RUTHFULLY YOURS

LIGHTS OUT: PETER HUESSEY

Posted By Ruth King on November 26th, 2014

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/lights-out?f=must_reads

American policy toward Iran, with the failure of the just concluded talks on Tehran’s nuclear program,  now centers in large part on two issues. Without Iran coming clean about the dimensions of its nuclear program, we remain uncertain whether Tehran is seeking to develop an arsenal of nuclear weapons, similar, for example, to what North Korea has accomplished. But if we believe Iran is in fact pursuing a nuclear weapons program, we either (1) work with our allies to end such a program or (2) we decide we will eventually have to live with an Iranian nuclear weapons capability.

That in turn puts on the table a serious question: what is the deal that works to achieve our goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons program activity as well as precludes Iran from moving quickly in that direction should it decide to do so? If such a deal is possible, why have not the Iranians grasped it? Versions of it have been repeatedly laid on the table.

Prospects for a deal remain elusive, to say the least. The US has made most of the concessions in the talks with Iran including major ones during this last round of negotiations. What Iran has agreed to are steps that are largely reversible and have not in any significant manner rolled back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, according to top American experts who laid out the landscape in a JINSA Gemunder Center Iran Task Force conference call.

Given the grave implications of concluding Iran has no desire to negotiate a reasonable deal on its nuclear program, many will once again shy away from such obvious implications and again grab hold of  the lever of American diplomacy to convince Tehran not to go forward with and negotiate an end to whatever nuclear program they have.

Perhaps it might be useful to examine our own assumptions as to why might Iran be seeking nuclear weapons. Too often we concede that while Iran may indeed have or is pursuing nuclear weapons, they are doing so largely in reaction to a hostile US policy. Others supportive of continued diplomacy–ratcheted up of course as newly as “energetic” or “aggressive”– assert Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon–yet–but if we don’t pursue a diplomatic solution they surely will.

Then even others say Iran may be seeking a nuclear weapon, but are forced to do so for nothing more than “regime survival”. Or that America forced them down this path because we supported a coup in Iran in 1953. Or that Iran is surrounded by US and allied hostile forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they need nuclear bombs to defend themselves. Or its religious views compel it not to build such a weapon.

Further confusing American policy makers has been a parallel narrative where those warning of an Iranian nuclear weapon program are serially accused of either wanting to go to war with Iran, or seeking to justify spending more defense dollars, or being critical of the current administration only for political purposes or using the Iranian nuclear program as an excuse not to give the Palestinians a state. Or all of the above.

An additional parallel narrative also is prevalent. Critics say even should Tehran get a nuclear weapons capability, we have nothing to worry about because “it’s only for status”; or that the mullahs would not use the bomb because “that would be the end of the regime”; or if Iran gets the bomb, “Israel will take care of it”.  Or since the regime is “rational”, they will not use such a weapon but keep it “for leverage”.

Many observers thus support sanctions, assuming if we make life unpleasant enough for the mullahs they will strike a deal with us and subsequently with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)  as required by signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The assumption is the regime will “deal”.

But at some point, the voices of restraint such as former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, have to tell us how this is all meant to work. Brzezinski continues to support sanctions, (but not new ones),  but ironically has concluded they won’t work!. He explains any sanctions have to be agreed to by “the UN” to show support by the “international community”, so Iran will take them seriously!

However, the sanctions will not be too tough, Brzezinski says, because China and Russia have to be largely exempt, otherwise they will not support them in the UN Security Council. And if they do not vote “Yes”, no one can say there is international cooperation because there will not any agreement on sanctions!

What is missing from these myriad views?

Not one of them understands the nature of the Iranian regime.

A little background helps explain this.

Most Americans still believe “Al Qaeda” alone attacked us on September 11, 2001 and that this form of terrorism remains our most serious challenge.

Yes, the hijackers were trained and inspired while in Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

But they got assistance from Saudi Arabia say the two chairmen of the 9/11 Commission.

And a Federal District Court has ruled that there is overwhelming evidence of senior Iranian and Hezbollah cooperation with the hijackers as well.

So if “states” were behind terrorist attacks of 9/11, as they were most every other terrorist attack against the US since 1979, what would Iran, as such a state, do with an atomic bomb or a few such bombs? After all, the Soviets refined the use of terrorism as a state-sponsored weapon throughout the Cold War.

So the question should not be who is working for the terrorists but who are the terrorists working for?

And the answer predominantly for the past 30 years: “Iran”. And Libya, and Iraq, and Syria and North Korea.

So who are the mullahs? Is our security at risk should Tehran get a nuclear weapon?

A 2009 memo from the leaders of the Iranian Green movement concluded: “The regime is a brutal, apocalyptic theocratic dictatorship that tries to survive by means of suppression of its own people, military force, theft of national resources and economic stealth”.

The regime, says the memo, sees as its mission the destruction of both Israel and the United States, a mission sanctioned and required by Allah himself-it will not change and cannot be reformed.

A 2007 Claremont Institute report confirms in detail Iran’s proxy war against the US from the 1983 bombing of our embassy and barracks in Lebanon to the 1998 bombing of our embassies in Africa, to their training and financing of terrorism against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The regime sees nuclear weapons as a new terrorist tool.

We think of coalition warfare as nation states combining their capability in pursuit of conventional forces victory.

But let us look at such a coalition slightly differently.

Hans Ruhle, a former high ranking German defense official, wrote in Die Welt on March 12, 2012 that western intelligence sources believe North Korea exploded two nuclear bombs in 2010 for the benefit of Iran.

What would be the consequences of Iran getting the bomb and missile technology from their friends in Pyongyang and deliberately arming its terrorist surrogates with such a weapon?

Remember, Pyongyang just tested a technology that when fully developed would give them the capability to launch a missile from a submarine.

Remember Bruce Bechtol and Uzi Rubin have both detailed the extensive military technology cooperation between Tehran and Pyongyang especially in the area of ballistic missiles.

Reza Kahlili reports Iranian scientists have attended each North Korean nuclear weapons tests and that North Korea has assisted Iran with uranium enrichment.

Coincidence?

Remember also that North Korea’s 2010 bomb test indicated a Fusion capability with a low-yield technology suitable to an Super EMP attack.

What if that means launching a freighter or submarine borne rocket–surreptitiously– some 30 miles high over the eastern seaboard of the United States, and detonating a nuclear EMP weapon at that height, and creating a catastrophic electro-magnetic pulse, or EMP blast , what National Geographic called an “Electric Armageddon”?

That would render useless the electrical grid from Atlanta to Boston. As two Congressional Commissions on EMP concluded, millions of Americans would perish as water, sewerage, electricity, traffic controls, ATMs, supermarkets, malls, trains, planes, gas pumps, and computers, trade and commerce would grind to a halt.

Lights out.

That is what Iran would do with a nuclear bomb. Whether its own bomb or one purchased from North Korea.

So here is the question: is this a regime we would be comfortable “living with”?

Irrespective whether Iran is pursuing its own nuclear program or as in association with its partners in Pyongyang.

In short, the mullahs are serious about what they are pursuing.

As are its allies in Peking, Moscow and Pyongyang.

Are we?

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