ISRAEL IN THE CROSSHAIRS…THE TIME FOR DITHERING IS OVER
Iran Positions Israel In Its Cross Hairs
Posted 11/06/2009 07:27 PM ET
Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It’s five minutes to midnight.
Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America.
Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop, a commercial ship with an Antiguan flag and sailing near Cyprus, presumably on course for Syria or Lebanon.
Israeli defense officials said the arms were destined for Hezbollah — the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group founded, financed and controlled by Tehran — and that documents found onboard showed that they originated in Iran. The officials said the arms cache would have given Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war against the Jewish state in 2006, enough firepower to sustain a full month of fighting on the scale of that conflict.
Iran is supposed to be forbidden from exporting arms, and two U.N. resolutions call for disbanding and disarming Hezbollah, a group that has effectively neutered the Lebanese democracy in which it now participates with veto power over any action by Beirut.
In Lebanon, these U.N. resolutions also forbid arms depots south of the Litani River as part of the deal that halted the 2006 war. In July a massive explosion in the area revealed the existence of a huge Hezbollah weapons cache in the border area north of Israel. U.N. Res 1701 says the area must be “free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons.”
Clearly Hezbollah and Iran have not obeyed a single U.N. resolution or diplomatic pledge for a single day. In any conflict with Israel, southern Lebanon would be Iran’s second front with the Jewish state. Syria, which was both a supplier of and transit point for arming Hezbollah in 2006, is also busy again.
Arab media in the Persian Gulf have been reporting that Syria, apparently at the request of Iran, has turned over about 300 long-range ballistic missiles to Hezbollah control on Syrian territory. Hezbollah personnel are being trained to operate the Scuds.
Israel launched Operation Orchard in September 2007 to destroy a North Korean built, Iranian-financed nuclear plant at Damascus’ al-Kibar complex in eastern Syria. The Washington Post noted that the timing of the raid was related to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying North Korean materials labeled as cement but suspected of concealing nuclear equipment.
After all this comes previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog that does not bark. As the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper reports, the Iranians have tested a sophisticated nuclear warhead design that lets them pack a nuclear warhead into a smaller package able to fit nicely on the Shahab-3 and other Iranian missiles.
The sophisticated technology, once perfected, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile designed to fulfill Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s pledge to wipe Israel off the map and usher in the age of the 12th Imam.
The very existence of this technology is supposed to be an official secret in the U.S. and Britain.
Known as a two-point implosion device, it’s being developed and tested by the Iranians and is being described by nuclear experts as “breathtaking.” It means, as we have discovered repeatedly, that our estimates of Iranian capabilities and intentions are dead wrong again.
There may soon be no choice but for Israeli pilots to light the fires and kick the tires.
The time for dithering on Iran is over.
Comments are closed.
