Arnaud de Borchgrave
September 3, 2007
BERN, Switzerland.
After a brief interruption of his New Hampshire vacation to meet President
Bush in the family compound at Kenebunkport, Maine, French President Nicolas
Sarkozy came away convinced his U.S. counterpart is serious about bombing
Iran's secret nuclear facilities. That's the reading as it filtered back to
Europe's foreign ministries:
Addressing the annual meeting of France's ambassadors to 188 countries, Mr.
Sarkozy said either Iran lives up to its international obligations and
relinquishes its nuclear ambitions or it will be bombed into compliance. Mr.
Sarkozy also made it clear he did not agree with the
Iranian-bomb-or-bombing-of-Iran position, which reflects the pledge of Mr. Bush
to his loyalists, endorsed by Republican presidential candidate Sen. John
McCain of Arizona and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Independent. But Mr.
Sarkozy recognized unless Iran's theocrats stop enriching uranium to
weapons-grade levels under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), we will all be "faced with an alternative that I call catastrophic."
A ranking Swiss official privately said, "Anyone with a modicum of experience
in the Middle East knows that any bombing of Iran would touch off at the very
least regional instability and what could be an unmitigated disaster for
Western interests."
Leaks about the administration's plan to brand Iran's 125,000-strong
Revolutionary Guards a global terrorist organization is widely interpreted as a
major step on the escalator to military action. Belatedly, Saudi Arabia, the
world's largest oil producer, has signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for
the training of 35,000 elite guards to be assigned to protect the kingdom's
widely scattered oil installations. With 25 percent of the world's oil
reserves, Riyadh has earmarked $5 billion to train and field as soon as
possible a high-tech force. Eighteen months ago, the desert kingdom was jolted
by an al Qaeda terrorist squad that managed to penetrate the first two layers
of defenses at Abqaiq, the nerve center of the entire oil infrastructure.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now stated publicly his country
holds the key to the conditions of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, much criticized by the United States for his lack of
leadership, and who has been deserted by half his Cabinet, is much praised in
Tehran, where he has gone twice in 11 months to confer with Iranian leaders.
Mr. Ahmadinejad also says Iran is ready to fill the power vacuum in Iraq
following a U.S. withdrawal. "The political power of the occupiers is
collapsing rapidly," he said, "and soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the
region."
The United States is not alone in trying to prove Mr. Ahmadinejad's
geopolitical weather forecast wrong. Saudi Arabia and its five Gulf Cooperation
Council allies in the Gulf, Egypt and Jordan, are terrified at the idea of Iraq
falling under Iranian domination.
Hoping to head off a U.S.-Iran military confrontation, European countries are
still pinning their hopes on major Iranian concessions at the International
Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna. Iran is back to cooperating with IAEA but
only one comma or semicolon at a time. The three European Union countries
acting as U.S. surrogates on nuclear matters with Iran, and IAEA chief Mohamed
ElBaradei, detect progress where the U.S. sees only stalling. Iran is still
resisting short-notice inspections of sites that are not officially declared
nuclear facilities, and where secret nuclear work is believed to be taking
place.
Tehran's only objective at the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council is to head
off further economic sanctions from its major EU trading partners. Thus the
mantra that its only interest in nuclear matters is as an alternative source of
energy in a country already awash in oil taxes credulity.
Both the Bush administration and Israel are painstakingly fashioning a casus
belli with Iran. For Israel, the training and weapons support Iran furnishes
Hezbollah in Lebanon (now with more rockets of all kinds than it had before the
2006 war when it fired 4,000 into Israel) and Hamas in Gaza (now equipped with
Katyusha rockets and a range of 10.6 miles), coupled with Mr. Ahmadinejad's
existential threats against the Jewish state, are sufficient evidence to
justify air attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. And for the White House,
there is daily evidence of Iran's Revolutionary Guards meddling in Iraq, from
improved explosive devices made in Iran to behind-the-scenes dominance in the
affairs of the oil-rich south.
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