The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, released on Thursday, should give all of us pause. It shows that Iran has made dramatic progress in just the past three months in expanding uranium enrichment all the while it continues to stiff arm international inspectors seeking to gain access to an alleged nuclear weapons development site.
Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium on hand, “if further enriched … to make five nuclear weapons,” according to the Institute for Science and International Security.
We also now know that over just the past three months, the Iranians have doubled the number of centrifuges at the previously secret Fordow enrichment site, which is buried deep inside a mountain outside the city of Qom.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has repelled repeated attempts by the IAEA to send inspectors to a suspected nuclear weapons development site in Parchin, just south of Tehran, despite multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions obligating Iran to comply with the IAEA inspectors.
We’ve been hearing of war and rumors of war for many months. Some have pointed to October 1 as the absolute deadline for Israel to make a decision whether to take military action against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities.
But what has our government been doing in the meantime? And why should all eyes be turned toward Jerusalem, and not Washington, D.C.? Have we ceased to be the leader of the Free World?
On Thursday, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came out with an extraordinary statement. Speaking to journalists in London, he warned that an Israeli air strike on Iran (who said Israel would launch air strikes?) would be ineffective in shutting down Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
“I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it,” he added.
Does that mean the mission of the USS John C. Stennis, which recently was dispatched to the Persian Gulf four months ahead of schedule to join the USS Enterprise and its carrier battle group, is to deter or even prevent Israeli military strikes on Iran?
What a chilling thought. The very fact that it has become thinkable shows how far this administration has strayed from our once rock-solid alliance with the state of Israel.
President Obama came to office with clearly announced plans to conduct “negotiations without preconditions” with the Iranian regime.
While I opposed that strategy at the time, and continue to oppose it today, it should now be clear that the president’s overtures to Tehran have been an abject failure.
