Guns of August, 1939? Iran’s confrontation with the IAEA over the Natanz nuclear fuel facility has triggered a genuine crisis in the European Union — a war-worrying, back-stabbing, bush-whacking, America-launch-on-warning crisis. Daniel Dombey, the Financial Times diplomatic correspondent at Brussels, told me last night that the definition of a crisis is when there is no acceptable solution. EU Foreign Secretary Javier Solana is talking like a Texas cowboy. Line in the sand. Britain’s Straw, Germany’s Steinmeyer, France’s Douste-Blazy, meeting in heated, whispery emergency session in this news cycle, have declared talks with Iran at a “dead end.” Russia also shows profound frustration and confusion with Iran’s adamancy, and the opaque RU foreign secretary Lavrov has signaled support for the EU crowd’s aim to refer Iran to the UN Security Council.
Guns of August, 1939? Iran’s Regime is savvy, well-financed beyond imagination, hostile, paranoid, and motivated with an apocalyptic vision of paradise. Ahmadinejad’s declarations that he wants Israel wiped off the map, that the Holocaust is a lie, that the United States is the great Satan, are sincere expressions of his and his cabinet’s hallucinatory thinking. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Council has just lost its aggressive chief and ruthless intelligence chief in a plane crash, and their replacements will redouble the IRGC capability for mischief and aggression.
Guns of August, 1939? The United States policy is to join with the EU and the Security Council to threaten Iran with trade sanctions and other non-military punishment. The PRC is the one mystery card, but China has never used its veto on the Security Council without the support of one other permanent member. France and Russia, very good customers of Iran’s oil money, are not presently available to give China cover.
Guns of August, 1939? History does not offer a model where political or economic sanctions work to back down a revolutionary military power intent on dominating its region. Not the Bonapartists. Not the Confederacy. Not the Prussians. Not the Nazis. Not the Japanese militarists. Not the Soviets. Not the Maoists. Not the Baathists. Not the jihadists. No model works short of gunplay.
Guns of August, 1939? Many sources confirm that Natanz contains a secret underground facility with a cascade of centrifuges capable of manufacturing 90% enriched fissile material. Many sources confirm that Iran has the capability of a multistage ballistic missile. Many sources confirm that Iran has the plans and intention to miniaturize a nuclear warhead for a ballistic missile.
Guns of August, 1939? The numbers tell the tale succinctly: light sweet crude neared $65 per barrel in New York, entirely on the Iran nuke news. And in the event of any retaliation by Iran to an economic sanction or the eventual logical scenario of a blockade, a barrel of light sweet crude has no calculable price at this time.
Guns of August, 1939? It is September 1938. Appeasement? Concessions? Contest? Europe failed the test, and the German tanks, after one one swift, mass murdering year, massed at the Polish and Belgian borders the last weeks of August, 1939, and then the apocalypse.
