Rod Blagovich’s trial, Snooki’s taxed tan, and Brett Favre’s unretiring are all apparently more newsworthy than Iran’s acquisition of nuclear power. Nice job, media.
This morning, all the news websites I checked — including Google News, The New York Times, Yahoo News, The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, and, yes, even our beloved Daily Caller (until now) — had zero headlines concerning Iran.
Iran goes nuclear on Saturday. That’s less than 48 hours from when you’ll read this article. America, or at least our media excluding John Bolton, seems not to understand the severity of this situation.
While Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon this weekend, Russia’s untimely gift of nuclear rods constitutes Iran’s biggest step yet toward a conflict with Israel. After Saturday, Iran will possess a functioning reactor capable of producing the plutonium necessary for an atomic bomb.
Don’t worry too much, though — the U.N. watchdogs will be monitoring the reactor closely. With their rampant success with containing dictators like Saddam Hussein, what’s to worry about? It’s not like Iran has had secret nuclear facilities before…
Oh wait. Oops, forgot about Qom — the formerly secret enrichment site.
I can joke, but whether or not the U.N. trusts Iran, Israel does not. I can’t blame them; Iranian president/puppet-dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes death threats toward Israel more frequently than Snooki used to go fake tanning.
Former Ambassador Bolton’s warning pointed out that Israel has some serious incentives to strike sooner rather than later. Long term, Israel must prevent the creation of an Iranian atom bomb. Short term, Israel wants to strike before the rods arrive in order to prevent infecting civilians with radiation poisoning.
Israel has attacked weapon targets before, and, at the very least, President Benjamin Netanyahu must be considering an attack on Iran’s facilities at Natanz, Qom, and Esfahan. On the eve of this grave possibility, where’s our media?
Actionless.
More importantly, where’s our president?
Vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard.
Golfing nearly a dozen times during the Gulf oil spill was bad enough. It’s time for our president to lead. Obama’s notable silence worries Israel, further escalating the tension. Our orator-in-chief needs to bust out the teleprompter and let the world know where we stand.
The message can be simple: affirm support for Israel and demand real economic leverage on Iran. If we’re to avoid the military option, Obama — the supposed coalition builder — ought to be organizing a global sanction on Iran’s oil.
Sixty percent of Iran’s revenue comes from petroleum. If we sanction oil, we defund their centrally-planned economy and give the Iranian people a chance to rebel against the regime in Tehran.
Before going any further on what Obama should do, I’m going to end this column to make a point. I’m no expert on Iran. I usually stick with youth issues, but our lackadaisical media gave me no choice today. On the brink of crisis, you should be hearing from foreign corespondents thousands of miles away, not me. This is the unfortunate state of journalism.
Ron Meyer hosts We the People Internet Radio Show and writes a weekly column for Human Events. He is a student at Principia College and a former National Journalism Center intern who has also written political opinion for AOL News and the Santa Barbara News-Press.