Much has been made of the report that Obama has offered to give Israel a ‘nuclear shield’ as a defence against likely Iranian nuclear attacks. I was asked to give my opinion in email to this issue and thought I would post the report and my answer here. I would very much welcome in comments any of your thoughts to this issue. How you guys feel about Iran’s ambitions and what the best courses of action might be.

First the report and comments from the MSM then my response then hopefully some of yours…

U.S.-ISRAEL COLLISION
Published on TheHill.com on December 16, 2008

With the election of Barack Obama, the United States has moved dramatically to the left in its foreign policy at just the time that Israel, which seems likely to return Bibi Netanyahu to office in early February, is moving to the right. A collision is almost inevitable.

Caroline Glick, the highly astute conservative columnist for the Jerusalem Post, writes that the “international community” believes that Obama “will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a ‘peace process’ with the Palestinians and the Syrians.” She notes that “people who have been in close contact with Obama’s foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month’s U.S. elections, Obama’s people are ’scope-locked’ on Israel.”

Meanwhile, in Israel, there is a growing consensus, reflected in public opinion surveys, that trading land for peace is a chimera. Netanyahu points out that “we do not have a viable partner with whom to negotiate peace.” The Palestinian Authority does not speak for the people of either Gaza or the West Bank, and Hamas, which probably does (it won the election), does not want to be a party to any peace agreement. Recent experience suggests that Hamas will quickly install rocket launchers on any territory Israel concedes, using it not as a basis for peace, but as a platform from which to kill more Jews.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the candidates of the left, Labor’s Ehud Barak and Kadima’s Tzipi Livni, are deeply committed to land for peace. Their rejection by the Israeli electorate — the anticipated outcome of the Feb. 10 election — will signal a bold departure in the political consensus of the Jewish state, a consensus that flies directly in the face of Obama’s likely policy.

The difference between the U.S. and Israel also extends to the realm of how strongly they oppose Iranian development of nuclear weapons. While Iran moves closer and closer to a bomb that could and will be used against Israel, Obama speaks of extending the American “nuclear umbrella” to cover Israel.

Reading between the lines, this means that he doesn’t think he can stop Iranian nuclear ambitions and will retreat to a policy of deterrence, accepting a nuclear Iran in the bargain.

If Netanyahu wins the election, he will bring with him a determination to stop Iranian nuclear weapons, no matter what, and a refusal to concede more territory in the name of the peace process. But Obama’s foreign policy team will be focusing on pushing Israel in just the opposite direction.

The result is likely to be the most significant divergence between Israeli and American policies since 1956, when President Eisenhower sided with the Arabs to halt the British-French-Israeli invasion of Suez.

The United States has tremendous leverage over Israel — military, financial and political. And Obama’s ability to carry the Jewish vote by a wide margin despite his likely Middle East policy makes him largely immune to the kind of political pressure that has disciplined American presidents in the past and forced them to incline toward accommodating Israeli views on the Middle East.

But Israel probably has the military capacity to bomb Iran and to win the Middle East war against Syria, Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah that is likely to result. Unlike Olmert, Netanyahu will use ground troops right off the bat and will fight such a war to win and to win big. But they may have to do it without their strongest ally: the United States.

Although I didn’t deal with every aspect of this article, itself a kind of ‘chimera’ I did focus on the issue of Iran the US and Israel….

some of this is good but like most stuff I read on the matter it seems under informed.
I so far at least do not see Obama’s admin as fundamentally different than Bush’s.

There are strong rumors of Obama offering to set up a ‘nuclear umbrella’ for Israel but in fact there is already a US base operating an ABM site and has been for some time albeit a ’secret’ one so Obama’s offer is nothing at all new.

What’s worth looking at is the idea that the US strategy is one of defense of Israel to Iranian nuclear missiles as opposed to preventing Iran from developing these weapons. It would appear that Iran will develop the capability for a nuclear device if they have not already done so and may in the coming years be able to develop an actual deliverable weapon.

Let’s put ourselves in the position of Iran for a moment…

We have a massive economic crisis. For the first time we are issuing debt bonds, something we are normally opposed to as an instrument. We use Islam as the tie that binds for a large number of disparate groups within Iran. The negative focus is the USA and Israel to try and keep our people united despite massive poverty and growing oppression at home. Our budget is based on a minimum USD $60.00 per barrel oil price and Iran’s crappy oil cannot get over $30.00 $PB at the moment and probably less, so Iran is sliding into more and more debt.

should we decide to go ahead with expensive nuclear weapons programs the thing to do would be distract the world with new missile tests and purchases from Russia and then build a shitty primitive nuclear device aboard a large ship and detonate it off the coast of Israel while everyone is busy with super high tech missile defense systems.

this is what I would do if I was Iran.
I tend to agree that any attempt to eradicate Iran’s program is probably not practical. It would mean a rapid end to the Obama admin for one thing. He would have to use all his political capitol up as it would be a near impossible sell at home if indeed it was even possible logistically. There is no point in destroying the facilities. You have to kill the people with the know how. This means you would have to have a surprise attack in order to be effective as the equipment is cheap and easily replaced and wouldn’t set the program back much at all. Chances are they have a lot of U235 available and ready now. The scarce resource is the technicians who have the know how to actually do anything with it.

Iran has been somewhat masterful at deception and stalling. Its a safe bet most of what we know is a dodge. The chinese bomb design is likely not what they are making. a simple U235 bomb needing a minimal of know how is probably what they are going for and it would be easy to construct this aboard a ship. something the size of Hiroshima bomb, maybe 15 or 20 kilotons would do to destroy Tel Aviv or more likely if they could, launch it high enough to create an EMP which would effectively set Israel back to pre 1900s technology and make it easy pickings for ground forces.

In any of these cases I find the analysis I see of Obama’s offer of a Nuclear shield to be lacking in decent information. It isn’t new and it doesn’t tell us anything we need to know.

If there is an attack on Iran’s facilities planned, as I said it would have to be a surprise. So the more we hear about one the less likely it is to happen.

More meaningfully the bickering over ABM systems for central Europe are indicators that the US is planning to defend against Iranian missiles as opposed to ending Iran’s capability to acquire them.

This seems to me a more telling example of US policy. That they are ready to incur Russia’s wrath for a system most definitely intended to defend against Iranian threats to Europe.

What the hell took them so long to catch on? The mainstream media has always been anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and playing the woe-to-the-poor-uprooted-Palestinians violins all the damn time. But now that it looks like one of their own may never return from the clutches of evil in Gaza, the press may have finally cottoned on to the fact that Muslims can’t be trusted.

“Up until now there has always been the assumption that there will be protection from the Palestinian authority or from Arabic and Islamic customs on treating guests. Now that trust is gone.”

Isn’t there a fable that goes something like this?

His latter-day minions are pretty damn cowardly. Think about it. Osama is hiding in a cave on the Pak/Af’stan border. Moqtada al Sadr has been hiding since the surge was announced. Even the “secular” Saddam Hussein was found in a spiderhole, wretched and filthy, not having seen the sun in weeks. These are the people that are leading resistance? How could anyone be foolish enough to follow them and do their bidding?

The orders [to resist the surge] come from a diminished Sadr, who still has yet to poke his head above ground in Iraq since the beginning of the surge. At first, he fled to Iran supposedly to hold strategy meetings with senior Mahdi Army commanders and to consult with his Iranian allies, but most suspected he bugged out before the Americans could seize him and his most loyal followers.

Sad, sad, sad.

Linda has a roundup of girls named Rachel murdered by Palestinians in Israel. Why? Because the brainwashed are busy canonizing the idiot Rachel Corrie - AKA St. Pancake.

Who knows. Maybe someday I’ll be crossing the street in downtown Toronto, busy traffic, not looking both ways, and I’ll be hit by an Iranian cab driver. And maybe someone will decide to celebrate me for being an idiot, and punish all Iranian cab drivers around the world for the misfortune that befell me when I walked in front of a cab. Why not? If someone can walk in front of a steamroller and be celebrated as a hero, surely the same applies to anyone who does something stupid in a dangerous situation?

a clever Persian girl figures out how to beguile a blood-thirsty misogynist Persian mullah who likes to bed virgins and execute them

Kate’s running a contest. Go over and put yours in the comments.

I haven’t read LaShawn in a few weeks, so I missed this when she posted it last week. It is the story of Phyllis Chesler, a former professor of (what else?) Women’s Studies who married a Muslim and moved to Afghanistan. What she found there challenged her liberal thinking, to say the least.

Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes — and that such “colourful tribal customs” are absolutely, not relatively, evil.

Indeed.

Hell of an ultimatum! The Religion of Peace has set its collective 7th Century sights on a tiny ancient religious sect in Iraq, and is calling for them to either convert to Islam or die.

The Mandaeans are pacifists, followers of Adam, Noah and John the Baptist.

They have lived in what is now Iraq since before Islam and Christianity.

More than 80% have been forced to flee the country and now live as refugees in Syria and Jordan.

We’re busy listening to Al Gore weep hot toxic tears for the polar bear - of which we have plenty, and besides, the meat is terribly stringy - but there are less than seventy thousand of these Mandaeans left in the world. Fair enough, cultures die out. Dying is a part of living. But murder is just plain wrong.

Nine-year-old Selwan likes watching cartoons and playing football.

But he is too scared to leave his flat. The other children tease him.

He has burns all down the side of his face and on 20% of his body.

He was kidnapped by Islamic militants who forced him to jump into a bonfire - because he is Mandaean.

I meet Luay. He is too scared to be identified and does not want to use his full name.

He was dragged off the street by armed men and forcibly circumcised - a practice not allowed in the Mandaean religion.

He is 19 and is now unlikely ever to find a bride from his own faith.

Worse, he was forcibly converted. That means in the eyes of those same extremists if he now declares himself Mandaean he is apostate.

That makes him a traitor to Islam, who may be murdered. He says he will not be safe in any Muslim country.

The Dean Esmay’s of the world can bury their heads in the sand for fear of offending their friends named Ali. But this truly is a clash of civilizations. The peaceful being forced at the point of a sword to join the violent - or die.

The bodies of 14 policemen were found Friday northeast of Baghdad after an al-Qaida-affilated Sunni group said it abducted members of a government security force in retaliation for the rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Shiite-dominated police.

How do we know the charge is bogus? Because if it were real, the woman would have been killed, not the Iraqi police.

Iran plans a female-only island to boost tourism in a northwest province, the Tehran-e Emrouz newspaper on Wednesday quoted a local official as saying.

It will be on the Urumiyeh lake in Western Azerbaijan province, a municipality official identified only as Aghai said.

Under Iran’s strict Islamic law, mixing with men in public is forbidden. Strict sex segregation actually protects women rather than restricting their rights, officials argue.

“There will be no men on the Arezou (Wish) island. Public transport, restaurants and other facilities will be staffed only by women,” Aghai said.

Why stop there? Put ‘em all on an infidel-free island, and leave ‘em there. Men, women, children, goat-mistresses… They can have a joyful little caliphate on their Allah Island - at least until their evil nature seeps out and they have to start killing again. But there will be no one to kill but other Muslims….

Ahhh, I see why they call it “Wish Island”… all it needs is a midget to greet the planes!

So I guess having Egypt assist with the ceasefire/peace talks is kinda out of the question…

“That cursed Israel is trying to destroy al-Aqsa mosque,” Mohammed el-Katatny of President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) told a heated parliament session held to discuss the Israeli digging.

Sounds just like our NDP here in Canada, but I digress….

“Nothing will work with Israel except for a nuclear bomb that wipes it out of existence,” he said.

Lovely folk. Religion of Peace, you know. Very peaceful. In 1400 years they’ve yet to peacefully coexist with any other culture, but it’s not their fault. It’s all those other pesky cultures, dontcha know. If we would just give up and give in, pay the jizya, we’d be fine! Really!

Hat tip to Jihad Watch.

This is an excellent web resource for choosing a provider to fuel your car. Unfortunately Canada has little to no Terror-Free Oil, but there are plenty of options in the United States.

As for us Canadians, we have to contact companies like Petro-Canada, Ultramar and Irving, and tell them that we do not approve of them purchasing their petrol products from terror states.

I won’t preach too much though. I live downtown and take the subway. I don’t even buy falafal anymore, for fear of having the proprietors send money back to the mothership. The pizza places I frequent are run by Greeks or Ukrainians. I do my best to keep money out of the hands of Muslims who may in turn use it against me (getting a taxi is nearly impossible!).

It’s just something for the rest of you to consider.