Mullahs - Are You Listening?

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert surprised us in announcing that he will step down in September. Olmert’s most likely successor is Tzipi Livni, presently the foreign minister. (It was Livni’s closest contender for PM, Deputy PM Shaul Mofax, who today singlehandedly rallied crude prices nearly $4 in noting a "major breakthrough" in the Iranian nuclear program.) She previously has worked for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. She is a hawk’s hawk and favors a strike, sooner rather than later. Mullahs, are you listening? She has concluded that the Iranians are simply biding for time, telling a recent cabinet meeting, "The Iranians have no intention of halting their...nuclear program." Is she worried? Don’t think so. She added that an Iranian attack on Israel would probably have little impact because Iranian missiles would largely be intercepted by Israel's advanced anti-missile defense system.

Talks in Geneva apparently failed (a few days to go to find out). U.S. and European officials say they will intensify efforts to impose new penalties; to the Israelis this is more of the same. Thus, timing grows increasingly key for the mullahs. Theirs may simply be theatrics, following the example of North Korea - leverage - with the ultimate goal of handouts from the West. Odds of that as their goal are perhaps 30%.

Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton more closely follows the odds, noting recently that "More sanctions today (even assuming, heroically, support from Russia and China) will simply be too little, too late. While regime change in Tehran would be the preferable solution, there is almost no possibility of dislodging the mullahs in time. Had we done more in the past five years to support the discontented – the young, the non-Persian minorities and the economically disaffected – things might be different."

Thus, Israel is now at an urgent decision point: whether to use targeted military force to break the nuclear fuel cycle. If successful, the air strikes or sabotage will not resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. But they have the potential to buy considerable time, thereby putting that critical asset back on our side of the ledger rather than on Iran's. Odds for this event now 60% from 40%.

Finally, our solution - a gasoline blockade - would prove to be messier in the short run but profoundly more effective in the intermediate term as the Iranian masses would see to the ouster of the government (while we temporarily experienced $7 gas prices), growing violent as they did during the last gas shortage; that was child’s play however to how they would respond to a blockade. Iranians aren’t content under these clowns; they envy the west. They simply need to be motivated.

Robert Craven.