John Bolton, in “Israel, Iran and the Bomb,” on what is likely to occur in the U.S. over the next year with respect to Iran’s increasingly public pursuit of nuclear weapons:
. . . the Bush administration’s last six months pursuing its limp diplomatic efforts, plus six months of a new president getting his national security team and policies together. In other words, one more year for Tehran to proceed unhindered to “the point of no return.”
We have almost certainly lost the race between giving “strong incentives” for Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and its scientific and technological efforts to do just that. . . . More sanctions today (even assuming, heroically, support from Russia and China) will simply be too little, too late. . . .
That is why Israel is now at an urgent decision point: whether to use targeted military force to break Iran’s indigenous control over the nuclear fuel cycle at one or more critical points. . . .
Israel sees clearly what the next 12 months will bring, which is why ongoing U.S.-Israeli consultations could be dispositive. Israel told the Bush administration it would destroy North Korea’s reactor in Syria in spring, 2007, and said it would not wait past summer’s end to take action. And take action it did, seeing a Syrian nuclear capability, for all practical purposes Iran’s agent on its northern border, as an existential threat.
When the real source of the threat, not just a surrogate, nears the capacity for nuclear Holocaust, can anyone seriously doubt Israel’s propensities, whatever the impact on gasoline prices?
Thus, instead of debating how much longer to continue five years of failed diplomacy, we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran. We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible.
Ironically, if John Bolton were still in government, and if a credible threat of U.S. force were communicated to Iran, there might be a chance that diplomacy could successfully avert a military confrontation that no one wants. But he’s not; it hasn’t been; and as a result, the chances of Iran responding to “diplomacy” are virtually nil.
Indeed the current calls for more of the same may at this point be counterproductive. See Caroline Glick, “When Talking Can Kill” and Matthew Continetti, “Let’s Not Be Provocative! Obama’s Iran Nonsense” and consider also the discussion of Dan Alexander’s points in the comment thread to “U.S. Policy in Iran.”