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US Wants Action on IranBy Kirsten Grieshaber in New York
The United States has stood back for more than two years and politely watched as the Europeans negotiated with Iran. Now a growing number of politicians are pushing for action -- including the possibility of a military strike.
AP
Me? Want nukes? Come on!
Hardly anybody in the US, of course, ever really believed that the European Union could persuade the Iranians to give up its controversial nuclear research program with harsh words and economic carrots. But the Americans held their tongues for a surprisingly long time so as not to annoy their European allies once more by going it alone.
Now, though, the voices of those who want action are growing louder by the day.
Since Iran last week broke the seals --placed there by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- on three nuclear research facilities, emotions in the US have been running high. And the superpower is flexing its muscles. The influential senator John McCain said that the US should be prepared for a military strike against Iran. "That is the last option. Everything else has to be exhausted. But to say under no circumstances would we exercise a military option, that would be crazy," the Republican senator told CBS.
"Gravest situation since the Cold War"
McCain, who ran for president in 2000 and who is widely seen as a future US presidential candidate, described the nuclear dispute with Iran as "the most grave situation that we have faced since the end of the Cold War, absent the whole war on terror." Only one development would be worse than a US military attack and that would be "a nuclear-armed Iran." Even if the US is already involved militarily in Iraq, that does not mean that it has "no military options."
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Strong words -- but McCain knows all to well that, for the moment, words are the only weapon at the West's disposal in its attempt to impress the Iranian leadership. Experts consider a military strike against either Tehran or the country's nuclear facilities to be politically dangerous and militarily futile. The US cannot afford to go it alone against Iran -- China and Russia, both permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have to be on board. The diplomatic drive against the Mullahs is therefore only just beginning.
Nevertheless, the Americans have never believed Tehran's protestations that the nuclear program -- which it for years strived tried to keep secret -- was only intended for peaceful use and not for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is not for nothing that George W. Bush has included the Islamic regime on his list of rogue states for years and declared that the mullahs were part of what he has identified as the "Axis of Evil."
Since the EU troika of Germany, France and Great Britain announced last week that the negotiations with Iran had failed and called for a special sitting of the IAEA at the beginning of February, Bush has not yet made any official pronouncement on the escalation in the nuclear dispute.
Verbal offensive against Israel
However, during her trip to Liberia yesterday, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice added her voice to calls for a meeting of the IAEA "as soon as possible" in order to refer Iran to the UN Security Council.
According to official procedure, the IAEA must call on the Security Council which would in turn be responsible for imposing sanctions against Iran, if its government does not come around. For some American politicians, an economic boycott would not go far enough. They fear that Iran might use any possible nuclear weapons against Israel -- a concern that has been further stoked by the utterances of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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It was only a few weeks ago that he ranted that Israel should be wiped off the map. This week he announced his intention to organize a conference on the Holocaust with the obvious purpose of denying the mass murder of the Jews. In doing so Ahmadinejad has confirmed all those images of the dangerous, crazy Iranian politician that have been prevalent in the US since the 1979 hostage-taking by activists of the Islamic revolution in Iran.
The American lack of trust for Ahmadinejad has recently been buttressed by comments from the head of the IAEA, Mohammed Elbaradei. The Nobel Peace Prize recipient, normally known for his thoughtful and low-key manner, no longer excludes the possibility of a military strike against Iran. "Diplomacy is not just talking," he said in an interview with Newsweek. "Diplomacy has to be backed by pressure and, in extreme cases, by force."
A few months from a weapon?
Elbaradei also no longer excludes the possibility that Iran has a secret atomic weapons program in addition to those nuclear activities known to the IAEA. "If they have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponization program along the way, they are really not very far -- a few months -- from a weapon," he said in the interview.
The Democratic senator Evan Bayh reacted to the Elbaradei interview by suggesting that one could significantly slow down the Iranian atomic weapons program were one to launch military strikes against specified targets. "But that should not be an option at this point," he went on in an interview with CNN. "We ought to use everything else possible to keep from getting to that juncture." Both Bayh and McCain emphasized that all diplomatic possibilities should be exhaustively pursued to avoid a further escalation. Tough sanctions should also be considered, said McCain. Even were they to lead to higher oil prices.
The Iranian government seems unimpressed by the American sabre rattling, choosing a confrontational tone instead. The world's fourth largest oil exporter warned that it would react to western sanctions by raising the price of crude oil. Such a move would doubtless have implications for the American economy.
It's hardly surprising, then, that oil prices rose sharply on Monday. The price of gold, too, shot upwards -- for the first time since 1981, an ounce costs more than $562. Gold, after all, is seen as a crisis indicator among experts. A stable investment in times of instability.