It's not being highly publicized,but there were several significant developments in a regional summit of Iran, Turkey and Russia in Istanbul today when one reads between the lines.Especially as it was a high level summit, with Putin, Erdogan and Ahmadinejad in attendance, not foreign ministers.
It's also worth remembering, as I reported yesterday that Syria's Basher Assad was on hand as well, though not an official part of the summit.
With a UN meeting to discuss a resolution on sanctions just days away, the first order of business appears to have been to set up strategy to oppose any significant sanctions, and it appears that Ahmadinejad received Putin's assurance that Russia was on board from the remarks he and Putin made at a subsequent news conference.
“If the U.S. and its allies think they could hold the stick of sanctions and then sit and negotiate with us, they are seriously mistaken,” he said, according to Iran’s state-run Press TV. He repeated that any UN sanctions would end nuclear talks.
Ahmadinejad also said that the bogus offer to send a small part of its nuclear stockpile out of Iran for enrichment was off the table if the US and Europe did not accept it immediately, and that it wouldn't be repeated. That particular work around was done in collusion with Brazil and Turkey.
Russia's PM Putin, speaking at the same conference, was very clear that sanctions should not be what he referred to as “excessive”, and made a point of following the Mullah's line of calling Iran’s nuclear program peaceful.
“I hold the opinion that this resolution should not be unnecessary, should not put Iran’s leadership or the Iranian people into difficulty,” Putin said.
Russia and Iran also announced a joint venture to operate Iran's Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plan when it comes online this summer...including the presence of Russian experts, ensuring more expertise for their Iranian colleagues and upping the ante on any attack.
The fix is obviously in, Not only are any significant sanctions unlikely to get past Russia's veto, but Putin is all but telegraphing that Russia is not going to abide by them in any case.
The sanctions were always going to be a non-starter anyway. This just makes it official.
In another victory for the Islamists, Turkey got Putin to issue the first formal condemnation by Russia of Israel's Gaza flotilla raid.
And Iran stated earlier that it was planning on sending ships break the Israeli blockade on its Hamas allies, manned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Needless to say, the Israeli shave announced that any Iranian ships will never reach Gaza.
The Bush Administration declined to handle the problem of iran's illegal nuclear program. and the Obama Administration has been even more marked in its weakness and vacillation.
These are the fruits of that policy.
There really isn't any thing we can do to prevent Iran from going nuclear. As long as Russia, the most powerful country in the world and China the second most powerful country in the world are supporting Iran there is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
ReplyDeleteBombing the Iranian nuclear sites is not an option. We would never be able to penetrate Iran's air defenses and the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz.
While we can't prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, we can take practical steps to defend ourselves. While the media has always obsessed over a potential American attack on Iran and how they could prevent it, that never has been what we really needed to worry about. What we really needed to be worrying about all these years is the coming Iranian attack on America and how we could prevent it. At one time, we may have had a military option against Iran but that is gone now.
All we can do is fully and completely withdraw from the Middle East and redeploy those forces to our borders. This will give us a fighting chance to defend our nation. In addition to this, the mosques will need to be closely monitored.
Finally, we will need to develop all of our own oil and gas reserves and build more refineries. As the recent oil spill in the Gulf has illustrated, there are still some technical issues that need to be worked out with deep water drilling. Until we can work these out, the focus needs to be on shallow water drilling and on onshore drilling. We have enough oil reserves on shore and in shallow water to meet our needs. In time this approach, might give us some leverage in any negotiations with these countries.
Without a military option, no leverage in negotiations, a deeply struggling economy, a worn down military, and a massive national debt we are out of options except for a complete withdrawl from the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. These are simply the facts of the situation. We ignore them at our own peril.
Israel may be able to penetrate Iran's military defenses to take out the nuclear program. I certainly hope for so for their sake and our sake. In any event, should they attempt to do so our best bet would be to stay out of their way. It would be in our best interest to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. Given the current political situation, it is very likely our men and women could be facing hostile forces on all sides without adequate resources to be able to withstand the onslaught and with no way to resupply our forces. When will the generals step up, show leadership, and demand that the President and Congress give the order for complete withdrawl?
In order for negotiations to get started, Iran will need to take their "death to America" slogan that has been the calling card of the Iranian government for so long off the table. How can we have negotiations with someone who calls for genocide of us?
ReplyDeleteThe focus has always been on what America needs to do. More focus needs to be directed toward what Iran needs to do for negotiations to be a success.
“If the U.S. and its allies think they could
ReplyDeletehey.
i got a question.
just who are the allies he is referring to in the above statement?
who are the allies of the US nowadays?
no.
really.
can someone name me one?
Iran,Persia, has always been playing major powers
ReplyDeleteagainst each other in the region. The only way to stop their Nuc program is to put US boots on the ground for a few years and clean up the country of extremist
and jihadies from Pakestan,Afghanestan and Iraq.
this would isolate Syria and turkey as well as other extremist in the region. As far as the Arabs living in the gaza,ship them to Saudis. They are the same people and will get along just fine.
"If the US and its allies think they could..." I agree with Louie on this. That was one of my first thoughts when I read this. The US has no "allies" right now. If a formal war should break out between Iran and the US right now, the entire world would side with Iran. The thought processes and the media would be along the lines of "America had it coming." Nobody would stand with America in this conflict.
ReplyDeleteWhat could the Iranian leader have meant by this statement? Surely he knows America has no allies. I think there are two possibilities.
1.)This is simply propaganda. In order to vilify someone, sometimes it is necessary to make them seem more powerful than they are. This may be the goal of the Iranian leadership here. Make America seem more powerful than it is. This way it is easier for them to justify their coming attack on American interests and possibly on the American mainland itself. I'd say they have largely succeeded, especially with the media tirelessly working to present Iran in a favorable light. 2.)The Iranian leadership actually believes America has allies. In this case, the folks who Iran percieves as American allies would likely be targeted as well when Iran attacks America. In this case, it would be in the best interest of these "allies" to find out to whom the Iranian leader is referring. They will want to be prepared.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteSometimes it is a case of playing powers against each other, however, in this instance I don't think that is the case. Both the Turks and the Iranians are completely on the same page here. While there likely does exist a Shia/Sunni divide, both groups hate America and Israel more than they dislike each other. In other words, they will work together as one to defeat what they percieve as a common enemy. Once America and Israel are defeated, there will be plenty of time to resume the Shia/Sunni fued. At least this is their thinking.
American "boots on the ground" are not an option here. America does not have the "boots" to put on the ground in Iran or anywhere else for that matter right now. Even if America did have this capacity, we don't have the financial ability to support this operation and our foreign creditors definitely will NOT extend credit for this type of military operation, as their business deals with Iran are far to lucrative for them to allow this.
Even if you could overcome all of this, which you can't, the boots on the ground would be needed for more than "a few years" as you seem to suggest. I think it would be more like "decades" that these people would be needed for. Many thousands of them would die in this operation. The American people are aware of this on an intutive level or a non intutive level depending upon which ones are discussed. As such, you cannot get the American people to support putting American "boots on the ground" in Iran.
Please understand I mean you no disrespect. When trying to find a solution to a problem it is very important that we stick with potential solutions that can actually be implemented. American boots on the ground aren't an option, even if we actually wanted to do it. As such, I don't think policy makers are considering this.
The best option for us, in this instance, is to get out of Israel's way and let them deal with this. They are in a much better position to do this than we are. I pray they are successufl. Its our option.