Can the West Live with a Nuclear Iran?

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The author Dilip Hiro is thoroughly confused between Iran without a bomb, obviously his optimal position, and Iran with a bomb when on the one hand he states, and inexpressively hopes, that the National Intelligence Estimate finding is correct that Iran has “ceased working on a nuclear military program,” and on the other, when he believes that we could live with a nuclear Iran. But he doesn’t realize that to live with a nuclear Iran is to live with the widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region, as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Libya mount the horse of the nuclear race. This is where the catastrophe of astronomical dimensions lies and not in a pre-emptive attack on Iran.

He is also ‘fatefully’ pessimistic about any positive results issuing by such an attack and focuses his attention, rightly so, on its dire repercussions that could lead to a conflagration of the region. In my opinion however, he underestimates the strategic nous of the planners of such an attack that would target not only the nuclear plants of Iran, such as Natanz, but also the military, civilian and religious leadership of the country with the aim of decimating it. If the latter somehow miraculously escaped its destruction and took retaliatory action against the Americans or on any other countries of the region then such action would be calling for Iran’s total destruction. 

America Hijacked by a Lemon

Obama’s West Point Speech Regurgitation of his Failed Foreign Policy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

America hijacked by a Lemon!  This will be the historical caption and history’s verdict on President Obama in his foreign policy misadventures of weakness. Who could have thought that the third rate powers of Brazil and Turkey would have the chutzpah and insolence to rudely supplant and supersede U.S. diplomacy on a most grave issue of our times, i.e., the attempted acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, by their own diplomacy, if America was not perceived under Obama as being weak and disrespectful? And the West Point speech clearly showed that the President still believes that diplomacy sans ‘rattling the sabres’ remains the pivot of his foreign policy despite the fact that this policy abysmally failed to deliver on his primary goals. That is, enticing the enemies of the U.S. to take the diplomatic road and repossess, by this ‘loving diplomacy’ toward implacable foes, the prestige and respect America had prior to the so called dispossession of these attributes by his Texan predecessor.

President Obama stuck to his geopolitical ignorant denial, due to lack of imagination and political nous, does not realize that a symphony, a ‘concert of peace’ having as players other powers can only succeed and be applauded if it has a Karajan as conductor. It is this role of the indispensable conductor in the realm of geopolitics that America has lost with the ‘sitting’ of Obama in the Oval Office. However, there are dawning auspicious signs that the lemon that Americans elected as president is in the process of being squeezed out. But the danger is that by the end of this process, the United States itself might be squeezed out of its strength as the sole superpower.