Time is Up to Stop Iran’s Nuclear Bomb

It’s not that unusual to hear hostile remarks directed at the United States from the Iranian 

regime — but lately, it’s been getting not only personal but frankly contemptuous. Iranian 

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki recently let it be known that “we do not take

 [U.S.

Secretary of State] Mrs. Clinton seriously.” Hostility is normal between mortal enemies.

Contempt means they think we’re so weak, we don’t even rate the effort hostility would take.

by  Clare M. Lopez

02/10/2010

At this point, even moves intended to show resolve fall flat with Tehran. Despite a U.S. naval

build-up in the Persian Gulf that includes stationing two ships armed with anti-missile

missiles and providing additional defensive missiles to Sunni regimes in the area, the Iranians

remain unimpressed. Just as they were earlier when the Obama administration offered an

“outstretched hand” if Iran would “unclench its fist.” Or when president Obama wrote ridiculous

letters of supplication and congratulation to Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and president

Ahmadinejad.

The White House decision not to speak out in support of the Iranian demonstrators who took to

the streets to protest rigged presidential elections in June 2009 didn’t seem to win any point 

with the mullahs either. Instead, the Iranian parliament voted to approve $20 million for

exposing human rights abuses in the U.S. Is this country even capable anymore of realizing when

it’s being seriously dissed?

Apparently not, because events in the Middle East are closing inexorably on an Iranian

demonstration of nuclear weapons status. Years of dithering negotiations have proven utterly

ineffective in halting Tehran’s deliberate, determined progress towards acquiring the bomb. The

ayatollahs have missed deadline after deadline set by the international community while

brazenly forging ahead with nuclear enrichment and a succession of missile delivery system

tests. That not one single meaningful consequence has ever followed years of Iranian non-

compliance with obligations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty they willingly signed must

be the cause of much chuckling in Tehran’s tea rooms and war rooms. As long as China and Russi 

can be counted on at the United Nations Security Council to block serious sanctions or any

other enforcement action with teeth, Tehran’s brutal dictators have no reason to expect they’ll

be called to account. Certainly not by the Obama administration.

The scorn that drips from every comment to or about the U.S. by Iranian president Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad and his regime’s thugs has been earned. U.S. refusal to acknowledge the state of

war declared against us by the Ayatollah Khomeini over 30 years ago, refusal to stand up to th 

rampant export of Islamic jihadist terrorism across the globe, refusal to impose regime- 

threatening consequences for failure to end the nuclear weapons program, refusal to stand with

brave Iranians who dare to stand for their own liberty, and above all, refusal to confront

Tehran’s 2-decade-long alliance with al-Qaeda, have thoroughly convinced the mullahs that the 

can get away with literally anything.

Even though Tehran has tried to hide its nuclear weapons program under bunkers, mountains, and

population centers, given the revelations about it over the years from the Israelis, the

Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), and every other Western intelligence service but ours, and despite

the thoroughly discredited 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate which said Iran ended its

nuclear program in 2003, there’s not much doubt anymore (even at the International Atomic

Energy Agency—IAEA) that Iran is moving methodically towards acknowledged status as a nuclea 

weapons power.

The Iranian-North Korean joint venture on missile development has been coming along nicely with

steady advances in technology (such as the use of solid rocket propellant fuel) and rang 

capability (southern Europe by now). Iranian centrifuges spinning at the Natanz show site seem

to multiply by the week (what goes on at the covert enrichment sites is anybody’s guess). An

obvious nuclear triggering device test program and blueprints for fashioning the hemispherical

pits of a nuclear weapon elicit little more than yawns from the U.S. intelligence community, 

even after both the MEK and IAEA revealed the details.

All that’s really left at this point is the buzzer — or more specifically, an Islamic

Revolutionary Guard commander’s finger on the button.

Change is coming to Iran, whether from a new generation of Greens determined to be free, or the

gathering internal implosion of a revolution that’s run its course. But the time clock on

Iran’s nuclear weapons program is ticking faster than either one of those now. Absent action

from the outside, from the U.S., Israel, and/or the international community, Iran will be a 

nuclear weapons power in the very near future. Whether it chooses to demonstrate that status

with a test launch, like India and Pakistan, an out-of-the-blue genocidal bolt against Israel,

or a life-altering electro-magnetic pulse attack over the U.S., will soon be out of any of our

hands unless somebody stops the mullahs soon and forcibly.

The courageous Dutch politician, Geert Wilders (currently on trial in Amsterdam for daring to

speak the truth about Islamic jihad), has called America “The Last Man Standing.” The question

is: are we? Are we really?

Ms. Lopez is the Vice President of the Intelligence Summit and a professor at the Centre for

Counterintelligence and Security Studies.