20060131
    Today, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council voted to recommend to the IAEA that Iran’s nuclear program and its defiance of its international agreements be referred to the UN Security Council for deliberation. Iran responded by ominously stating that “We consider any referral or report of Iran to the Security Council as the end of diplomacy”.
    Did anyone really expect another outcome from this game that Iran has played with the rest of the world for the past few years? The truth is that Iran wants the confrontation with the West in the same way that it wants nukes so that it can “wipe Israel off of the mapâ€. The issue of being referred to the Security Council is just another move in their game.
    And what is that game? Fanatical, totalitarian, theocratic Islam. The West turns away from such a thought in fear and disgust, but to the leadership of Iran, the dream of a world turned to their form of Islam, by conversion or by force, is the greatest of all possible dreams. And how better to enact such a dream than with the power and force a nation derives from possessing nuclear weapons?
    This is the endgame. Iran will likely successfully build a nuclear weapon now, unless some country ‘unilaterally’ intervenes on the world’s behalf. The Iranians watched carefully how the problem of Iraq was played on the UN’s stage, and they understand that there is no single nation with enough political capital to ‘go it alone’ on the issue of Iran.
    Or is there? I cannot believe that nations like the US, Britain, France, and Israel will sit by while this game is played to its end. There can be no way to justify a nuclear Iran. The opportunity for diplomacy has ended. Now is the time to act.
DLH
“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ while reaching for a stick.”
I read that somewhere. I don’t know exactly how it applies, but I thought it was funny and thus I ad to share it with the world.