Makes you want to weep. One day earlier, Britain, France and Germany admitted that their two years of talks to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program had collapsed. The Iranians had broken the seals on their nuclear facilities and were resuming activity in defiance of their pledges to the "E.U. Three." This negotiating exercise, designed as an alternative to the U.S. approach of imposing sanctions on Iran for its violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, had proved entirely futile. If anything, the two-year hiatus gave Iran time to harden its nuclear facilities against bombardment, acquire new antiaircraft capacities and clandestinely advance its program.
There's not much to argue with here. The "soft" approach has in fact failed, Iran is pushing forward towards a nuclear program, and it has had time to protect it's nuclear facilities (though certainly it was doing so from the beginning.) But who's to blame for this mess?
Ah, success. Instead of being years away from the point of no return for an Iranian bomb, as we were before we allowed Europe to divert anti-proliferation efforts into transparently useless talks, Iran is probably just months away. And now, of course, Iran is run by an even more radical government, led by a president who fervently believes in the imminence of the apocalypse.
Well now let's just hang on there. As near as I can tell the only mention Krauthammer gives to the U.S. approach for the last two years is the paragraph I quote above this one. I'd say that's giving short shrift to the circumstances in play here. The Europeans could just as easily argue that the United States obstinate, stubborn, mule-headed refusal to participate in a process that considered anything but sanctions or the threat of military attack against Iran has just as much hampered the European approach as their approach has hampered ours. And considering for the last two years that our "approach" consisted of little more then having nothing to do with Iran and resisting European entrities to get involved in the process, it's hard to argue that we've had much of an approach at all. But to Krauthammer it's the Europeans fault and if we don't go over immediately to sanctions we can blame that on European relcacitrance and even cowardice:
Which is one of the reasons the Europeans are so mortified by the very thought of a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The problem is not just that they are spread out and hardened, making them difficult to find and to damage sufficiently to seriously set back Iran's
program.
The problem that mortifies the Europeans is what Iran might do after such an attack -- not just cut off its oil exports but shut down the Strait of Hormuz by firing missiles at tankers or scuttling its vessels to make the strait impassable. It would require an international armada led by the United States to break such a blockade.
Such consequences -- serious economic disruption and possible naval action -- are something a cocooned, aging, post-historic Europe cannot even contemplate. Which is why the Europeans have had their heads in the sand for two years. And why they will spend the little time remaining -- before a group of apocalyptic madmen go nuclear -- putting their heads back in the sand. And congratulating themselves on allied solidarity as they do so in unison.
In other words, Europe doesn't have the BALLS for the kind of irresponsible, thoughtless and brash action that we do...such as in our successful invasion of Iraq.
So let's get our history straight here. The Europeans tried their approach essentially without any help from us, and while we talked up a good game of threatening strikes and sanctions against Iran while refusing to cooperate with the Europeans, we've now allowed Iran to get to the point where it feels like it can get it's nukes faster then we can get our act together to stop them. Who's betting they're right?
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