Monday, February 6, 2012

Iran and Israel: Obama's blindspot Intact


In the brief interview he gave ABC before the Superbowl, President Obama declared “I’ve been very clear that we’re going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and creating an arms race, a nuclear arms race, in a volatile region.”
Sounds like a very laudable goal, right. Except for the fact that, as I recently blogged, the nuclear arms race in the Middle East is already under way. It began almost fifty years ago when Israel developed the bomb.
According to a 2007 study by the Federation of American Scientists, “Estimates for Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads. The actual number is probably closer to the lower estimate. Additional weapons could probably be built from inventories of fissile materials.”
In other words, as I wrote, “One of the most uncommented on ironies today is that Israel is threatening military action to prevent Iran from continuing the same clandestine route to nuclear weapons that Israel took; just as Israeli planes destroyed nuclear reactors in Syria and Iraq to prevent those countries from following Israel’s lead”
Indeed, Israel, probably has more nukes today than either India or Pakistan. Speculation is that they could be fired from long-range artillery, dropped as bombs, or delivered as warheads from Israeli submarines or via Israel’s Jehrico 1 and 2 Missiles.   There has also been conjecture about nuclear land mines, suitcase bombs, and missiles fired from Israelis submarines.
A parallel irony, as I pointed out, is the fact that, for the past fifty years, every American President has refused to publicly recognize the fact of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
On Superbowl Sunday President Obama kept the tradition intact.
Of course, so did ABC News and reporter Matt Lauer who let Obama’s statement go unchallenged. But, hey, that’s what the mainstream media has done for years.
Whatever your views on this crisis, how are we supposed to discuss it--never mind resolve it--with such a political blind spot.
Check it out the missing issue yourself as you follow the breathless coverage of the current crisis. 

4 comments:

  1. As an American, whose family as served the principals of our world democracy, the U.S.A, shouldn't we become ashamed of our politicians who are becoming only bureau- rats, as every where else. Enough of, would you think, paying for useless nincompoops.

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  2. Your article rightly points out the irony of the U.S, threatening military action against a country for following the development of the nuclear weapons game plan laid out by Israel 50 years ago. To that tale of blind allegiance and mindless threat mongering, two earlier decisions by two other American presidents − Eisenhower and LBJ − add agency to America’s complicity in this looming catastrophe.

    President Eisenhower’s laid the groundwork for an international atomic energy agency under the UN to promote the use of nuclear energy for “the peaceful purposes of mankind.” Forever known as Atoms for Peace. Under that plan in 1957 Iran inaugurated its nuclear program signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with the US. Three years later, the US agreed to allow Iran to purchase a 5 MW research reactor for Tehran University.

    Fast forward to 1967. Knee deep in Vietnam on the brink of being consumed by it, LBJ agreed to let the Shah, our buddy, fuel the reactor with highly enriched uranium provided by none other than the US.

    Note also that Iran was one of the first to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty in 1968 unlike Israel which has chosen not to acknowledge its nuclear capability nor sign the treaty

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  3. Thanks for the comments.. You may be interested in an earlier blog i did on this subject:
    http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/02/iran-and-israel-oblamas-blindspot.html

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