Iran is going to get nuclear weapons.

This was assured because the European Union has now reached a tentative deal with the mullahs. In return for Iran’s promise not to enrich uranium, the Europeans will forget the last two years of blatant cheating by Iran and, in fact, reward their duplicity by granting them economic concessions and promise not to take the butchers before the Security Council where they would be liable for sanctions.

Not that any sanctions would be forthcoming. Frankly, I can’t understand what Iran would be so worried about. On the one hand, you have the Great Nuclear Enablers of France and Russia competing to see who can give the mullahs the most dual use equipment in the shortest possible time. On the other hand, you have their sponsors in the nuclear black market of Qadeer Khan, China, sitting inscrutably on the sidelines waiting to veto any sanctions regime the US would wish to impose.

“The Washington Post on Monday quoted unnamed American, European and Iranian officials as stating that the EU 3 (Britain, France and Germany), which have been trying for more than a year to persuade Iran to jettison its nuclear program, could produce an agreement within days. The deal would call for Iran to agree to a full suspension of its nuclear-related work. In exchange, the EU (in a move reminiscent of the Clinton administration’s failed 1994 nuclear accord with North Korea) has reportedly promised Tehran a package of economic and diplomatic incentives along with a guarantee that it will not be referred to the Security Council.” (WA Times 11/10)

That’s just peachy. No sooner was the ink dry on the Clinton nuke agreement with North Korea than Kim began to systematically violate the accord. One of the few moments of levity in the recent Presidential campaign was listening to John Kerry use the 1994 N. Korean agreement to pound George Bush on the issue of nuclear proliferation. Does any sane person believe that, when Kim announced in 2002 that he would no longer abide by the terms of that agreement that he was able to procure the 3-8 nuclear weapons he now has in the space of less than two years?

The fact is, North Korea systematically and routinely trashed that agreement. As a matter of policy, the US and the rest of the world turned their backs on the problem because the consequences of confrontation were to horrible to contemplate. (Although we now know that Clinton was ready to nuke the N. Koreans as late as 1998 if they invaded the South.)

So now we’re going to use the framework of an utterly failed agreement to keep the bloodthirsty mullahs at bay? I hope that the United States, who has remained on the sidelines for the most part in this process, allowing the EU Big Three to do the heavy lifting, has done so to maintain a certain freedom of action in case the mullahs try to pull a fast one. The agreement would allow the Europeans to once again wash their hands with regards to nuclear proliferation leaving the Americans to decide whether and when to protect their sorry behinds from the raving lunatics that are currently in control in Iran.

Raving lunatics? At the International Moral Court in Paris last September, we got a rare glimpse into just what kind of regime we’re dealing with in Iran.

“Following the administrative procedures a film was shown; smuggled out of Iran, it pictured scenes of despicable horror. We all watched the unwatchable: a man lay on a stretcher while another, bearded and looking like an official, read what seemed to be a court sentence. Then a man dressed in white comes in — presumably a physician — bends over the lying man and applies the sentence.

There is only one word to describe the horror of what I saw: horror. There is other no word for the act of tearing out a living man’s eyes; there is no adjective to describe it. The whole assembly was plunged into a macabre silence. In the next scene, another man, lying alive and awake on a stretcher, watched his physician-torturer cut his fingers with a hand-mower. Next, a third man, or woman — there is no way of distinguishing the gender of someone wrapped up like a mummy — is buried, alive and awake, up to his chest, before being stoned to death. It barely takes a minute or two before the chest and head of the living mummy start circling around in a dance of death. What magnifies to near-infinite the evil of these scenes of barbarity is the unbearable accompanying cry, “Allah Akbar!” — “God is Great!”

I’d like to hear the cultural relativists here excuse that kind of nauseating barbarism.

Israel has already indicated that they will not allow-cannot allow-Iran to achieve nuclear weapons. The theocracy already has missles that can reach Tel Aviv (the Shahab-3) and are working feverishly (with the help of China and North Korea) to develop the Shahab-4; a missle that could conceivably strike targets in Western Europe. Israel has proved its willingness in the past to protect itself from a hostile state obtaining nuclear weapons when they bombed the French built Osirak reactor in 1981 to prevent Baghdad from completing its quest to become a nuclear power.

Iran, however, will be a much tougher nut to crack. In the last two years, the mullahs have buried their most sensitive facilities and hardened the sites against commando raids. And despite Israel’s recent purchase of 500 bunker busting bombs, there’s no guarantee that Iran’s nuclear program can be stopped by dropping bombs of any size.

Bombs won’t do it. Commando raids won’t do it. Diplomacy is failing. Europe doesn’t have the stomach for a confrontation. This leaves the US and Israel with few options, none of them good ones.

Is war inevitable? Time is running out. Maybe that will focus the minds of our friends in Europe to the real problems in Iran and the enormous danger they face. If not, it may be a very long, very hot summer in 2005.

THE “FALLUJAH POCKET” CLOSING FAST

With lightning speed and devastating firepower, United States Marines are moving to bottle up the terrorists and foreign fighters in Fallujah, confining them to a narrow strip of land in the southern part of the city with their backs to the Euphrates River:

“Simply reading the map shows that the enemy is pinned in a strip north of the highway, which is now a barrier to further escape south. As Major Piccoli put it, the “enemy fighters were bottled up in a strip of the city flanking the major east-west highway that splits Fallujah”. Pressing them against the highway are four US battalions from the north and two from the east.” (HT: Belmont Club)

Casualties so far have been comparatively light. Apparently, we faked the thugs out during the initial phase of the attack:

“They’re probably thinking that we’ll come in from the east,” said Capt Natalie Friel, an intelligence officer with task force, before the battle. But the actual plan involves penetrating the city from the north and sweeping south. “I don’t think they know what’s coming. They have no idea of the magnitude,” she said. “But their defences are pretty circular. They’re prepared for any kind of direction. They’ve got strong points on all four corners of the city.” The aim was to push the insurgents south, killing as many as possible, before swinging west. They would then be driven into the Euphrates.”

As the “Fallujah Pocket” is squeezed, the terrorists will be forced into last stand defenses or surrender.

The stunning rapidity of the American advance along with the overwhelming firepower brought to bear on an urban area should give the bitter enders in Ramadi and elsewhere something to think about.


MARS ROVERS STILL GOING…AND GOING…AND…

More than 6 months after their scheduled operational demise, mars rovers “Spirit” and “Opportunity” continue to unlock some of the mysteries of the red planets’ surface.

The scientific instruments on Spirit are adding fresh evidence about the history of layered bedrock in a hill the rover is climbing.

“Our leading hypothesis is that these rocks originated as volcanic ash that fell from the air or moved in ground-hugging ash flows, and that minerals in them were altered by water,” said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the mission.”

While scientists are now sure that water once flowed on Mars, determining how much water and its effect on surface rocks is just now becoming clear.

“Other hypotheses for their origin focus on the role of transport and deposition by water. In fact, it may turn out that volcanism, water and wind have produced the rocks that Spirit is examining. We are just beginning to put together the big picture.”

Opportunity, meanwhile, examined a lumpy boulder called “Wopmay” inside “Endurance Crater.”

“Evidence from the spectrometers and microscopic imager is consistent with scientists’ earlier hypothesis that rocks near the bottom of the crater were affected by water both before and after the crater formed. The evidence is still not conclusive.”

If flowing water was this abundant on the surface for any length of time, it would seem probable that some kind of life was able to arise in Mars’ past. It took less than 500 million years for life to arise on earth. If what the rovers are telling us pans out, the certainty quotient for life arising on Mars will rise substantially.