What Israel demands and what it gets may be two different things, but it is now clear to me, if it isn't to Ross and Jordinson, that only the credible threat of force is going to stop the Iranian regime from acquiring the nuclear knowledge it seeks to perpetuate its rule while at the same time not building trust with the West. We don't have a problem with Japan and Germany having that same knowledge: we only have a problem with Iran because it refuses to build trust, and of course it can't build trust without allowing a US embassy to open in Tehran, without cancelling censorship, without welcoming Western tourists like they used to, without holding fair elections like in Egypt and Turkey, without a more inclusive policy towards the Iranian diaspora, without locking up dissidents and without sponsoring terrorism, etc., and of course all those trust building measures that would give us the confidence to trust Iran with a less intrusive inspection regime to do its own uranium enrichment would lead to the end of the regime in any case. The newspaper article below in today's Telegraph is probably as good as any indicator of where Western policy is likely to go in the future with Iran: yes, they are likely to be delivered an ultimatum like we did to Hitler. Sure people will bleat we are only doing it for the oil (I can imagine your John Pilger having a field day on that one), but I think I've dealt with that before: it sounds true until you actually go into the detail of how you would actually steal their petroleum resources, and of course how, having annoyed them, you would give yourself a new problem of being unable to sell them more goods - the answer probably is not to annoy them in the first place? Once an ultimatum is delivered, I expect all those death sentencing judges will be fleeing and all the have-nots will be looting every shop in Teheran to make up for the regressive "taxation" they have suffered as a result of the currency depreciation and the resultant inflationary effect on food prices. Dr Al Bawarni must be laughing all the way to the bank at the prospect of getting more Mehdiabad off us as a result of our takeover offer for MAK. He probably understands all this. Ross and Jordinson plainly do not.
The slow response of Khamenei to the earthquake victims and his continued talk about foreign plots in Syria instead aren't a great testament to his priorities? He is preoccupied with his survival perhaps? Now is probably not the wisest time to dilute us out of Mehdiabad. All IMO. DYOR.
P.S. About 1 million Iranian tourists visited Turkey last year. How many Turkish tourists visited Iran? 15,000. Apparently, even after the rial devaluation, Iranian tourist numbers to Turkey are not down by a great deal. Iranians can't be dumb how well Turkey is doing in comparison?
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Israel demands nuclear ultimatum for Iran
Israel declared that international talks with Iran on its nuclear programme had failed as it demanded a deadline of "just a few weeks" be handed down to Tehran to scrap its atomic build-up.
[Picture of Shahab Missile omitted]
By Mark Weiss in Jerusalem 8:50PM BST 12 Aug 2012
It emerged that new intelligence shared with Israel by the West indicated that Iran had moved several steps closer to developing a nuclear warhead that could be fitted on the Shahab-3 missile.
According to an unidentified official, new intelligence obtained by Israel, the United States and other Western states shows that Iran's development of a nuclear weapon is progressing far beyond the scope reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Tehran has made significant progress towards assembling a nuclear warhead for a Shahab-3 missile, which has a range of nearly 1,000 miles, putting the whole of Israel, including the Dimona nuclear reactor in the southern Negev desert, within the Islamic republic's range. Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, called on the Western powers to declare that the negotiations with Iran, conducted by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, had failed.
He called for Iran to be presented with an ultimatum of a "few weeks" to cease its nuclear programme.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, issued a public warning that Tehran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb. "Every threat against the home front is dwarfed by one threat. Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon," he told ministers at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
In a further sign that Israel is stepping up preparation for a possible showdown with Iran, the army's home front command sent out thousands of text messages in a test run of a programme to alert people when rocket attacks are launched on specific areas.
The test continues this week when hundreds of thousands of people will receive text messages in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English.
