Jonathan S. Tobin wrote at Commentary-Contentions on March 17:

Yesterday, John Demjanjuk died in a German nursing home. Though twice convicted of participation in one of history’s great atrocities, with the assistance of clever lawyers, liberal judges and owing to his age and infirmity, Demjanjuk didn’t pass away in jail. Upon his death, his family once again declared his innocence and, due to a technicality in German law that says sentences are not final until the last appeal is ruled on, could even claim that his death voided his conviction. The New York Times obituary, though providing voluminous detail about his case, insisted on describing his case as merely a one of “questions” and “mysteries.”

But any objective examination of his story reveals little that could be fairly termed a “mystery.” Demjanjuk was a soldier in the Red Army who was captured by the Germans. Like many other Ukrainians he fought for Hitler’s army. But he was no ordinary turncoat solider hoping to evade the grim fate that befell most Soviet prisoners of the Nazis. He volunteered to be a death camp guard. Even if one accepts the doubts that were raised as to whether he was the infamous “Ivan the Terrible” of the Treblinka extermination facility, there is no doubt that he was a terrible Ivan who served at the equally horrific Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenbürg camps. But though enough proof of his complicity in these crimes was brought forward to secure two convictions many years later, like many another Holocaust criminal, Demjanjuk didn’t die inside prison walls. While his Holocaust-denying fan club (among whose members we must count pundit and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan) may claim the last laugh we must credit the hard work of activists and prosecutors who never gave up the fight to bring him to book for his crimes. In doing so, they did honor to the victims as well as to the cause of justice. We can’t help but note though that their efforts must be said to have fallen short since Demjanjuk never got the date with the hangman that he richly deserved.

The Cold War allowed many Eastern Europeans who took part in Nazi-era crimes to pretend to be victims. Demjanjuk was one such person and like many others who took part in these crimes, Demjanjuk evaded the long arm of the law after World War II ended and entered the United States where he took the name John and eventually became a citizen and raised a family. But unfortunately for him, evidence of his ties to the SS was uncovered, including an identity card with his picture. Survivors also identified him. His lies were eventually exposed and after many years of litigation the Justice Department was able to revoke his citizenship and deport him to Israel where he was put on trial.

After exhaustive arguments and extensive testimony from survivors who identified him as the man who brutally assaulted victims and killed many with his bare hands at Treblinka, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death. But five years later, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the verdict and set him free.

The court’s justification for this action was the claim that other guards claimed that another Ivan, named Marchenko was the “terrible” guard of Treblinka. But the court’s ruling was not so much a conclusive ruling about his innocence as a meditation on the role of Israel justice. The majority seemed to feel that so long as even a shadow of a doubt existed as to his guilt it would be better that Israel should not take his life or deprive him of his liberty. This was meant and was actually perceived in many quarters as tribute to the quality of Jewish mercy as well as Israeli justice but it may well have been very bad law. As even the Times noted, Demjanjuk had listed his mother’s maiden name as Marchenko on his U.S. entry papers. The preponderance of evidence still must be said to show that Demjanjuk really was Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka.

Instead of the execution that he merited, he was sent back to America in 1993. But there again, intrepid prosecutors set to work to try and convict him again, this time, for being a guard at the camps that his lawyers said he was at rather than Treblinka. Again long delays put off his second deportation and trial (this time in Germany) and his conviction on those awful charges did not come until 2011. …

Among the most shameful aspects of this story is the way some, like Buchanan, used Cold War enmity to obfuscate the guilt of Demjanjuk and other Eastern Europeans who were Hitler’s collaborators. Also shameful was the criticism aimed at the many Holocaust survivors who stepped forward to identify Demjanjuk as one of their torturers. The aspersions cast and doubts that were raised about the veracity of their testimony were deeply unfortunate. Most of all, the unwillingness of the Israeli Supreme Court to take responsibility for the case and to rule with fairness as well as mercy did little honor to that institution.

The plain fact of the matter is that John Demjanjuk never got the sentence his crimes warranted. In that he was not alone since many such criminals evaded prosecution, let alone prison time or execution. And for that we may all hang our heads in shame.

What would be justice for the Nazis and their paid sadists? What would be justice for Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Kim Jong-il, Joseph Kony, Torquemada …? “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”  – though sentimentally decried by Christians and liberals – is a good definition of justice. It aims for balance, for the punishment fitting the crime. But what should be done to men who take hundreds, thousands, millions of eyes and teeth and lives?

Was hanging a just punishment for Adolf Eichmann? Oh, he had to be hanged. Anything less than the taking of his life would have been egregious injustice. It was the most that could be done to punish him, yet it wasn’t much. The Israeli court, too tender of its own conscience (a form of moral hubris typical of the Left), should have hanged Demjanjuk, yet it wouldn’t have been enough. For great crime there is no condign punishment. 

For lesser crimes justice may be done. It’s past time that Pat Buchanan were condemned for his Nazi sympathies, at least in the court of public opinion.

How did it come about that academia, the media, intelligence agencies, and eventually government became positively supportive of Islam and opposed to the American ideals of individualism and liberty?

The answer has much to do with the baleful influence of two dim “intellectuals”, Noam Chomsky and Edward Said.

Michael Widlanski explains what happened in his book Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, which we confidently recommend.

It is discussed in this video:

190 rockets have been fired at Israeli cities from Gaza over the last 76 hours according to this March 12 report.

Israel has intercepted and destroyed many of them using the defensive weapon named Iron Dome.

It is not an offensive weapon as The Times alleges:

HonestReporting corrects the caption:

[The Times is] wrong. The Iron Dome intercepts Palestinian rockets approaching Israeli population centers like Ashdod, Ashkelon, Beersheva, etc.

Moreover, the Times can’t blame this on the European Press Agency’s original caption. The EPA got it right.

It is true that the rocket attack was in response to an Israeli airstrike against the kidnapper of Gilad Shalit.

This is the Telegraph’s report of the successful hit:

The commander of the Palestinian militant group behind the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit was killed in an airstrike in Gaza on Friday. Zuhair al-Qaissi, the commander of the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a Hamas-aligned militant group, was targeted in a midday strike as his car rolled through Gaza City. His son-in-law and another aide also died in the attack while Israel’s military said it killed two more militants in a separate operation.

Then came the massive rocket attack from Gaza.

Rick Moran writes at Front Page:

Israel needed Iron Dome to perform above expectations the past few days because the PRC and its Islamic Jihad allies felt it necessary to respond to the pinpoint strike that took out al-Qassi. That strike reveals a slight change in Israeli defense doctrine, according to YNet News. While Israel has always reserved the right to take preemptive action against the terrorists, this sort of targeted assassination is the result of the terrorist attack last August that killed eight Israelis. the Israelis apparently had an opportunity to kill al-Qassi at that time, but decided against it because they knew there would be a retaliatory rocket strike by the terrorists on civilians. Once Israel’s intelligence services got wind of the plot, it was decided to take out al-Qassi despite the almost certain retaliation with rockets on Israeli civilian centers.

He provides this information about Iron Dome:

Iron Dome has an unconventional history. It took only three years from design to deployment — a rarity among complex weapons systems. The tracking system was developed by Elta, an Israeli defense company while the computer software was created by the Israeli firm Prest Systems. The interceptor rocket was built by Rafael.

It is a marvel of technology and can actually determine if a rocket is a threat to a population center, or whether it will land harmlessly in an open field. CNN describes the system:

“First deployed in April 2011, the Iron Dome system targets incoming rockets it identifies as possible threats to city centers and fires an interceptor missile to destroy them in mid-air. Each battery is equipped with an interception management center to calculate the expected location of impact, and to prioritize targets according to pre-defined targets. The battery also has firing-control radar used to identify targets, and a portable missile launcher.”

This was the first serious battlefield test of Iron Dome and it passed with flying colors. The Jerusalem Post reports that Iron Dome intercepted a total of 27 rockets for a 90% success rate. It is currently deployed around three of the larger cities in the south: Ashdod, Ashkelon, Beersheba. The system is entirely mobile and it is expected that once all batteries are deployed, Israel will potentially be able to intercept any missile fired from Gaza. …

The most common rocket in the terrorists’ arsenal is the Qassam – a small, inaccurate projectile whose major benefit appears to be its easy portability. There are several variants of the weapon and its range is limited to between 5 and 15 miles. Hamas also has a Russian-designed Grad rocket system that is truck mounted, which it purchased from Iran. Iron Dome can intercept all of these rockets.

A fourth Iron Dome battery is expected to be added later this year with 5 additional batteries to be manufactured by 2013. An Israeli defense official [said] it would take 13 batteries to cover the border with Gaza. …

The response to the rocket barrage from the terrorists by the Israeli air force has received the usual blanket coverage in the media, highlighting every Palestinian civilian casualty while downplaying — or not even mentioning — the rain of rockets that is constantly hurled at the Jewish state. Not reported in the media were the 45 separate rocket attacks by the terrorists just since January 1 of this year. That number does not include the attacks carried out over the last three days. …

With the fully tested and functional Iron Dome rocket defense system, the threat by terrorists to harm civilians will fade.

An Iranian reader, Kourosh, tells us that “Iranians don’t care about Mahdi or any of those things. I’m Iranian and I can tell you that most Iranian youth hate Islam and love America/Israel. It’s the Arabs that are the problem. Remember that Iran is a multiethnic country, only 60% of Iran is truly Iranian.”

To illustrate what he says about Iranian youth hating Islam, he sent us video links.

Here’s one of the videos showing an Iranian burning the Koran.

And here we can see tides of men and women surging with ferocious violence, and great courage, in protest against the ruling regime of religious fanatics.

He asks us, “Why do you only show bad things about Iran and Iranians? Why do you dehumanize Iranians? Show something good about Iran.”

With those questions he sent us links to videos (here and here) showing the beauty and grandeur of Iran, both natural and manmade, with glimpses of monuments to its splendid history.

We admire the beauty and the grandeur. And we do not “dehumanize” anyone except those who act inhumanly – and they dehumanize themselves. But our business is to speak out against political evil and the cruelty of religion, and at present we find both in Iran.

It’s encouraging to see that many Iranians want regime change. We wish the US would support the protest movement. Obama’s refusal to do so is disgraceful and dangerous. Regime change in Iran would likely rid the world of the worst threat hanging over it –  nuclear arms in the hands of the mullahs and Ahmadinejad.

We are grateful to Kourosh for the links, and for providing us with an opportunity to explain our views.

In an article that makes good sense until the very last sentence, Ken Blackwell writes at Townhall:

The recent high-level comings and goings between Jerusalem and Washington remind us of nothing so much as all those “consultations” between top-level officials of two other democratic allies seventy-six years ago. In 1936, everyone wanted to stop the German army coming into the de-militarized Rhineland, but no one was willing to use force to prevent it. Hitler sensed this weak resolve in the Americans and the British. The Americans were still in the throes of isolationism in 1936. Britain wanted to talk about Hitler’s move into the Rhineland, but it did not want to use force, or even allow the threat of force.  Hitler could smell fear.  …

As the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran can sense weak resolve and fear in the US leadership now.

Consider this: Iran has been at war with the U.S. for more than thirty years. When they seized our U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, that was an act of war. When they recruited terrorists to kill 241 U.S. Marines and Navy corpsmen in Beirut in 1983, that, too, was an act of war. 

The Iranians are also at war with Israel. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly said he can foresee a world without the U.S. and Israel. He says Israel should be “wiped off the map,” that the Jewish state is but a “two-bomb country.” What kind of bombs would those be?

U.S. policy makers are desperate, it seems, to dissuade Israel from striking Iran. Gen. Martin Dempsey has been to Israel carrying that warning. Sec. Leon Panetta publicly worries that Israel may be planning a “surprise attack.” In Britain, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg frets that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons installation would be “potentially destabilizing.” 

What, one wonders, does Mr Clegg understand by the word “stable”, if what is happening in the Islamic world seems to him to be stability? And Iran’s threat must be seen as part – the most dangerous part – of the jihad that Islam is waging with ever greater ferocity and determination against the West.

Looking at the chaos, violence, oppression, and tumult throughout the region today, where exactly does the Right Honorable Mr. Clegg see the stability that might become “destabilized”?

As worrisome as an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities might be, Iran with a nuclear weapon is infinitely more dangerous. …

Israel reminds us that when a nation’s very survival is on the line, that nation will do whatever it must do to meet its sworn enemy. Israel followed the advice of American and British administrations. They urged [Israel] to evacuate Southern Lebanon. Now Hezbollah, supplied by Iran, rules there. Israel withdrew from Gaza. Now, Hamas, another Iranian cat’s paw, holds sway there. The Israelis — prodded by Bill Clinton and the illusory Oslo accords — let Yasser Arafat’s unreformed Palestinian terrorists have “authority” in the West Bank.

Today, surrounded by mortal enemies, with their backs to the wall, Israelis are told to take more “risks for peace” by a US. administration that is outraged by the sight of too many Jews in Jerusalem.

If we wait until the Iranians have sunk their nuclear weapons deep into hardened bunkers it will be too late. The Obama administration will not act in time. Later will be too late.

Israel: Don’t wait; hit the Iranian nuclear facilities now. The world will thank you for it.

The world will thank Israel?

If so, the sun will be blotted out by trillions of flying pigs.

The map shows the spread of Islam round the tiny state of Israel – which President Obama wants to make even smaller – as it is now.

In the latter half of this century the greater part of Europe, if present demographic trends continue, will also be predominantly Muslim and governed by sharia law.

Think of it: a vast expanse of Asia from Bangladesh to Turkey, from Turkey across Europe to Britain, from north Africa to the top of Norway, all Islamic lands, all governed by sharia.

And no, it is not likely to be a “milder form” of Islam in Europe than in Afghanistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. There is only one Islam and it’s only name is Islam.

We take these extracts from an article, which needs to be read in full, by Andrew C. McCarthy at Family Security Matters. It is titled Islam is Islam:

Islam … is an entirely different way of looking at the world. We struggle with this truth, which defies our end-of-history smugness. …

So we set about remaking Islam in our own progressive image … We miniaturize the elements of the ummah (the notional global Muslim community) that refuse to go along with the program: They are assigned labels … Islamist, fundamentalist, Salafist, Wahhabist, radical, jihadist, extremist, militant, or, of course, “conservative” Muslims adhering to “political Islam.”

There is a “real Islam” – McCarthy’s “we” pretend – which is  a “religion of peace”. “The vast majority of Muslims,” it is said ad nauseam, “are peaceful and law-abiding”. Abiding by what law given a choice? It’s a question “we”  don’t want answered.

We consequently pretend that Muslims who accurately invoke Islamic scripture in the course of forcibly imposing the dictates of classical sharia — the Islamic legal and political system — are engaged in “anti-Islamic activity,” as Britain’s former home secretary Jacqui Smith memorably put it. When the ongoing Islamization campaign is advanced by violence, as inevitably happens, we absurdly insist that this aggression cannot have been ideologically driven, that surely some American policy or Israeli act of self-defense is to blame, as if these could possibly provide rationales for the murderous jihad waged by Boko Haram Muslims against Nigerian Christians and by Egyptian Muslims against the Copts, the persecution of the Ahmadi sect by Indonesian and Pakistani Muslims, or the internecine killing in Iraq of Sunnis by Shiites and vice versa — a tradition nearly as old as Islam itself — which has been predictably renewed upon the recent departure of American troops.

The main lesson of the Arab Spring ought to be that this remaking of Islam has happened only in our own minds, for our own consumption. The Muslims of the Middle East take no note of our reimagining of Islam, being, in the main, either hostile toward or oblivious to Western overtures. Muslims do not measure themselves against Western perceptions, although the shrewdest among them take note of our eagerly accommodating attitude when determining what tactics will best advance the cause.

That cause is nothing less than Islamic dominance.

‘The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism,” wrote Samuel Huntington. “It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture.”

Samuel Huntington famously called the conflict between the West and Islam “a clash of civilizations”. But it’s better described as a clash of Western civilization with Islamic barbarism.

Not convinced merely in the passive sense of assuming that they will triumph in the end, Muslim leaders are galvanized by what they take to be a divinely ordained mission of proselytism — and proselytism not limited to spiritual principles, but encompassing an all-purpose societal code prescribing rules for everything from warfare and finance to social interaction and personal hygiene. …

An all-purpose societal code. That is what sharia is.

Most Americans still do not know that hurriya, Arabic for “freedom,” connotes “perfect slavery” or absolute submission to Allah, very nearly the opposite of the Western concept. Even if we grant for argument’s sake the dubious proposition that all people crave freedom, Islam and the West have never agreed about what freedom means. …

The Muslim Brotherhood is the ummah’s most important organization, unabashedly proclaiming for nearly 90 years that “the Koran is our law and jihad is our way.”

Hamas, a terrorist organization, is its Palestinian branch, and leading Brotherhood figures do little to disguise their abhorrence of Israel and Western culture. …

[Yet] the Obama administration, European governments, and the Western media tirelessly repeated the mantra that the Brothers had been relegated to the sidelines. …  Surely the Tahrir throngs wanted self-determination, not sharia. Never you mind the fanatical chants of Allahu akbar! as the dictator fell. Never mind that Sheikh Qaradawi was promptly ushered into the square to deliver a fiery Friday sermon to a congregation of nearly a million Egyptians.

The Arab Spring is an unshackling of Islam, not an outbreak of fervor for freedom in the Western sense. Turkey’s third-term prime minister Recep Erdogan, a staunchBrotherhood ally who rejects the notion that there is a “moderate Islam” (“Islam is Islam, and that’s it,” he says), once declared that “democracy is a train where you can get off when you reach your destination.” The destination for Muslim supremacists is the implementation of sharia — the foundation of any Islamized society, and, eventually, of the reestablished caliphate. …

Led by the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic parties have become expert at presenting themselves as moderates and telling the West what it wants to hear while they gradually ensnare societies in the sharia web, as slowly or quickly as conditions on the ground permit. They know that when the West says “democracy,” it means popular elections, not Western democratic culture. They know the West has so glorified these elections that the victors can steal them (Iran), refuse to relinquish power when later they lose (Iraq), or decline to hold further elections (Gaza) without forfeiting their legitimacy. …

Once in power, they are sure to make virulent anti-Americanism their official policy and to contribute materially to the pan-Islamic goal of destroying Israel. …

We should not be under any illusions about why things are shaking out this way. The Arab Spring has not been hijacked any more than Islam was hijacked by the suicide terrorists of 9/11. Islam is ascendant because that is the way Muslims of the Middle East want it.

We continue to suspect that Obama wants to protect Iran from an Israeli attack on its nuclear installations.

But one part of the the report we quoted in our post Obama protects Iran from Israel, that the US called off scheduled joint military exercises with the Israelis, turns out to be untrue. They were called off by Israel itself.

This is from DEBKAfile, the source of the information we used for our earlier post:

Contrary to recent reports published in Washington, Jerusalem – and this site too – it was Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, not the Obama administration, who decided to call off the biggest ever joint US-Israeli military exercise Austere Challenge 12 scheduled for April 2012.

Washington was taken aback by the decision. It was perceived as a mark of Israel’s disapproval for the administration’s apparent hesitancy in going through with the only tough sanctions with any chance of working against Iran’s nuclear weapon program: penalizing its central bank and blocking payments for its petroleum exports.

This was the first time Israel had ever postponed a joint military exercise; it generated a seismic moment in relations between the US and Israel at a time when Iran has never been so close to producing a nuclear weapon.

This week, Netanyahu further orchestrated a series of uncharacteristically critical statements by senior ministers: Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon called the Obama administration “hesitant” (Jan. 15), after which Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman urged the Americans to “move from words to deeds” (Jan 16).

The underlying message was that the Israeli government felt free to attack Iran’s nuclear sites on its own if necessary and at a time of its choosing.

Why now? DEBKAfile suggests four reasons:

1. Washington has taken no action against Iran’s capture of the RQ-170 stealth drone on Dec. 4 more than a month after the event, and not even pressed President Obama’s demand of Dec. 12 for the drone’s return. Tehran, for its part, continues to make hay from the event …

2. Silence from Washington also greeted the start of 20-percent grade uranium enrichment at the underground Fordo facility near Qom when it was announced Jan. 9. Last November, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned in two US TV interviews (Nov. 17 and 22) that as soon as the Fordo facility went on stream, Iran would start whisking the rest of its nuclear facilities into underground bunkers, out of reach and sight of US and Israeli surveillance.

Barak made it clear at the time that Israel could not live with this development; therefore, the Netanyahu government believes Israel’s credibility is now at stake.

3. Exactly three weeks ago, on Jan. 3 Lt. Gen. Ataollah Salehi, Iran’s Army chief, announced that the aircraft carrier USS Stennis and other “enemy ships” would henceforth be barred from entering the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz . Yet since then, no US carrier has put this threat to the test by attempting a crossing. Tehran has been left to crow.

4. Even after approving sanctions on Iran’s central bank and energy industry, the White House announced they would be introduced in stages in the course of the year. According to Israeli’s calculus, another six months free of stiff penalties will give Iran respite for bringing its nuclear weapon program to a dangerous and irreversible level.

So it does look very much as if the Israelis are planning to strike Iran. We hope they do.

Post Script: Commenters have more than once pointed out the unreliability of DEBKAfile. We agree with them, and will treat this source of information more skeptically in future.

Obama hates the idea of an attack on Iran. He also hated the idea of the long-planned joint military exercises with Israel – named “Austere Challenge 12” – due to take place this spring. He looked for an excuse to scuttle them, and he found it.

That is our interpretation of the events reported here:

US-Israeli discord over action against Iran went into overdrive Sunday, Jan. 15 when the White House called off Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint war game the US and Israel have ever staged, ready to go in spring, in reprisal for a comment by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon in an early morning radio interview.

What did Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon say that elicited such a furious, punitive response from Commander-in-Chief Obama?

He said the United States was hesitant over sanctions against Iran’s central bank and oil for fear of a spike in oil prices. … He pointed out that the US Congress had shown resolve by enacting legislation for sanctions with real bite. But the White House “hesitated.” 

On the pretext of finding these statements intolerable, Obama reacted vengefully.

The row between Washington and Jerusalem is now in the open, undoubtedly causing celebration in Tehran.

Nothing was said about [what will now be done with] the 9,000 US troops who landed in Israel earlier this month for a lengthy stay.

Neither was the forthcoming visit by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, mentioned.

The official purpose of Gen. Dempsey’s visit next Thursday was supposed to be coordination between the US armed forces and the IDF. But his main object was another try to dissuade Israel’s government and military leaders from plans to strike Iran without Washington’s prior consent.

A diplomatic ruse has been resorted to:

The exercise was officially postponed from spring 2012 to the last quarter of the year over “budgetary constraints” – an obvous diplomatic locution for cancellation. It was issued urgently at an unusually early hour Washington time…  to underscore the Obama administration’s total disassociation from any preparations to strike Iran and to stress its position that if an attack took place, Israel alone would be accountable. …

The “budgetary constraints” pretext for cancelling Austere Challenge 12 is hard to credit since most of the money has already been spent in flying 9,000 US troops into Israel this month. Although the exercise in which they were to have participated was billed as testing multiple Israeli and US air and missile defense systems, the exercise’s commander, US Third Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, announced that the event was more a “deployment” than an “exercise.”

But Obama does not want to deploy against Iran, and he manifestly dislikes Israel’s determination to make its own decisions about its own survival:

Neither Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak or Deputy Prime Minster Yaalon, who are responsible for all decisions on Iran, are willing to put all their trust for defending Israel in American hands or relinquish unilateral military options against Iran. They believe US officials when they assert that the administration is prepared to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon (we don’t! – JB) but they want to see … actions to back up the rhetoric. In the light of credible intelligence that Iran is very close to achieving its nuclear goal, Israel is holding on to its military option over American objections.

The Iranian tyrants may derive some pleasure from the conflict between the Israeli and US governments, but it will not lessen their fear. The essential intransigence of Israel is more likely to increase the growing desperation in Tehran. The Iranians are trying to bluster their way out of the crisis they have put themselves into, threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz. But they know they couldn’t win over that issue. Nor could they win a war with Israel. The only thing they can do to save themselves is abandon their ambition to become a nuclear-armed power.

Obama’s Muslim bias and his chronic inability to make decisions and act effectively leaves control in the hands of Iran and Israel. What either Iran or Israel does next will force the US to react, and Obama will not be able to evade responsibility, perhaps for a new war in the middle east. 

Wednesday night, the Iranian parliament began drafting a bill prohibiting foreign warships from entering the Gulf without Tehran’s permission. …  Saudi Arabia has warned the Obama administration that Iranian leaders mean what they say; their leaders are bent on provoking a military clash with the United States at a time and place of their choosing, rather than leaving the initiative to Washington. To this end, Iranian officials are ratcheting up their belligerence day after day.

If this report is accurate, either Iran is eager to be at war with the United States, or the mullahs do not believe that anything they do will put them in danger of military retaliation by the Obama administration:

The armies of Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states stood ready Thursday Jan. 5, for Washington to stand up to Iranian threats and send an aircraft carrier or several warships through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. Riyadh has been leaning hard on the Obama administration not to let Tehran get away with its warning to react with “full force” if the USS Stennis aircraft carrier tried to reenter the Gulf or Iran’s pretensions to control the traffic transiting the world’s most important oil route. …

America’s failure to rise to Iran’s challenge will confirm its rulers in the conviction that the US is a paper tiger and encourage them to press their advantage for new gains.

The assessment of British military experts was that the question now is: Who will blink first? Will the US follow through on the Pentagon’s assertion that the deployment of US military assets in the Persian Gulf will continue as it has for decades? Or will Iran act on its warnings and block those waters to the entry of American warships?

President Barack Obama can’t afford to cave in to Iran, especially while campaigning for reelection in Nov. 2012; Tehran, for its part, has made too many threats to easily back down. The entire region is now on tenterhooks for the next move, with US, Iranian and Gulf armies on the highest war alert. American and Iranian war planners both accept that their advantage lies in surprising the enemy – without, however, catapulting the Persian Gulf into a full-dress war.

In anarchic Libya, militias are engaged in a power struggle with each other. In Egypt the religious parties are engaged in a power struggle with the military. To what extent, we wonder, is the “Arab Spring” a struggle between those who want to enter the modern world as shaped by the West and those who want to remain in the unchanging darkness of the Islamic past?

We think that if Iran were hit so hard now that all its nuclear and military installations were incapacitated  –  by Israel or the United States, better still by both acting together – not only would the threat of nuclear attack from that belligerent country be averted, but the strike would send a shock wave through every Islamic state, every mosque, every terrorist group, and the heart of every West-hating Muslim. It could halt, or at the very least strongly discourage, every form of jihad, violent or stealthy, open or insidious.

The Muslim world would stand appalled.

It would be the victory for civilization that civilization urgently needs.

Is Obama – the pro-Islam weakling in charge of the American giant – likely to hit Iran? Not willingly. But maybe force majeure is about to move him too.