What Would Cenk And Bob Do?

11 April, 2006. 743 words.

No doubt you’ve heard about this past weekend’s articles from Seymour Hersh and The Washington Post, exploring the possibility that the Bush administration is planning nuclear strikes against Iran.

Lots of talk on television about it, most of which I didn’t pay much attention to. But these got my attention: HuffPo’s Cenk Uygur implores Bush not to start World War III, and fellow HuffPoster Bob Cesca writes a fictional letter to President Bush urging him not to use nuclear force. georgia10, chief fiction writer for Daily Kos, is strangely silent on this topic (oh yeah, it’s probably Spring Break for the college kids). Not much conservative blogger reaction so far.

To the people who think Bu$hCo is needlessly terrorizing the world again, I’d like to point this out: Seymour Hersh’s article states that everyone believes Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, and nobody believes Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons under any circumstances. By everyone, I mean the Bush administration, European nations, the U.N. Security Council, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). To reiterate; everyone, everywhere, in every nation, believes Iran is lying about their peaceful nuclear energy ambitions. Anyone with any knowledge on this subject expresses no doubt that Iran’s goal is nuclear weapons, and bad, bad things will happen if that goal is achieved. Estimates vary on how far away that grim future is, but it sounds like about 5 to 10 years.

So, we know that it’s an absolute certainty that, if the world does nothing, in 5 to 10 years, Iran will have the capability to render entire swaths of planet Earth uninhabitable at the whim of its Islamic leaders, who routinely espouse rhetoric against Israel and the West. And don’t forget, we know that Iran supports terrorist groups like Hezbollah. (They also stone men and women to death.)

Cenk Uygur and Bob Cesca did not mention any of that in their writing. No doubt they assume this is just another developing case of BushLiedPeopleDied(TM). To be fair, nobody actually has any “slam-dunk” proof or a “smoking gun” on Iran — they are too smart for that. But there is so much circumstantial evidence stacked up against them that you’d have to bury your head pretty deep in the sand to ignore it.

So what do we do? Bob Cesca writes in his fictional letter, “I assure you, if Iran begins to weaponize its nuclear program, the I.A.E.A. will find out about it.”

As we used to say in IRC: Laff. Okay Bob, let’s take a look at the IAEA’s record in preventing nations from morphing civilian energy programs into nuclear weapons. Let’s see… Pakistan, India, and North Korea have all recently developed nuclear weapons under the scrutiny of the IAEA. So I’m sure the IAEA will do the same high-quality job with Iran… if they’re allowed to conduct inspections, that is (you may recall, Bob, that Iran no longer cooperates with the IAEA).

Oh, and by the way, as I said earlier, Iran has already begun to weaponize its nuclear program, according to every intelligence estimate in the entire world.

So, now what do we do? Diplomatic pressure, right? Sanctions? Well, the European Union is “considering” it… after UN negotiations fail. And in the UN, Russia currently does not support sanctions. The director-general of the IAEA (blocked from anything but pre-arranged inspections) agrees: “Sanctions are a bad idea. We are not facing an imminent threat. We need to lower the pitch.” We’ve got 5 to 10 years, after all.

By the way, according to Wikipedia, the U.S. has not had diplomatic ties with Iran since our embassy was violently overthrown in 1979, and the U.S. already has trade sanctions with Iran — except for food, medical supplies, and, of all things, carpets. (We can’t live without Persian rugs, I guess.)

So where are we now? The UN has delivered an ultimatum to Iran: “Please let our guys look over your nuclear programs within 30 days. Pretty please?” Of course, there is no real threat behind that since there is no “or else” and nobody in Europe seems to give a damn anyway. Iran continues to emphatically state that they will not let anyone interfere with their nuclear program.

So I would ask Cenk and Bob, with all that in mind — what, exactly, would they do to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?

P.S. This happy news just in: Iran Has Enriched Uranium, Ex-Leader Says.

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