Iran, Syria and Obama

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gave his much awaited speech at the UN General Assembly on Thursday. It was widely anticipated because of growing world concern over the Iranian nuclear program focusing on uranium enrichment. The fear is that Iran is not pursuing uranium enrichment for medicine and energy generation but as a step-by-step enrichment up to the 90% level required for nuclear warheads and bombs. Iran is hampering the International Atomic Energy Agency oversight and inspection of its nuclear program but the IAEA has reported that it has found traces of uraniun enriched to 28%, while 20% is the maximum needed for peaceful uranium uses. Iran denies that it is enriching uranium for military uses but it has moved its enrichment labs deep underground so that normal attack bombs cannot reach them. Israel is profoundly concerned that Iran's developing nuclear bomb capacity, if unconstrained, will put Israel and its people at the mercy of a deeply hostile nuclear-armed Iran. The UN and world diplomats have used a series of sanctions to try to bring Iran to the table for serious negotiations to replace its enrichment program with internationally supplied peaceful-purpose enriched uranium. While Iran is feeling the pinch in terms of its sales of petroleum (down 50%) and much less access to its currency reserves in foreign banks, Israel and some nuclear experts are convinced that sanctions alone will never force Iran to abandon its enrichment program. The US has, in particular, insisted that sanctions should work and that there is still sufficient time to wait for them to bring results. Israel and nuclear experts, clearly on the front line of fire, believe there remains little more than six months before Iran will have nuclear warhead capability and sanctions will become irrelevant, with the result that Israel will become the target of Iran's fiercely anti-semitic oath to "erase Israel from the face of the earth." This has led to an estrangement in the relationship between Netanyhu, who demands a red line telling Iran what exactly will precipitate a US attack, and President Obama, who refuses to give such a red line, saying that America will do whatever is required to prevent Iran's becoming a nuclear power. Frankly, dear readers, the international diplomatic stalemate over Iran's nuclear program - an unchallenged fact - bears the same footprint as the diplomatic stalemate over the al-Assad regime's genocide against its own people in Syria - un unchallenged fact. At the heart of both problems is the refusal of President Obama to bring the gravitas of his office to bear on the side of reason. Obama clearly believes that talking and waiting will solve all problems. He is wrong - and his misunderstanding of the role of world leadership could cost Israel its existence and the Middle East its freedom. This may, finally, be the most urgent reason to vote for Mitt Romney - to deny Obama another four years of dithering with the future of the world.