by Charles Krauthammer via The Abandonment
The Obama policy is in shambles. Which is why Cordesman argues that the only
way to prevent a nuclear Iran without war is to establish a credible military
threat to make Iran recalculate and reconsider. That means U.S. red lines:
deadlines beyond which Washington will not allow itself to be strung, as well as
benchmark actions that would trigger a response, such as the further hardening
of Iran’s nuclear facilities to the point of invulnerability and, therefore,
irreversibility.
Which made all the more shocking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dismissal last Sunday of the very notion of any
U.S. red lines. No deadlines. No bright-line action beyond which Iran must not
go. The sleeping giant continues to slumber. And to wait — as the administration
likes to put it, “for Iran to live up to its international obligations.”
This is beyond feckless. The Obama policy is a double game: a rhetorical
commitment to stopping Iran, yet real-life actions that everyone understands
will allow Iran to go nuclear.
Yet at the same time that it does nothing, the administration warns Israel
sternly, repeatedly, publicly, even threateningly not to strike the Iranian nuclear program. With zero
prospect of his policy succeeding, Obama insists on Israeli inaction, even as
Iran races to close the window of opportunity for any successful attack.
Not since its birth six decades ago has Israel been so cast adrift by its
closest ally.
