Charles Krauthammer and Caroline Glick have great columns today. Dr. K. points out that “isolation” is not an end game in and of itself especially when it will not deter Iran from acquiring nukes and that Iran has hardly been isolated in any case. Caroline Glick points out that the first rule of strategy is to make your enemy act according to what you do and that you should not get distracted over peripheral issues such as supplies to be delivered to Gaza. Keep your eyes on the big picture!
by Charles Krauthammer
In announcing the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, President Obama stressed not once but twice Iran’s increasing “isolation” from the world. This claim is not surprising considering that after 16 months of an “extended hand” policy, in response to which Iran accelerated its nuclear program — more centrifuges, more enrichment sites, higher enrichment levels — Iranian “isolation” is about the only achievement to which the administration can even plausibly lay claim.
“Isolation” may have failed to deflect Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but it does enjoy incessant repetition by the administration. For example, in his State of the Union Address, President Obama declared that “the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated.” Two months later, Vice President Biden asserted that “since our administration has come to power, I would point out that Iran is more isolated — internally, externally — has fewer friends in the world.” At the signing of the START treaty in April, Obama declared that “those nations that refuse to meet their obligations [to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, i.e., Iran] will be isolated.”
Really? On Tuesday, one day before the president touted passage of a surpassingly weak U.N. resolution and declared Iran yet more isolated, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran gathered at a security summit in Istanbul “in a display of regional power that appeared to be calculated to test the United States,” as the New York Times put it. I would add: And calculated to demonstrate the hollowness of U.S. claims of Iranian isolation, to flaunt Iran’s growing ties with Russia and quasi-alliance with Turkey, a NATO member no less.
Apart from the fact that isolation is hardly an end in itself and is pointless if, regardless, Iran rushes headlong to become a nuclear power, the very claim of Iran’s increasing isolation is increasingly implausible. Just last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted an ostentatious love fest in Tehran with the leaders of Turkey and Brazil. The three raised hands together and announced a uranium transfer deal that was designed to torpedo U.S. attempts to impose U.N. sanctions.
Six weeks ago, Iran was elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, a grotesque choice that mocked Obama’s attempt to isolate and de-legitimize Iran in the very international institutions he treasures.
Increasing isolation? In the past year alone, Ahmadinejad has been welcomed in Kabul, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Caracas, Brasilia, La Paz, Senegal, Gambia and Uganda. Today, he is in China.
Read the rest here: The myth of Iran’s ‘isolation’
by CarolineGlick
The first rule of strategy is to keep your opponent busy attending to your agenda so he has no time to advance his own. Unfortunately, Israel’s leaders seem unaware of this rule, while Iran’ rulers triumph in its application.
Over the past few weeks, Israel has devoted itself entirely to the consideration of questions that are at best secondary. Questions like how much additional assistance Israel should provide Hamas-controlled Gaza and how best to fend off or surrender to the international diplomatic lynch mob have dominated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s and his senior ministers’ agendas. Our political leaders — as well as our military commanders and intelligence agencies — have been so busy thinking about these issues that they have effectively forgotten the one issue that they should have been considering.
Israel’s greatest strategic challenge — preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — has fallen by the wayside.
In the shadow of our distraction, Iran and its allies operate undisturbed. Indeed, as our leaders have devoted themselves entirely to controlling the damage from the Iranian supported, Turkish-Hamas flotilla, Iran and its allies have had a terrific past few weeks. True, Wednesday the UN Security Council passed a new sanctions resolution against Iran for refusing to end its illicit uranium enrichment programs. But that Security Council resolution itself is emblematic of their triumph.
It took a year for US President Barack Obama to decide that he should seek additional sanctions against Iran. It then took him another six months to convince Iran’s allies Russia and China to support them. In the event, the sanctions that Obama refers to as “the most comprehensive sanctions that the Iranian government has faced,” will have no impact whatsoever on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
They will not empower the Iranian people to overthrow their regime. And they will not cause the Iranian regime to reconsider its nuclear weapons program. They won’t even prevent Russia from supplying Iran with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to protect its nuclear installations from air assault.
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And that’s the heart of the matter. The main reason that the past year has been such a good one for Iran and its allies is because they have managed to keep Israel so busy fending off attacks that Jerusalem has had no time to weaken them in any way.
Read the rest: The first rule of strategy
