William Kristol argues persuasively that “President Barack Obama [has] made it clear that he’s resigned to a nuclear Iran.”

Appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America, Obama told George Stephanopoulos:

If the question is do we have a guarantee [that] the sanctions we are able to institute at this stage are automatically going to change Iranian behavior, of course we don’t. I mean, the history of the Iranian regime, like the North Korean regime, is that, you know, you apply international pressure on these countries, sometimes they choose to change behavior, sometimes they don’t. …

North Korea has nuclear weapons. Now Obama is telling us that he intends to deal with Iran as we dealt with North Korea. So, as the Iranians follow in the footsteps of the North Koreans and move ahead to get nukes, we’re going to do nothing about it.

But Israel will.  An Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities now seems inevitable.

I’ve written at length about the difficulties Israel will face in attacking Iran’s weapons program, starting with the need to fly long distances over one or more hostile countries just to get to Iran.  But I don’t see Israel standing by while a nearby Islamic theocracy with a Holocaust-denying nutcase president develops both nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching Israel.  Kristol again:

The Obama administration knows that Israel is weighing military action against Iran. This accounts at least in part for the administration’s turn against Israel in recent weeks—its attempt to further isolate the Jewish state in order to put pressure on it not to act.

I think this gets it exactly backwards.  The Obama administration’s hostility to Israel makes an Israeli air strike more likely, not less.

Just two days after Western leaders revealed that Iran has a secret nuclear facility, the Holocaust-denying nutcase who presides over Iran has started staging missile tests.  The missiles tested Sunday were short-range, but apparently Iran plans on Monday to test missiles capable of reaching Israel (not to mention American bases in the region).

It has become hard to imagine a peaceful ending to the Iranian nuclear problem.  I’ve gone back and forth on this, but it seems highly likely that Israel, which twice before has launched pre-emptive attacks on nuclear facilities in hostile countries, will do so again.  I wish I could be confident that our President would then stand behind one of our staunchest allies, but after Obama’s call at the UN for a “Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967,” I cannot.

Not very cheery thoughts on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.  I wish my Jewish friends an easy fast.

President Obama has slipped to the worst rating of his young presidency in the daily Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll, weighing in at -11 points.  That’s based on likely voters with strong opinions.  He fares better when you look at total approvers vs. total disapprovers — although for the first time, or at least the first time I’ve noticed, he’s in slightly negative territory there as well, with 49% at least somewhat approving of his performance and 50% disapproving.

As soon as I saw that strong uptick in the red strongly-disapprove line above, I knew it had to be a result of Gates-gate, and Rasmussen confirms that.  It’s unfortunate that Obama chose to squander some of his post-racial cred by meddling in an ambiguous incident in a town with a black police commissioner and a black mayor, in a state with a black governor, in a country with a black president.

BTW, I would not show up on Rasmussen’s tracking poll, because I would tell the pollster that I “somewhat disapprove.”  Foreign policy is key for me in evaluating a president, and I give Obama positive marks for continuing President Bush’s policies on Iraq and Afghanistan. (Iran, not so much, although he eventually decided which side to back.) But I’m opposed to pretty much everything he’s trying to do domestically.

Will the Sunni Saudis side with the Jews against Shiite Iran?

The Sunday Times today reports that Saudia Arabia has quietly let Israel know that “that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.”  Israel’s Prime Minister promptly denied it.

But it makes sense, given that the Saudis and other Arab countries are fearful of a nuclear-armed Iran. This may affect my earlier belief that Israel would not attack Iran anytime soon.  Israel flew back and forth over Saudi airspace in its 1981 strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, but flew low to avoid Saudi detection. I assumed it would be too risky to do the same for the much-longer flight to Iran, but if the Saudis were on board …

Ironically, Saudi cooperation in this way would increase the chance of a confrontation between Israel and the United States.  A glance at the map on the earlier post shows that a Saudi flight path means the Israelis would fly across the entire width of U.S.-controlled Iraqi airspace, whereas the Turkey route would send the planes over only the northern tip of Iraq.

Osirak was quite a hike, and Iran is even farther

In today’s Washington Post, former UN Ambassador John Bolton stops just short of openly rooting for Israel to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities:

Iran’s nuclear threat was never in doubt during its presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.

Accordingly, with no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable. Israel is undoubtedly ratcheting forward its decision-making process. President Obama is almost certainly not.

The usual suspects are outraged. One HuffPo commenter said “I would take foreign policy advice from Ronald McDonald before I would take advice on where to buy a cheeseburger from John Bolton.” (Much as I disagree on substance, I gotta admit that is a pretty good line.)

Bolton is nothing if not consistent — the day before the fateful Iranian election, he was in the Wall Street Journal openly speculating about how Iran might react to such a strike.  Out of six possible responses, he judged that increased Iranian support for terrorism was most likely, edging out a direct missile strike against Israel (because Israel might respond with nukes).

As a Bolton-loving, pro-Israel, Saddam-overthrow-approving neocon, I have to say that some part of me is rooting for an Israeli pre-emptive strike as well.  But they couldn’t do it without crossing U.S.-controlled airspace, and I don’t see that happening.

There’s nothing new about all this speculation, of course.  In 2007, two “MIT eggheads” published a detailed paper titled “Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities.” According to the UK Register:

Raas and Long skate over the massive diplomatic problems that would accompany an Israeli strike. The planes would have to fly over Turkey, Syria, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia: and/or American-occupied Iraq. Turkey and Jordan would be extremely angry, but conceivably might not shoot at the Israelis. Syria surely would. America probably wouldn’t, and arguably would have to be consulted in advance anyway, but all in all the Israeli airmen might have to fight before they even reached [Iran], and perhaps again before they got home. The two authors are surely correct to assume that Israel could never get away with more than a single lightning raid; international outrage would surely prohibit any sustained campaign.

Those three words — “America probably wouldn’t” — might seem like an understatement.  My initial reaction was of course America wouldn’t shoot at Israeli fighters.  I certainly hope we would not.  But the more I think about it, the more I think “probably not” is the right assessment.

The MIT eggheads opine:

Raas and Long suggest that a “strike package” of 50 US-made F-15 and F-16 jets — a considerable proportion of the IAF’s current strength — could potentially wreck Iran’s ability to build nukes, using conventional weapons already in the Israeli inventory.

Those F-15 and F-16 jets are the same fighters Israel used 28 years ago when they took out Saddam’s nuke facility at Osirak, according to the writeup in Wikipedia.  (Yes, yes, Wikipedia’s not authoritative, blah blah blah — but I tend to trust the Wikipedians when they cite footnoted sources, as in this case.)  A look at the map above immediately makes clear the logistical challenges of an Israeli strike on Iran, especially since the much-easier Osirak operation was dicey in the first place.

One of Wikipedia’s footnotes leads to the text of a 2001 speech by an Israeli Ambassador, in which he said:

Ten years later, Dick Cheney told me that if Israel not made this preemptive attack [on Osirak], the Gulf War may have yielded a different result.

Cheney — talk about the usual suspects!

And therein lies my point.  There’s a new American sheriff in town, and Mr. Obama is clearly less supportive of Israel’s security needs than his predecessor.  I’m no expert on military capabilities — I wouldn’t even qualify as a dilettante — but it’s inconceivable to me that Israel could carry out a strike against Iran without American acquiesence at the very least.  Remember that even before the war in Iraq, America was enforcing no-fly zones in the northern and southern portions of Iraq.

Iran’s efforts to blame the U.S. for the recent rioting in Tehran are transparently silly, but that hasn’t kept them from making the accusation.  Obama has shown what I and others consider to be excessive concern with what Iran thinks about us.  So it stands to reason that even as I write this, American diplomats are telling Israeli diplomats to pay no attention to what that man with the white mustache says in the Washington Post.

Would Israel attack Iran even over the strenuous objections of the Obama administration?  It’s certainly conceivable.  The question is, how far would Obama go to deter an Israeli attack?  I don’t for a moment think that any American official is eager to shoot down an Israeli fighter — but would they scramble American jets to try to intercept and wave off the Israelis?  And if those jets get within range of each other, what would each side’s rules of engagement be?

Any such confrontation would “probably” (there’s that word again) not permanently cripple U.S.-Israeli relations, but I don’t think Israel will want to risk it at a time when even the chief of Mossad thinks an Iranian nuclear threat is still years away.  So I’ll be very surprised in Israel actually goes through with a strike on Iraq’s nukes, at least in the near future.  But if it turns out I’m wrong — if Israel does take on Iran — I know who’s side I’ll be on.

(Map and photos of Bolton and F-15 from Wikipedia)

While much of Barack Obama’s national security policy has, thankfully, looked like a continuation of the Bush administration, his rhetorical response to the crisis in Iran thus far contrasts sharply with what we would have expected from his predecessor.

Bush turned the heat up under Iran by naming the regime to his “Axis of Evil.”  Obama, who painted himself as the anti-Bush during the campaign by pledging to negotiate with Iran “without preconditions,” initially responded to globally televised evidence of the regime’s  evil by voicing “deep concern” while maintaining neutrality between the regime and the demonstrators.

It took several days for him to express support for the demonstrators, and only yesterday did he forthrightly denounce the regime’s crackdown, using the words “appalled,” “outraged,” “condemn” and “deplore.”  Well put.  (I was rooting for “evil,” the word behind this blog’s name, but I guess that’s too much to expect.)

But even yesterday, the Washington Post reports,

the president and his aides made it clear that the extraordinary events in Iran have not caused the administration to rethink its desire to engage with the Iranian government in order to achieve a deal that would resolve international concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Which leads us to a troubling similarity between Bush and Obama — an apparent penchant for clinging to a policy long after overwhelming evidence shows the folly of that policy.

In Bush’s case, the folly I’m talking about is not the decision to overthrow Saddam Husein.  Like roughly a third of all Americans, I continue to believe Bush was right to go to war in Iraq.  Rather, I’m talking about Bush’s stubbornly prolonged support for Donald Rumsfeld’s “light footprint” approach, in which we sent enough troops to depose Saddam but not enough to pacify the country.  The uncontrolled looting in the spring of 2003 made the shortfall clear, but it took until the 2006 election for Bush to replace Rumsfeld, and months more to launch the “surge” that now seems to have been decisive.

I just hope it doesn’t take Obama three years to understand the perils of engagement with the Iranian regime.

(Photo: New York Times)

I think President Obama’s expression of support Friday for Iranians “seeking justice in a peaceful way” in Iran set the proper tone.  I’d give it a B+, with points deducted for tardiness, as it could and should have been said days earlier.  Obama is right to be wary of appearing to meddle in Iranian affairs, but proclaiming American support for democracy and non-violence isn’t meddling.  Calling for a new election would have been meddling.

Some commentators give the President an F — one of them literally using the word “failure.”  In the lead-in to a broader article on the Obama Administration’s alleged “Abandonment of Democracy,” Commentary magazine writes:

Failure to use the bully pulpit to give the Iranian people as much support as possible is morally reprehensible and a strategic blunder for which he will not be forgiven.

Wow.  “Reprehensible” is way over the top, and the  “will not be forgiven” part sounds like wishful thinking.  The lengthy article actually has some serious things to say about the administration’s apparent de-emphasis (not “abandonment”) of Democracy, but the article’s florid lead-in undercuts its credibility.

Credit where credit is due: President Obama yesterday said unambiguously “we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way” in Iran.

And then, after days of complaints about the president’s lack of public support for the demonstrators, CBS, which had Obama’s words on tape in an exclusive interview, edited that statement out of the clip that ran on the CBS Evening News. (Hat tip: Allahpundit.)

The complete transcript is on the CBS News site, and the headline indicates that somebody at CBS knows what the news is: “Obama: Iran Proestors ‘Seeking Justice’“.

Here’s the text that was edited out, with Allahpundit’s highlighting:

What you’re seeing in Iran are hundreds of thousands of people who believe their voices were not heard and who are peacefully protesting and – and seeking justice. And the world is watching. And we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way. And, you know, already we’ve seen violence out there. I think I’ve said this throughout the week. I want to repeat it that we stand with those who would look to peaceful resolution of conflict, and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that’s a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for…

But the last point I want to make on this – this is not an issue of the United States or the West versus Iran. This is an issue of the Iranian people. The fact that they are on the streets under pretty severe duress, at great risk to themselves, is a sign that there’s something in that society that wants to open up.

I don’t see why Obama couldn’t have said that five days ago, but I’m glad he said it yesterday.  Maybe today CBS will run the good parts.

Charles Krauthammer today, taking aim at Obama’s tepid expression of “deep concern about the election”:

Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren’t dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What’s at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime — and the future of the entire Middle East.

A quibble: I think — I hope — that what’s at stake is the future of the regime.  I don’t think it has ever had any legitimacy.

Time to pick a side, Mr. President.  I don’t buy the idea that the Iranian protesters would somehow be undermined if Obama expresses support for democracy.  It may once have made pragmatic sense to try to make nice with the theocracy, but only because the regime’s power was unquestioned.  Now there’s an opposing force within the country.

Michael Ledeen, from yesterday:

I think that many pundits insist on thinking about the Iran-that-was-five-days-ago, instead of the bubbling cauldron that it is today.  The same mistake is repeated when people say that Mousavi, after all, is “one of them,” a member of the founding generation of the Islamic Republic, and so you can’t expect real change from him.  The president made that mistake when he said that he didn’t expect any real difference in Iran’s behavior, no matter how this drama plays out.

I think that is wrong;  at this point, Mousavi either brings down the Islamic Republic or he hangs. If he wins, and the Islamic Republic comes down, we may well see the whole world change, from an end of the theocratic fascist system, to a cutoff of money, arms, technology, training camps and intelligence to the world’s leading terrorist organizations, and yes, even to a termination of the nuclear weapons program.

I think that, whatever or whoever Mir Hossein Mousavi was five days ago, he is now the leader of a mass movement that demands the creation of a free Iran that will rejoin the Western world. And yes, the wheel could turn again, this revolution could one day be betrayed, all kinds of surprises no doubt await the Iranian people.  Yes, but.  But today, there is a dramatic chance of a very good thing happening in Iran, and thus in the Middle East, and therefore in the whole world.

Update — Rich Lowry today:

Obama says he wants to avoid stoking a nationalist backlash. A legitimate, but overblown, concern. Iranians surely can understand the difference between the U.S. sending CIA operatives into the country to help stage an anti-democratic coup — as Obama constantly reminds the world we did in the 1950s — and speaking up against repression. Without undue “meddling,” Obama could note that governments in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan honor election results, and exhort Iran to lead the democratic wave rather than resist it.

(Welcome, GayPatriot readers)

Since he turned against the Iraq War that he once championed, Andrew Sullivan has taken to using the term “neocon” as a curse word.  “The neocon hope that Ahmadinejad keeps himself in power – barely disguised any more – seems to me premature,” Sullivan said a few days ago — while linking to a blog post that is more accurately summarized by its own headline: “The Bright Side of Ahmadinejad’s ‘Win’”.

So when I saw Sullivan’s headline this morning — “The Good Neocons” — I was prepared for sarcasm.  But he was praising the work of two writers, Michael J. Totten (who years ago rejected the neocon label) and Daniel Finkelstein, whose London Times article Sullivan then quoted at length.  The whole thing is worth reading, but it was a different passage that jumped out at me:

Now, there is something you need to know. I am a neocon. Given all that has happened over the past ten years, I am sure my PR consultant would advise me to drop this label. But I don’t employ a PR consultant. [KP note: please contact me if you'd like to discuss your PR needs.] So, stubbornly, I cling on to the designation. It declares my belief in two things – that in every country in the world, wherever it may be and whatever its traditions, the people yearn for liberty, for free expression and for democracy; and that the spread of liberty and democracy (not necessarily through the barrel of a gun) is the only real way to bring peace to the world. I believe that what we are seeing on the streets of Iran now is a vindication of these neoconservative ideas.

Hear hear, and I’ll take it a step further:  It is a vindication of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq.

I sniped at Sullivan in my first Iran post for saying that Obama inspired the Iranian revolt by sweeping away the Bush years.   To me it seems self-evident that exactly the opposite is true.  If the Bush Administration had not planted democracies (albeit still troubled democracies) in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s inconceivable to me that so many Iranians would risk their lives and their freedom for an idealistic vision that did not yet exist in their neighborhood.  Just as it was inconceivable that Libya would renounce its nuclear ambitions in the absence of a credible threat.

In the long run, the only hope for victory over Islamic fascism is a Reformation within Islam.  As Jews and Christians have evolved beyond the most repugnant parts of their own scriptures, so too can Islam.   If an Islamic Reformation occurs, the democracies that President Bush helped install in the heart of the ancient Caliphate will play an important role.

And yes, I’m a neocon too.

(Photo: Mousavi1388)