JERROLD SOBEL: PLAYING ROPE A DOPE WITH NUCLEAR TALKS
For those of you old enough to remember, during their epic heavyweight battle in 1974 known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” Muhammad Ali made famous a defensive ploy known as the “Rope-a-Dope.” Flailing on the ropes, the former boxing great feigned being beaten by then World Heavy Weight Champion George Foreman.
Allowing Forman to throw punches until the champ’s energy was spent Ali then went on to defeat his much larger foe. Iran today is proving what works in boxing can also work in the international ring of world politics.
Following a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran’s nuclear program far exceeded civilian purposes, since July of 2006, no less than seven resolutions have been passed by the U.N. Security Council attempting unsuccessfully to reverse this policy.
Each Resolution passed demanded the Iranians suspend their uranium enrichment activities, and for whatever it’s worth, made it legally binding upon them to do so. Not shockingly, Teheran has refused and continuously scoffs at the pity pat sanctions imposed against her mainly at the behest of the Obama administration.
Hell bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and clearly unimpressed with the rhetoric and wrist slapping of the world body and the United States, the Ayatollahs and their mouth piece, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defiantly continue their development of enriched uranium and the hegemony a nuclear weapon would bring them.
The most ludicrous aspect of this sorted affair is the propensity of President Obama to double down on defunct policies. With the same conviction, Neville Chamberlain had at the Munich Conference in 1938, and Jimmy Carter had during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, Obama is either too timid or naive to recognize that tyrants dead set on mayhem do not respond to talks and hand slaps. Rather than drawing a definitive line in the sand and threatening military action by a certain date, the President is content to go along with the Iranian charade and playing the part of George Foreman in this international boxing match.
Obama: Possible Iran Talks Offer Opportunity
Does history have a way of repeating itself? Not exactly, but close enough. As it was tragically farcical to believe Hitler would be satiated with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia following the annexation of the Sudetenland, the same is true today holding talks with the rogue Iranian cabal headed by “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Sayyid Khamenei. Ardent supporters of terrorism throughout the world since the downfall and betrayal of the Shah by the Carter administration, Iran has been implicated in countless assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings throughout the world directly by its own operatives and indirectly by terrorist proxies set up by the regime. Amongst these, first and foremost is Hezbollah, financed, trained, and supplied by Teheran through the auspices of their closest friend and ally, the butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad.
These sweethearts along with splinter groups have proudly accepted responsibility for the:
- The 1982-1983 Tyre headquarter bombings.
- The bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killing 58 Americans.
- The 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks killing 241 Marines.
- The hijacking of TWA flight 847 holding 39 captive for weeks and the murder of 1 sailor in 1985.
- The bombing of the Israeli Embassy killing 29 in 1992.
- The bombing of the Jewish Community center in Argentina in 1994 resulting in 94 fatalities.
- In Saudi Arabia the attack on the Khobar Towers killing 19 servicemen in 1996.
- The firing of thousands of rockets into northern Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.
Iran and State Terrorism
It’s the ringmaster of these vipers that the group of 5+1, consisting of the permanent members of the Security Council: The United States; United Kingdom; France; Russia; China; plus Germany hope to dissuade from its present course of action. Not crazy enough? How about throwing in the fact that one of this so called group of five is none other than Iran’s good friend and trading partner Russia. The other being China, a nation so in bed with the regime that in 2009, Chinese President Hu Jintao unambiguously reaffirmed his commitment to Iran by stating,
“We are quite confident that friendly and profound economic relations between the two countries should continue forever.”
China-Iran Foreign Relations
Talk about wolves guarding the hen house.
On September 12, 2011 Iranian and Russian officials celebrated their joint project, the opening of Iran’s first nuclear reactor in the port city of Bushehr. U.S. officials candidly expressed fears that it might be a cover for a nuclear weapons program at other sites. Now there’s some astute thinking.
China in turn, driven by economic ties and sympathy with the Iranian position has steadfastly defied the most grievous sanctions against Iran and is still very active in the Iranian oil patch paying mainly lip service to a ban on energy investment in Iran.
Getting China to Sanction Iran
Can it get any more bizarre? Of the countries assigned the task of curtailing the Iranian nuclear program, 33% of them are allies and trading partners of this rogue state.
As the Iranians enrich greater quantities of weapon grade uranium and burying it deeper into mountains throughout their country, round and round we go in a perpetual game of Ring Around the Rosie. Sanctions, condemnations, talks and more talks.
In April, after first agreeing to talks in Turkey the Iranians adroitly bid for time by suggesting Iraq or China as the venue balking that Turkey, a NATO member is participating in the shield project designed to potentially thwart their missiles. What was accomplished? Iranian officials agreed not to let the negotiations reach a dead end. That’s it. With nothing tangible accomplished, NATO officials somehow came away optimistically seeing it as: “the beginning of a process of confidence-building between the two sides.” Onto to Baghdad they went for, you guessed it, more talks.
Iran Open to More Talks in May
http://www.euronews.com/2012/04/16/iran-open-to-more-51-talks-in-may
At the conclusion of this conference a spokesman for Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations had the following to say:
“Ban Ki-moon was satisfied with the good intention of the parties for the delivery of the negotiations to a conclusion and that he welcomed the continuation of these negotiations in the Russian capital Moscow on 18 June next,” stressing that “the moon supports always the continuation of negotiations to reach a solution comprehensive about Iran’s nuclear program.
Satisfaction of the Results of a UN Meeting in Baghdad, 5+1
You may notice, glaringly missing from this statement is anything about Iranian compliance with previous U.N. Resolutions or a willingness to cease and desist further uranium enrichment. Instead next stop Moscow for more of the same. Tick tock, tick tock. The days and weeks tick by and the Iranians move closer to perfecting a nuclear weapon, and the means of delivering it. What’s even more incongruous, as Czechoslovakia was not allowed to be party to its own dismemberment, Israel, most affected by these talks is not a party to them either.
Despite continuous threats of annihilation since the 1979 revolution by the Islamic Republic, Israel has been cajoled by successive administrations to withhold military action and to allow gradually ratcheted sanctions and talks to take hold. Unfortunately, while the group of 5+1, residing thousands of miles away have time to dither and incomprehensibly allow the Iranians to engage them in a game of rope-a-dope. Israel, 900 miles from Teheran the professed target of Iranian angst sits and waits American mandate on military action.
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