-Israel relationship. She said that the relation is now broken and that as long as Obama is President it will remain broken. Her worry is that this will embolden Iran to continue its nuclear program unchecked.
Rice also believes that Iran will achieve its nuclear weapon status unless the US makes its presence felt in a much more forceful way than it is now doing.
For her, this means a bigger presence in the region, a much more active support for Israel, and a much more public leadership of the world’s effort to halt Iran’s nuclear activities.
She said that as Iranian nuclear facilities go deeper underground, the likelihood that Israel can act alone to destroy their capabilities lessens. And, for her, unless America makes its opposition absolutely clear to Iran, there will be no diplomatic resolution of the problem.
Rice, like the BBC experts, says that America is the key to stopping Iran. But, Condoleezza Rice goes farther, saying that, if all else fails in the appropriate timeframe, America must be prepared to use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before they can produce weapons-grade materials.
Appropriate timeframe? For Condoleezza Rice, it is a matter of perhaps a year or so, not much longer.
So, dear readers, what do we do?
Short of moving to America and voting for Mitt Romney, I really don’t have an answer.
But, one thing is clear. President Obama’s strategy of talking to the Iranians and then disappearing from a visible and muscular leadership position for long periods has not served either America or the world. Nuclear weapons in the hands of the leader of a hostile world group bent on destroying the West - Europe and America and its allies - is not a matter for Political Science 101. It is a matter for experts and seasoned diplomats.
Right now in America, we have neither experts nor experienced senior diplomats working on the critical Iranian problem and Iran is using President Obama’s timidity and seeming indifference to advance its own anti-West agenda.