Would the US be in Afghanistan if not for Israel?

No.

So with that short answer out of the way, we can look at the reasoning the leads to that answer.

The United States is in Afghanistan largely to prevent anti-American groups from using the fact that the area is weakly controlled by any central government to use that freedom from oversight to amass resources that could be used to harm the US.

The resources Al-Qaeda was able to amass in Afghanistan were less the money than the central networking ability and the ideological development that could be used elsewhere.

Central networking means that al Qaeda was able to accumulate lists of people that they trust to be reliably ideologically motivated and also trained and disciplined. It is very difficult to put that together in a territory under hostile control. Efforts to take raw ideologically motivated prospective members and weed out those unable to become effective fighters while also training and indoctrinating the rest into fighters are easily thwarted in the US, Europe or anywhere that has a ruling culture that is not accomodating to the ideology being instilled. From Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was able to weed, train and keep track of fighters who could later be coordinated in Europe or the United States.

Central networking played a very important role in 9/11. It is often said that 9/11 was planned in Europe, which it was, but the planners could not have trained, met and trusted each other without Afghanistan or something like it.

Far less important than central networking, but maybe worth a mention, is that Afghanistan also provide a place for Al Qaeda to develop ideologically. An ideological movement is about not only fighting, but needs constant refinement of its world-view in light of outside developments as well as slowing and combating the natural process by which different people's understandings of any ideology drift in different directions over time.

A single source that is capable of holding a party line requires that those who think about how their ideology applies to changes in outside events and differences of interpretation by members are able to be fed, informed of events and kept in communication with the rest of the membership. These functions, if provided in an organized way, are easily broken up in hostile territory, where ideologists can be made to focus on personally avoiding imprisonment rather than the wider implications of their world-view.

Not only could central Al Qaeda have not accomplished the role it played in 9/11 from Europe or the United States. It also could not have played the role it did from Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Egypt and Saudi Arabia do and must break up organizations that would provide central networking or ideological development to advance world-views in conflict with the United States or West as those countries have rulerships that are infamously among their own people known to be subservient to the United States.

So Afghanistan played an important role in Al Qaeda attacks on the West. At this point we have to understand why Al Qaeda's ideology demands conflict with the West. Fortunately, despite the insistence of Western supporters of Israel, Al Qaeda has been consistently explaining the basis of its dispute with the West almost since it was founded.

(Osama Bin Laden’s Nov 2001 interview with DAWN)

The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government, they elect their president, their government manufactures arms and gives them to Israel and Israel uses them to massacre Palestinians. The American Congress endorses all government measures and this proves that the entire America is responsible for the atrocities perpetrated against Muslims. The entire America, because they elect the Congress.

(1997 interview Osama Bin Laden gave to CNN’s Peter Arnett)

REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, you’ve declared a jihad against the United States. Can you tell us why? And is the jihad directed against the US government or the United States’ troops in Arabia? What about US civilians in Arabia or the people of the United States?

BIN LADIN: We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Prophet’s Night Travel Land (Palestine). And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. The mention of the US reminds us before everything else of those innocent children who were dismembered, their heads and arms cut off in the recent explosion that took place in Qana (in Lebanon). This US government abandoned even humanitarian feelings by these hideous crimes. It transgressed all bounds and behaved in a way not witnessed before by any power or any imperialist power in the world.

The United States, in its expensive quest to ensure that the Middle East remains safe for a Jewish state, regularly commits and supports atrocities against the non-Jews of the Middle East. This is a difficult concept for Americans to understand, especially because the people Americans take as sources for news in the Middle East tend to be disposed to minimize the cost of protecting Israel. Americans will have to trust me that the concept is quite easy to understand in the Middle East.

There are many parts of Africa and South America that could play the role Afghanistan played, but there is no issue that generates anti-Western anger in those regions the way Israel does so in the Middle East. Because of that, the United States is spared the expense of sending tens- or hundreds- of thousands of troops to occupy, for example, lawless areas in Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso or the Congo.

The United States is in Afghanistan to ensure that as atrocities against non-Jewish people in the Middle East continue and continue to generate anger among the people of the Middle East, the people of the Middle East remain, to the degree possible, unable to attack the United States and West in retaliation.

How to understand Iran

The last paragraph of Barack Obama's statement to Iran is off in a weird way:

Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights. It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.

We've heard for thirty years what Iran's government is for just as much, if not more than we've heard what it is against. (And most Iranians support the Iranian government. We can just say Iran.)

Americans do not have a good way to conceptualize Iran, and it should be easy. Imagine Iran as a Christian fundamentalist state. Founded by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, T.D. Jakes, Rick Warren or any of them. Then imagine that most of the Palestinians are Christians - that Christians were moved from their homes against their will to make way for a Jewish (non-Christian) state and are in the position the Muslim Palestinians are in today.

That's it. That's all an American needs to fully understand Iran.

A country like that passes a lot of laws that Americans disagree with, but you'd never say they only stand against things. They stand for the Bible. Disagree or agree, but they stand for peace and equality of all men before God, and mercy, decency and morality. They stand for people living their lives, and countries conducting their affairs making a constant honest effort to do so according to the rules set down by God. They only make mistakes because they as humans fail, despite their profound longing, to reach the perfection represented by God. At least that's how they see themselves, and what they'll tell you over and over and over for as long as you can tolerate being an audience for them.

The Iranian government is not that mysterious, but no supporter of Iran or its government would ever think to define Iran as being opposed to, for example, the United States. They see the United States as acting against the rules set by God, while they are for God. Every speech we hear from any member of the Iranian government, if we listen to it reasonably, is less about opposing anyone than about working to achieve justice as God desires his servants to do.

Of course most Americans have a different conception of justice and will disagree with Iran's government on a whole lot of issues, as most Americans disagree with American religious fundamentalists on a whole lot of issues. Still Americans have a large store of experience that they can use to understand Iran's government as they disagree. No American would say that they only hear what Jerry Falwell is against, never what he is for. Americans know exactly what Jerry Falwell is for.

All Americans have to understand is that is the same thing the government of Iran is for.

I hope this makes understanding Iran a little easier for Westerners, especially Americans. Most Americans have had some exposure to very religious people who believe politics should be guided by religion. Just imagine them in control of their whole own country, then make them identify with the Palestinians more than the project of Zionism and you're left with Iran.

The two faces of US Iran policy - and can the fuel export deal be salvaged?

The United States speaks with two voices about its policy on Iran's nuclear program, one voice is represented by John Kerry in a June interview with the Financial Times:

Certainly [the line should be for Iran] not to be a quote nuclear weapon state. Now some people can argue about when you are a nuclear weapons state. Capability versus, different definitions of that, just leave that there for a minute.

The key here is that, first of all the Bush administration [argument of] no enrichment was ridiculous, on its face, because Iran is a signatory to the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty and whether they are inside or outside their obligations, to ask them to give up something that was within their rights within the treaty assuming they were up to their obligations is a non-starter. It was bombastic diplomacy. It was wasted energy. It sort of hardened the lines, if you will (inaudible).

Because it seemed so unreasonable to people. They have a right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in that purpose. But they don’t have a right, obviously, to be outside of the other restraints of the IAEA and of the non-proliferation agreement. And so the key here was to really open a different kind of dialogue with them about where you draw the line.

The second view, widely at variance with the first, is expressed by Hillary Clinton after Iran's elections, but also is consistent with George Bush and Condoleeza Rice's policies on Iran's nuclear program:

Our hope is--that's why we're engaged in the president's policy of engagement toward Iran--is that Iran will understand why it is in their interest to go along with the consensus of the international community, which very clearly says you have rights and responsibilities. You have a right to pursue the peaceful use of civil nuclear power. You do not have a right to obtain a nuclear weapon. You do not have the right to have the full enrichment and reprocessing cycle under your control. But there's a lot that we can do with Iran if Iran accepts what is the international consensus.

Clinton's construction there is so bizarre in so many ways that we have to look at it before moving on.

The first thing is that her parallel use of "obtain a weapon" along with "have the full enrichment cycle under your control" suggests that she believes, and is even here asserting that the two are the same thing. There is a big difference between having a weapon and having an enrichment cycle. This is exactly what I thought Kerry meant when he called the Bush position ridiculous on its face.

But it goes further. Why would Iran not have the right to enrichment and reprocessing cycle under its control? Where could the "under its control" language possibly come from? What would a non-proliferation agreement look like that said signatories do not have the right to enrichment under their own control? Maybe signatories can have enrichment, but they can't control it. Of course the NPT does not say this. But how crazy would any agreement have to be for Clinton's statement to be based on an agreement?

And the answer to that question is the most bizarre element of Clinton's position. Clinton is really saying that as Secretary of State of the United States, she may say because of the Security Council resolutions and the US veto power in the Security Council, she gets to just invent arbitrary restrictions with absolutely no basis in the language of any document but that are still binding on Iran. No sovereign nation would tolerate that if it had any alternative at all. No Iranian government could remain in power if it was inclined to submit to this type of demand.

An important thing to notice is that this was an early and expanded example of the administration's "rights and responsibilities" formulation. When Obama speaks of "rights and responsibilities" after that (as in his counter-productive recent speech on the anniversary of the hostage taking), it is a reasonable interpretation that Obama is using a shorthand to reference the lunatic position fully expressed by Hillary Clinton on July 26.

So anyway, we have two points of view. One that Iran cannot be reasonably denied the right to enrich uranium, that I'll call the Kerry view for short, and the other that Iran must (and more importantly "can") be prevented from having enrichment under its control. I call that the Clinton view.

First. The Kerry view is right. Iran has enrichment under its control now. Iran has far more spare capacity to increase its enrichment than it has ever had - thousands of centrifuges operational but not processing uranium - and could nearly immediately bring them on line given a political decision. Iran has not made that political decision because there has not been an increase in sanctions. The West and Iran have been more or less at an equilibrium the United States can continue to expand its implementation of current sanctions and Iran can relatively slowly increase its enrichment capacity, but neither side is racing or making abrupt changes since at least mid 2008.


(Source ArmsControlWonk.com)

Sanctions would break that equilibrium and cause Iran to reach its enrichment goals faster. War, even if started by Israel, would be very painful for the United States (Iran officially does not see Israel as separate from the United States, and while Iran's capability to harm Israel is limited, its capability to harm the US is vast.) And in the end, war would not prevent Iran from building a nuclear capacity anyway, but would make Iran more determined to do so. What this means is that the Clinton view is just not attached to reality. There is no way to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapons capability. Fortunately the part of the Clinton view that holds that a nuclear weapons capability is the same thing as a nuclear weapon is also just as crazy.

So we have two views of policy - both directly contradictory, one that also contradicts reality. It is easy to believe that the view that contradicts reality is not the truly held view, it is presented for domestic consumption or to satisfy some internal or external constituency. It is reasonable to think that the people who actually make decisions make them on the basis of the Kerry view.

Countering that, the US public foreign policy community seems to be dominated by the Clinton view. Exponents of the Kerry view include Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, Kerry himself and sometimes Roger Cohen. Every other commentator on Iran policy who claims to have access to the Obama administration seems to put forward the Clinton view. A key element of the Clinton view is that Iran is desperate for a deal with the US because of the loss of legitimacy it took due to the "fraudulent elections".

(And they always describe them as "fraudulent elections", they never any more even attempt an argument that the elections were fraudulent. The elections were not fraudulent, most of my posts in June and July were about this issue, but in light of the September 2009 poll that over 80% of Iranians think the election was fair, and also the fact that over three months later, there still is no tangible evidence of fraud that has surfaced, it really is time for them to give that up.)

The fact of the matter is that as long as the Clinton view dominates the administration thinking on Iran policy, there will be no deal for Iran to export its uranium before getting its fuel rods. The Clinton view of the deal is that now that the Iranians are weak, we can trick them into exporting their uranium, and after the uranium is out, we'll tell them they'll never get it back unless they suspend enrichment - at which point Iran may buckle.

The Kerry view of the deal is that because we cannot prevent Iran from enriching uranium, but we've put our reputation on the line by making that a requirement, if Iran exports its uranium, for compensation, that will give us a way to present Iran's continuing enrichment - at significant but possibly negotiated levels - as a victory.

The Clinton view of the deal cannot be salvaged. Iran now will not proceed without assurances that any uranium export is not part of a ruse aimed at increasing leverage to force Iran to cease enrichment. When an unnamed European diplomat said that negotiations with Iran were "like playing chess with monkeys, you get them to checkmate and they swallow the king", he was expousing a Clinton view of the negotiations, where somehow the Iranians had been gotten to checkmate. As an aside, French public statements presenting the Clinton view have been very unhelpful up to now. Just a guess, just by the hostility I've felt from France against this deal, is that the unnamed European diplomat was from France.

The Kerry view may be salvageable. ElBaradei seems to have an idea that Turkey can be used to store Iranian uranium until the fuel is ready. The key is not that Turkey is somehow more trustworthy or independent of US pressure than Russia. If Russia can be pressured on Bushehr and the S-300s, Turkey can be pressured on Iranian uranium. The key is that Turkey can provide an excuse for the deal to move forward. But there has to be an assurance, not necessarily public, that the US is following the Kerry view on Iran's nuclear program.

For example, if the US commits to Russia and China that negotiations in 2010 can acceptably proceed with 36 cascades during talks toward a long-term arrangement that will include substantial Iranian capacity for enrichment possibly that independent capacity can be put on hold once an international consortium comes on line.

If the US is going to remain holding the Clinton view, then to make a deal, Iran will have to get its processed uranium up front. The delivery of the processed uranium cannot be used as leverage to pressure Iran to cease enrichment. The Iranians are not monkeys who would have ever fallen for that. But if fuel rods are built while arrangements are made to ship Iranian uranium to Turkey, an up-front swap can be made using Turkey as a face-saving excuse.

So what happens after two states?

In the conflict over Zionism, it seems that we have an interesting situation where both sides act as if time is on their side. This is because there is a true disagreement over what will happen if it is acknowledged that there is no longer a viable two state option.

Zionists seem to believe one of two things: one is that the US and relevant members of the world community will give their blessings at that point to a new round of full ethnic cleansing - where enough Palestinians are driven from the territories that the remainder can be incorporated into Israel without posing a demographic threat to their vision of Israel as a Jewish state.

The other possible (and more likely) belief is that it is impossible to predict confidently that further outright ethnic cleansing will be tolerated, but the moment when it is clear that it would be necessary can be put off indefinitely, and in the meantime Israel can continue to provide a Jewish state to those who want it.

Anti-Zionists seem to believe the opposite, that the world community will impose minority status on Jews of Israel as they did to the Whites of South Africa.

If anti-Zionists and those Zionists who favor delaying the recognition of the impossibility of a two state solution are right - I think they are. A solution along the lines of South Africa fits with most value systems currently held in the world far better than a solution along the lines of post-partition India - then Abbas does his people a huge disservice when he realizes that there is no longer a viable two-state solution and bends to US and Israeli pressure to refrain from saying that.

Another senior aide said Abbas was on the verge of announcing the death of the two-state solution but heavy pressure from Washington made him tone down his words.

On the other hand, this is the exact type of weak betrayal of his own people that Israel and the United States orchestrated his rise to the position of Palestinian president to execute.

It's in Israel's interests for Abbas to remain

The popular Ynet news website quoted an official it did not identify as saying: "It's in Israel's interest to have Abbas stay in office."

"Netanyahu does not want Abu Mazen (Abbas) to leave," another told the Maariv newspaper. "He is careful not to embrace him too tightly, but clearly he is the candidate who is the lesser evil among the Palestinian leadership."

I don't think this needs much comment.

[Edit] I'll make this one comment. I wish Abbas had the courage to resign effective today, but if he had been a courageous man, Israel would have chosen someone else as sham leader of the Palestinians. I have the same realization when I realize what a fundamentally stupid person Hosni Mubarak is.

Obama claims the US does not intervene in Iranian affairs

Barack Obama's speech on the anniversary of the Iranian hostage crisis.

We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. ... We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.

"Obligations every nation has" is a very lawyerly formulation that is misleading even if true. Iran has an obligation to submit to the rules of the Security Council, but the UNSC action was not applied in a non-discriminatory fashion. Other nations, including nations that are known to have had nuclear weapons programs have not been required by the UNSC to cease enrichment, to subject their enrichment programs to US discretion or to go beyond their current obligations and ratify the Additional Protocols which is a voluntary treaty modification that would impose new legal requirements on Iran.

The relationship between the US demands on Iran and Israel's unusual security situation, surrounded by more populous states that most of whose people fundamentally believe that Israel's creation and Israel's continual denial of the rights of Palestinians is an injustice, is openly acknowledged even by Americans.

Very few people in Iran will agree with Obama that Iran's nuclear issue is being treated as "every other nation" 's. The statement certainly reads as a false one in Iran.

Which is more problematic because while it is widely reported, even in the West that "there was a well funded campaign of supporting separatist elements under Bush, all we have is Obama's word that this campaign has stopped "we do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs".

If two sentences later he makes a statement that is stretching the truth, the first statement, the more important one which is harder to evaluate, loses credibility.

I have not seen evidence of a decrease in separatist activity since Obama took office, while there was a substantial increase after the US invasion of Iraq that is reasonably attributed to US policy.

The issue of US support for Iranian separatist organizations is one Obama will have to deal with in a more serious way than a single statement in the middle of this speech. Especially in light of the attack in Balochistan.

If not, an atmosphere of trust or even of non-confrontation will be difficult, nearly impossible to build.

Erekat: Two state solution is dying. Abbas: I may not run

This seems like interesting news.

Abbas, who was elected nearly five years ago, had been expected to run again, despite the deep factional divisions among his own people and the deadlock in returning to peace talks with the Israelis.

"The president insists on not running in the upcoming election," an official from the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation told Reuters. Abbas announced his decision today at a meeting of the PLO, which he chairs.

He was expected to give a speech later in the day, but some senior Palestinian figures said they were still trying to dissuade him from stepping down.

This also.

Erekat said the international community faced a "critical moment" in the Middle East and that it may be time for the Palestinians to start arguing in favour of a one-state solution, a bi-national state of Jews and Arabs on the same land. Israel bitterly opposes such an idea.

"President Abbas will have to come to his moment of truth and tell that to his people, tell them that we tried but now it's not an option to talk about two states because Israel destroyed it with settlements and walls," Erekat said. He said the Palestinians were not walking away from negotiations, but wanted the US to create a "realistic political track" for two-state peace talks.

I would like to believe either of these, or even better, both, could come to pass. Unfortunately, Israel has a tremendous amount of leverage with Abbas, Erekat and Fatah as a whole. I'd like to be wrong, but I doubt we will see any change in policy or direction from the Palestinian territories.

Differing viewpoints on the deal in Geneva

To read the viewpoints of Western commentators on the deal in which Iran was to ship most of its uranium to Russia in exchange for fuel for its reactor fuel is to be shocked by the inability of these commentators to understand the perceptions and motivations of the Iranians.

It now appears to me that there are two vastly conceptions of the deal, mine, which I assume was shared by Iranian supporters of the deal in early October and the Western conception that I gather from reading commentary after commentary containing the same fundamental misunderstandings.

On September 30, the situation was that back in June, John Kerry said in an interview that the Bush administration policy that Iran must have zero enrichment was "stupid", his word, and counter-productive. By August Hillary Clinton said that Iran must comply with the security council resolutions or face painful sanctions by the end of the year.

Hillary Clinton is an actual member of the Obama administration. She contradicted what Kerry had said earlier which, from the outside, seemed to indicate that between when Kerry spoke and when she spoke, the US position had hardened against Iran.

The facts on the ground had not changed. Contrary to what Western commentators believe to the point of blind faith, the Iranian regime was not threatened by the turmoil over the election. The truth was that the electoral process in Iran was conducted as it customarily is, and it is one of the most open electoral processes in the world. Not everyone can run for office because in an undemocratic way, candidates must be approved by a branch of government. But once candidates run, there is a solid trail from when votes are cast to when they are counted to when they are reported, which huge numbers of witnesses and decentralized operations that make massive fraud essentially impossible.

Most Iranians were always going to conclude that the person who was reported as the winner actually was the winner. That was clarified for Westerners by a poll released in September that shows that of the people who said they voted, about 60% said they voted for Ahmadinejad, matching his reported tally and also that over 80% of Iranians believe the polling process was honest.

Mousavi's movement is a threat to Iran the way people claiming Obama was born in Kenya are a threat to the US, except that there are suspicions that despite Khamenei's magnanimity, Mousavi may have been working with encouragement from enemies of Iran. Mousavi's political stock is of no value at this point. He is completely irrelevant to Iranian politics. His patron Rafsanjani started from a more powerful position, but he has also nearly completely lost credibility in Iranian politics.

Iran came into the October meeting without any domestic turmoil to speak of, but with a question of who spoke for the Americans, Kerry or Clinton, with Clinton being the more reasonable assumption. If the US was going to follow the Clinton line, which is the Bush line, Iran would continue to confront the US.

I say again and again that Iran can continue to confront the US. Sanctions will not slow Iran's enrichment program, they will speed it up. A military attack on Iran will start a war, but Iran expects that the war will hurt the US more than it gains. US military officials commonly acknowledge that war will set back Iran's nuclear program but will not stop it, and Iran will be able to reassemble the program in a more resilient form after the attack. The cost of slowing but not stopping Iran's nuclear program will be that Iran will harm a lot of US interests in the region, including both causing the deaths of many US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and making US political victories in both countries impossible.

The US is fairly confident that the US is able to calculate that an attack would not be worth it. Iran also expects the US to maintain its red light on any Israeli strike because an Israeli strike is the same as a US strike in terms of consequences, but Israel has far fewer assets that it could use to even slow Iran's nuclear program.

Iran came into the October meeting secure that the option of continuing its current production of uranium is available but unsure if the US was willing to accept this reality or would continue the Bush policy of turning Iran's enrichment into a focus of confrontation.

After the meeting, it seemed that Clinton had been bluffing all along, and the US had actually come to Kerry's conclusion that negotiations would have to answer the question of exactly how nuclear capable will Iran be, but that Iran would retain nuclear capability. This would have paved the way for a dramatic improvement in relations between the US and Iran. If the US has come to Kerry's position, Iran has reason to consider it a victory and to be pleased with the idea of future talks.

The reason it seemed that Kerry's view had won is that the US proposed to move one ton, out of Iran's potential supply of about ten tons, of uranium on the pretext that it was to be used to create fuel for Iran's medical reactor and that would satisfy the US' conditions for talks that could occur as Iran continued to enrich uranium.

Western commentators left with an entirely different interpretation of the events. According to the Western narrative, Iran is so terrified of Clinton's threats to get painful sanctions, that it flailed about begging for a deal. To Westerners this is made worse because Iran's leadership hopes that a deal can stave off imminent massive unrest against the regime.

How this works is that Westerners hate Iran's regime - largely over their disagreement with the regime over Israel. Westerners hate Iran's regime far, far more vehemently than they hate the Saudi, Egyptian or Jordanian regimes that by any objective measure are vastly worse than the Iranian but are relatively accommodating of Israel. Most Western foreign policy commentators cannot imagine that there is not a huge majority of Iranians who agree with them. In fact, only a small, nearly insignificant minority of Iranians agree with them.

Westerners, feeling incorrectly that the Iranian regime had exposed its weakness by speaking positively of a deal that would remove uranium from Iranian territory, saw this deal as a first step toward a further Iranian capitulation on enrichment itself. The deal went from acceptable to the Iranians to unacceptable as it came to seem that the Western perception of the deal was not that Iran would make a gesture to allow the US to accept enrichment, but instead that Iran was taking a step in the direction of giving up enrichment.

"It's like playing chess with a monkey," said one diplomat close to the talks. "You get them to checkmate, and then they swallow the king."

In the case of Iran, I do think sanctions can still work and I would give you the Iranian offer which they may not be serious about, but the offer to remove all of their low-enriched uranium to Russia. Why would they entertain such an offer? Why would they make such an offer? What is that about? I think it's a sign of weakness on the part of the regime. I think they are desperate to avoid additional economic sanctions. The political situation inside Iran is making them very anxious. In the months since the June election, they have not eliminated opposition to the regime and the regime itself is split. The clerics are split. This is big trouble for the regime and they don't want additional economic sanctions. They will do a lot to avoid sanctions. So if we can, we the P5-plus-1, the global community so called, if we can credibly threaten additional economic sanctions against Iran, I think it is still possible to freeze their nuclear program.

Iran had never been checkmated, and was never anxious, split or in big trouble forcing them to consider a deal with the US.

If the West continues to misunderstand Iran's perception of its position as the unnamed EU diplomat and Elliot Abrams do here, Iran will continue to march towards nuclear capability without any restraint other than those already applied, or even more quickly if Abrams gets his way and credibly threatens and then actually applies economic sanctions on Iran.

Arabs "mad" that Hillary retreats on settlements position

The US change in position on settlements in occupied territory was not unexpected, in fact it has been clear since late spring. I'm surprised by how publicly and vocally Hillary is supporting Israel's settlement position. Once, by late spring, it was clear that the US was not going to force Israel to freeze settlement construction Israel had gotten what it wants. By that point, I would have expected the Obama administration to offer vocal support to the Arab side since its tangible support was going to Israel on an issue on which it had previously taken the Arab side.

Hillary plays in interesting role in the Obama administration. She was the person who committed the US to painful sanctions against Iran if Iran did not suspend enrichment this year, only to see the US contradict her stance on October 1, by saying it would accept Iran shipping some uranium out of the country to be further enriched, while it continues enriching uranium during later talks.

Now she is taking the position that Israel does not have to stop construction on the occupied territories, and she is taking the position that the US will not accept any changes to the deal presented to the public by the West, that Iran ship its uranium out in one batch this year to get fuel back some indefinite time in the future. (Maybe.)

I don't believe her any more. At least on Iran I'm sure her position is not the administration's position, her audience is more domestic, Israeli and maybe European advocates of hard line positions against Iran.

On settlements, I believe she is really reporting the US position, but I'm not sure what she is trying to accomplish if anything. She is actually as untalented at this position as Condoleeza Rice, which is to say completely incompetent, but she probably follows instructions if they are given. I'm not sure if there is a method to this action on her part or not.

The Arabs are angry and made helpless by this public position the US is taking. Not angry enough to change any policies. Arabs probably are the most politically pathetic people in the world. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems as if a kind of meek subservience to rich outside powers such as the US is a trait of Arab leadership that I'm going to have to incorporate into any model I form of the region.

It's been a long time since we've seen an Arab Erdogan or Khomeini and unfortunately (fortunately for the US) I don't see any on the horizon. There seems to be in the Arab world a kind of acceptance of traitorous leadership that I don't see anywhere else in the world.

So I guess it is interesting and maybe funny that the conflict between the Arabs and the last active colonialist project in the world is being led by non-Arabs of Iran and Turkey with Syria in a supporting role.

One possible theory is that Hillary in her impotence to impact Iran's uranium enrichment program is attempting to reassert her sense of first-world dominance by humiliating the Arabs.

Any where else in the world, Mubarak's grandchildren would come home crying from school saying "all the kids are making fun of us". Even if Mubarak didn't change his mind or policies, his grip on power would be weakening because fundamentally most societies would not tolerate a relationship like the one between the US and Arab countries. But in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, the Emirates, the West Bank, etc the leaders are sleeping fine at night after Hillary's insults. I think on some level they believe this is how it is supposed to be.

Fooled me once, but fundamentals are fundamentals

I tried, but there is almost nothing happening that I find interesting in the greater Middle East that is not Iran-related. I hope Pakistan holds together. Turkey may be leaving the US orbit, but the extent and irreversibility of any move are not clear yet. The Palestinians feel betrayed by Obama's reversal on settlements, but Abbas is dependent on the US and Israel and everyone knows it. Same for the rest of the pro-US Arabs. Hezbollah's hold on power in Lebanon remains a fact on the ground, but it looks like not all of March 13th's backers are willing to accept that. Things are pretty stable, and they are pretty stable in Iran also.

But I do find it notable that it looks as if the US is painting itself into a corner that if Iran does not ship its uranium out of the country, the US will be forced to initiate sanctions. In other words, it looks like it looked on September 30th, when the word was that if Iran did not agree to suspend enrichment sanctions would be imminent.

Sanctions had never been imminent. It came out that there had been behind-the-scenes talks all along. The corner it looked like the US had painted itself into, it walked right out of, by claiming that shipping uranium out justified further talks.

So here's the fundamental fact that we have to remember when it comes to sanctions. The United States does not want sanctions. Israel wants sanctions, the United States does not. Israel wants sanctions because sanctions increase the chance of a confrontation spiraling into a full war between the US and Iran. In this war, thousands of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will die. Israel considers that a small price to pay to ensure that Iran never has the capacity to build a weapon in theory.

The United States calculates differently. The direct impact of sanctions will be that Iran will accelerate its enrichment program. I'm pretty sure an agreement has been in place for the last year or so that Iran will not increase the amount of centrifuges producing uranium and the US will not increase sanctions. I'm also pretty sure Iran is ambivalent about this agreement. Iran won't break the agreement first because they see themselves as the good guys, but if the US breaks it, obviously that is a sign that God's plan cannot be denied.

The faster Iran gets its ten or so bombs worth of LEU enriched, the faster it can move to other things. Sanctions will cut at least two years off of that process because Iran can very quickly increase its production by 50% and double it not long after that. Iran has reason to want sanctions, just to enrich faster. The US has no reason to want sanctions and does not want sanctions.

It looks as if the US is painting itself into a corner. Obama said he had to see progress by the end of the year or sanctions would be next. Either a "breakthrough" will be orchestrated at the end of the year, or "negotiations" in the Security Council will begin then so that a "breakthrough" can be orchestrated between the US and Iran before sanctions can be agreed upon.

I perceive nearly no chance of new sanctions in 2010. If there are sanctions, Iran will benefit, but the US really does not want them.

But what happened with this deal? Two things were true by the middle of October that were not true on October 1. The first is that separatist forces killed high profile Iranian military commanders. The second is that France did everything in its power to embarrass the Iranians and thereby scuttle a deal. I'm sure both had impacts, and I think possibly either one alone would have prevented an agreement from being reached in 2009. I'm not sure if there is a relationship between the two and I'm not completely sure where both happening leaves us.

The attacks on the revolutionary guards commanders were done by suicide bomb, but they were not terrorist attacks by the normal definition. They were attacks on military personnel whose aim is to loosen the authority of Iran's central government on their region. While the US pushed through a strong anti-terrorist resolution in response, the US openly supports Iranian separatist movements. Which means that the US cannot credibly claim to even oppose this attack. This attack would have created enough anger in Iran's leadership to end any deal Iran was considering reaching with the US.

France just started acting crazy. France leaked negotiating notes that it would only agree to a deal if all of the uranium was exported from Iran at once before the end of the year. Iran never accepts publicly made ultimatums on its nuclear program. Every deadline is missed by at least a week. France just allowing its position to become public ensured that no uranium would ship in 2009. But further, if one report I saw is true, France claimed that it would only return the uranium if Iran made policy changes. That is enough to kill the deal forever.

I saw the deal initially as the US gaining a face-saving way to allow Iran to continue enriching and in exchange Iran gained a respite from public US pressure to stop enriching. This is a deal Iran would make. After the French even mentioned the possibility that the uranium could be held up the way Bushehr is being held up, the entire frame of the deal changed. Now Iran was giving the US leverage over its enrichment program for free. This is not a deal Iran would make.

One problem is that the Western foreign policy community has a very distorted view of Iran's decision-making process. Iran was not feeling pressure on September 30. The Qom revelation, even if somehow it was forced (how could it have been forced? Iran announced it first - and Washington admits that after learning of Iran's disclosure to the IAEA, it rushed to put together a statement in Pittsburgh before Iran's statement became public knowledge), but all the Qom revelation ever meant was that a site that has no uranium will be looked over by inspectors. Even if Iran should have reported it, so what? Iran is already under Security Council sanctions and Iran isn't afraid, at all, to say the least, of more Security Council sanctions.

So Iran was not feeling pressure from Qom. Western analysts keeps insisting that the elections have weakened Ahmadinejad's hold on power somehow. They even still refer to the elections, reflexively though without argument, as "fraudulent elections". 80% of Iranians disagree with that assessment. Ahmadinejad does not need a deal with the United States to be legitimate. Iran is not under pressure and it seems like some parts of the US foreign policy community believe Iran is under pressure.

Iran will make a gesture that over the long term is nearly meaningless to help the US save face. Giving away its first ton of LEU means that it will ultimately have, maybe, 10 tons instead of 11 when its domestic supply is exhausted. Iran will not give the US leverage that the US can use to try to force a suspension later. Mostly France's behavior, along with the general loss of trust and the anger caused by the separatist attack changed the perception of the transaction from a meaningless gesture into a capitulation to put new tools in the hands of the US. At that point the deal died.

So where we are now is that Iran will not send uranium out of the country until it is sure the fuel for its medical reactor will be sent. That means that if an order is placed today for the first plates, and it takes six months for Russia and either France, Argentina or someone else to create the fuel, then it will be possible for Iran to export uranium in April. The US and Iran are talking behind the scenes. I consider this a reasonably likely outcome. If the entire order can be completed by then, that can be the "breakthrough", that Iran sends all of its uranium out just as the US demanded, only a few months late.

Otherwise, there will be another breakthrough. I don't know what the US and Iran are negotiating behind the scenes. I just know that the corners the US pretends to paint itself into are just theater.

Anything going on outside of Iran?

I'm going to try to get 5 posts in a row, after this one, that do not mention Iran at all. Iran has taken the role as by far the most effective opposition to US/Israeli hegemony not only right now, but of this generation. The dispute in the Middle East today is the dispute between Iran and the US and Israel. The dispute is over the Palestinians, but those in the West Bank are indirectly ruled by the Americans and those in Gaza are largely, though not fully boxed in directly by the Egyptians and indirectly by the Americans.

The Palestinians, sadly and due to huge expenditures of resources by the US and Israel, are not the most important direct agents in the campaign for the recognition of their rights.

The Saudi and Egyptian leaders are still solidly in the pro-US/Israel camp but have not seemed to be moving independently in any interesting way.

Iran has had a dramatic last few months, but even though it is not widely understood, Iran has reached a steady state. Iran will discuss fueling its medical reactor and will be in somewhat broad talks with the US over its nuclear program and it will not suspend enrichment.

So we'll see what we can come up with outside of Iran to write about.

Ephraim Sneh wrongly predicts sanctions or war this year

"If no crippling sanctions are introduced by Christmas, Israel will strike"

George Friedman's prediction of either sanctions harsh enough to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear program or war "in the near future" was close to absurd.

Now former Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh claims that either crippling sanctions will be imposed on Iran or Israel will strike by Christmas this year. That prediction is so ridiculous that it brings into question his mental health.

I've gone over the reasons the US is not going to either attack Iran or impose unagreed sanctions on Iran. Iran has a lot of leverage in Iraq and Afghanistan that it would use to retaliate either in the case of war, and a military strike means war, or sanctions that actually put Iran's economy, people or leadership into distress.

It may occur that there may be tacitly agreed-upon sanctions, where in order to placate US constituents who want to see some sanctions on Iran, a deal is reached where the sanctions are set to a level the Iranians consider reasonable while Iran increases its enrichment rate by an amount the US considers reasonable. Agreed-upon sanctions such as this are unlikely but not impossible like "crippling" sanctions.

I have not recently discussed why Israel will not attack Iran on its own. The answer is that it cannot. Of course there is the issue of flight over US-controlled airspace, but more importantly Israel is a supplicant in its relationship with the US. Any Israeli policy that would predictably and drastically harm US interests, regardless of flight-paths, is off of the table just because Israel cannot survive as a Jewish state even over the medium term, even for a decade or so, without large outlays of material, financial and diplomatic support from the US. An attack on Iran that the US predicts would be seriously harmful would put needed US support for Israel in jeopardy.

US voters would definitely choose Obama over Israel if the two were to come into conflict - and this is before the consequences of the attack become visible. As US casualty rates go up in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel could expect a severe punishment. Severe enough that Israel may not after that be viable as a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Iran has already said, if it was not already obvious, that an Israeli attack would be interpreted by the Iranians as a US attack.

[MSNBC Interviewer Ann Curry]: If Israel strikes Iran and the U.S. says it did not approve that strike, would you believe that Israel acted alone?

[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]: First of all, the Zionist regime is much smaller to entertain ideas of ever attacking Iran. Today, it's very well known, it's very clear that this illegal, murderous regime, which is killing children and women and innocents. This regime is being influenced by parties which are, in Europe and the U.S., in political corners, if you will. As far as we're concerned, the Zionist regime is not alone. And it’s continued life and – all the murderous activity it engages in has something to do and is connected with – the arms industrial complex in Europe and the U.S.

Such an attack would have all the drawbacks of a US attack from Iraq and the Persian Gulf, but Israel doesn't even have enough planes to inflict substantial damage. The idea of it is just nonsensical.

So Sneh is bluffing. He doesn't usually give a date as specific as he has given here. On December 26, he's clearly hoping that his prediction has been forgotten so he can claim Iran has to stop enriching by March and someone somewhere may take him seriously.

George Friedman from Stratfor wrongly predicts war or sanctions

George Friedman believes that over the "very near future", there are two options for the issue of Iran's nuclear issue.

There are two possible outcomes here. The first is that having revealed the extent of the Iranian program and having revealed the Russian role in a credible British newspaper, the Israelis and the Americans (whose own leak in The New York Times underlined the growing urgency of action) are hoping that the Iranians realize that they are facing war and that the Russians realize that they are facing a massive crisis in their relations with the West. If that happens, then the Russians might pull their scientists and engineers, join in the sanctions and force the Iranians to abandon their program.

The second possibility is that the Russians will continue to play the spoiler on sanctions and will insist that they are not giving support to the Iranians. This leaves the military option, which would mean broad-based action, primarily by the United States, against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Any military operation would involve keeping the Strait of Hormuz clear, meaning naval action, and we now know that there are more nuclear facilities than previously discussed. So while the war for the most part would be confined to the air and sea, it would be extensive nonetheless.

He does not give a date. I think a reasonable assumption is that he means one of his options will take place before the end of 2010. Given that assumption, his prediction is almost certainly wrong.

I find the leaks Friedman mentions, that some IAEA staffers have assessments of Iran's program more in line with Israel's than Baradei's and that Israel accuses Russia (and also China) of actively helping with Iran's missile program to be less impressive than Friedman does. Fundamentally, the only thing that has changed since Bush rejected an Israeli request to attack Iran in 2008 is that the US now has a president who was elected and has a mandate to reduce, rather than increase provocations between the US and the Muslim world.

There are two issues that Friedman misses along with a large segment of the US foreign policy community. The first is that sanctions so stringent that they will force Iran do abandon their nuclear program do not exist. Not even in theory. A developed latent military capacity for Iran - which Iran is now less than a decade away from - would represent freedom from threats of US, Israeli or Western military intervention in Iran. For Iran, as for any country where there are real and continuous threats against its sovereignty, this freedom is worth a decade of whatever sanctions the West could dish out. Iran would withstand sanctions as stringent as the Oil-for-Food sanctions imposed on Iraq without abandoning its nuclear program.

In reality, very stringent sanctions are never going to be applied because they begin an escalating spiral that leads to war. Iran would retaliate against "crippling sanctions", to use Hillary Clinton's term. This retaliation has the potential to become very painful to the US positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan especially, the US does not need an openly hostile neighboring state.

For domestic consumption, the US pretends Russia and China are blocking crippling sanctions. The US has military control over the Persian Gulf. The US can begin stopping ships to and from Iran today if it wants. It would be no more illegal than getting a Security Council resolution demanding that Iran ratify the Additional Protocols. Much less illegal than Obama's refusal to investigate the previous administration over charges of torture. Much, much less illegal than the US invasion of Iraq under a doctrine of preemptive war.

So yes, technically imposing a blockade against Iran would be illegal, but that's not the reason the US does not do it. If the US were to do it, it would claim to be following its own unique interpretation of the sanctions resolutions already passed. The US is becoming well-known for its unique interpretations of international law. The US does not impose the ultimate sanction, a blockade, not because it would be illegal but because Iran's response would render such an action counterproductive from the US point of view. No Security Council resolution can change that.

I guess that takes us to what Friedman describes as the second possibility - a US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, or war. This is not a plausible option. The US military vetoed an attack on Iran during the end of the Bush administration. Nothing has changed since then, we've known that Iran is attempting to reach a latent nuclear capacity. The US was deterred by the threat of an Iranian response to any attack in 2008. Now in 2009 and easily through 2010, the US remains deterred for all of the same reasons.

When you hear a US or Western analyst say sanctions in the context of Iran, you can think of a very modest increase in sanctions over what is in place today that will be met with an increase in Iran's uranium production. Iran has also adopted a policy that once production increases, it never decreases, so if Iran is at 5000 centrifuges today and another round of slight sanctions is imposed prompting Iran to increase to 8000 centrifuges, negotiations from that point can aim at preventing Iran from going to 12000 centrifuges, but returning to 5000 will never be considered again.

Iran considers the sanctions that it has already endured as the price it paid for the permanent right to keep around 5000 centrifuges producing uranium. This stance, embodied in the "freeze for freeze" deal that was put into place in 2008, is the real reason, not China or Russia, that the US has not been willing to increase sanctions over the last year.

Humorously I sometimes read that Iran rejected such a deal. Then I guess Iran coincidentally stopped increasing the amount of active centrifuges at the same time the US coincidentally stopped its program of periodically increasing the UNSC sanctions, and this coincidence has held for over a year now. There are a lot of signs that discussions and agreements are being held and made behind the scenes between the US and Iran, and have been since before the 2007 NIE was released and anti-US violence committed by Shiite groups decreased in Iraq.

When you hear a Western analyst say stringent sanctions, you can think "war". Any sanctions that the regime actually considers threatening will provoke counter-responses at least in Iraq and Afghanistan. The final course of these escalating responses and counter-responses is unpredictable, but open fighting is more than a plausible outcome. US planners are actually understand this very well.

When you hear a Western analyst say war, you can think "bluff". The US has already admitted that it considered strikes and declined under Bush/Cheney. The US continues to claim attacks are on the table because they wrongly believe it increases their negotiating leverage. Attacks may return to the table after the US resolves the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we are several years from that. Until then, we all know there will not be an actual overt military attack on Iran by either US or Israeli forces.

In one way the US is in an position from which it is much more difficult to engage in war with Iran. The US foreign policy community seems to be newly willing to describe the dispute with Iran as one over Iran's capability to create a weapon instead of one over Iran building an actual weapon. There clearly would develop opposition to an attack should tangible preparations be made or should an attack happen which would elicit a response. That opposition would be better placed than it would have been in 2008 to charge that the parties that took the decision exaggerated the Iranian threat - as there is support for attacking Iran to prevent Iran from getting an actual nuclear weapon, but none for attacking Iran to prevent Iran from being able, theoretically in what Iran considers an emergency, to produce a weapon.

So instead of Friedman's two options, we'll see the continuation of the third option. The US is negotiating with Iran the degree of nuclear capability it will have. One idea on the table is limits to the amount of LEU in Iran, another is limits to Iran's pre-installed centrifuge capacity.

Thinking of the medium term, 5 or 10 years from now, Iran's first ton of low enriched uranium is of little consequence, so Iran is willing to make a gesture of giving it up while Iran currently has an entirely different and effective deterrent to US military action in the US vulnerability in the neighboring states. Offering to send that uranium overseas gives the US a way out from the corner it seemed to be painting itself into by committing to sanctions. It also allows Iran to restock on a supply of medical-use uranium that had been running and that would not have been replaced had Iran not had the leverage of its own active enrichment program.

Iran likely will not accept permanent or effectively permanent limits on its program of any sort. So there will be no deal that can only be altered with US permission, instead any deal will have to be set to expire with a provision for renegotiation in light of future facts or allow Iran to unilaterally pull out given some agreed upon notice.

I think a deal that accepts some degree of continuous nuclear capability for Iran and that can be extended indefinitely with mutual agreement is possible and actually likely to be arrived at in 2010. This is somewhat bad news for Israel, but there had been no better alternative. Sanctions or war with Iran would have led to consequences for the US that are unfavorable enough that the US would reconsider its entire relationship with Israel.

Juan Cole explains the Iranian nuclear situation

Juan Cole's explanation of the issues around Iran's nuclear program is close to exactly correct, but he does not do as good a job as he could at explaining exactly why Israel especially, and the US, France and the West in their roles as defenders of Israel or defenders of Zionism, are threatened by what Cole describes is Iranian nuclear latency.

If Iraq had gotten a Japan option, then over the months-long period that the US was amassing an invasion force in Kuwait in late 2002, early 2003, Hussein at that point would have produced a weapon.

What that means is that if the US believed Hussein could build a weapon, it would never have massed its troops for an invasion as that would have been a waste of time since they'd have to disband once Iraq announced or even hinted its nuclear weapon was complete.

(Despite a program of calculated deception, there was no doubt at all in the minds of US military planners that Hussein could not field a nuclear weapon.)

An Iranian nuclear latency or Japan option would render Iran invasion-proof. And take forcible regime change off the table permanently. It would also provide a lot of deterrence for any plan to even attack Iran from the air.

John Bolton went on Jon Stewart's daily show and said that if Serbia had been nuclear capable, the West would not have been able to get regime change. Bolton is right, but I wonder if he realizes how that sounds to Iranian planners.

The first Israeli nightmare is not that Iran will bomb Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, but that once Iran knows it will not be invaded or even bombed, it will feel free to offer more support to the Palestinians and to pressure Egypt and other Arab countries to do the same.

The second Israeli nightmare is that once Egypt and Saudi Arabia see that Iran has achieved immunity to US bombings or invasion without making unpopular concessions to the project of Zionism, they will want the same deterrence. Once they get it, their domestically costly policies of cooperation with Israel will be less useful. These countries, whose cooperation Israel needs to remain viable as a Jewish state may follow the wishes of their people and become more hostile to Zionism.

(Contrary to reports of rivalry with Iran, Iran has publicly offered to share its nuclear technology with any Muslim state. Saudi or Egyptian nuclear latency threaten Israel and make those states less dependent on the US, which is good from Iran's point of view.)

Knowledgeable supporters of Zionism, such as France's Sarkozy, Israel's Netanyahu and many US political figures are lying, not mistaken but lying, when they declare the danger of Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

The threat of an Iranian bomb is more emotionally compelling than the threat of an Iranian "Japan option". An Iranian bomb is also illegal unless Iran leaves the NPT, while a Japan option is not.

But the true threat, and everybody knowledgeable knows it, is that Iran gets a Japan option.

Anti-climax: OK Iran, you can enrich uranium

I was taken aback by how suddenly the US has accepted that it will not be able to prevent Iran from enriching uranium.

It is interesting to look back on what signals were being sent and how they played out.

The first signal was John Kerry, speaking obviously with the knowledge and approval of the Obama administration, but deniably and in a way that could not be interpreted as a commitment.

After the election Hillary Clinton chimed in, stating supposedly committed US policy that Iran does not have the right to enrich uranium domestically under its own control.

The Kerry line was forgotten and the Clinton line repeated continuously right until the post-meeting press conference where Kerry's line was put into an official offer that Iran accepts in principle.

This deal sets the terms for the negotiating period. The problem with a suspension as a pre-condition for negotiation is that if Iran accepted it 'temporarily', the US would be comfortable with negotiations never ending which would be a de-facto permanent US ban on Iranian enrichment.

Instead, during the negotiation period, sanctions will not increase while Iran's uranium production, at least in terms of productive centrifuge count, will not increase.

Possibly there has been an agreed principle that Iran's stock of LEU will remain under 2 tons for the entire negotiation. Possibly this was offered as a one-time gesture. We'll see, but possibly not until 2011.

Of course Iran will not now dismantle its nuclear program. Iran is nuclear weapons capable, the extent is now under negotiation and Iran has a modest Japan option starting now.

Iran is now set short term and only has to be sure it does not restrain its long term options. While Iran has a modest capability today, it cannot give the US a veto over its long term growth. Iran's next generation, if it chooses will have a much more robust Japan option.

So what was Clinton's job? If it was misdirection, she fooled me. I thought the US was committing to sanctions if Iran did not suspend.

If all of the sanction talk over the summer had been war talk, I would have realized immediately that it was bluster. Sanctions all along had been maybe less dramatically so but implausible for all the same reasons. I figured, wrongly, that the US isn't stupid enough to bomb but somehow stupid enough to increase sanctions. Wrong on me. I'll be more alert for theatrics on the part of the US going forward.