Apocalypse Soon

By Richard A. Baehr

For about a decade, it seems, pretty much every analyst of Iran’s nuclear program has offered up an attempt at reassurance, concluding that Iran was two to four years away from completing its program. Of course, the continued use of this range was an absurdity as the years progressed, unless Iran had stopped the program in its tracks, which was the nonsense communicated in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, alleging that Iran had abandoned a plan to weaponize its program in 2003, while production of enriched uranium continued, supposedly for other purposes.

Today, no one makes a credible argument that a nuclear bomb is not Iran’s goal, so the key question remains: how soon will they have one, and can and will they be stopped by Israel on its own, or Israel and the United States, before that happens? Iran continues to deny that it has a nuclear weapons program, while it continues to threaten to destroy the Jewish state in virtually every pronouncement from the leadership of the country. Of course, given the lack of Western intelligence sources within the Islamic Republic, a strike could come too late. Considering the Obama administration’s seeming disinterest in even threatening the use of military action to stop the Iranian program, and its pressure on Israel not to act “prematurely” (meaning at a time that could complicate the president’s re-election

effort), what we are left with is the knowledge that every day that passes brings the date of a nuclear Iran closer.

We also know that the use of sanctions to bring the regime to its knees, and force it to give up its nuclear program, has failed. The waivers the Obama administration have knocked the heart out of the tougher sanctions regimes that Congress has passed. Diplomacy with the mullahs has been a joke, first as subcontracted to the Europeans during the Bush years, since they are supposedly better at this than the Americans. Once Obama was elected, there seemed to be an expectation, at least in the mind of Obama, that Iran would come to its senses and negotiate away its program, because the Iranians were dealing with Obama, whose greatness would be enough to win the day.

With new reports suggesting that an Israeli strike could come in the next few months, a new book by Noah Beck presents a different scenario for Iran to go nuclear from the one that has concerned the West — namely, Iran developing a bomb on its own. In Beck’s book, The Last Israelis, the Iranians have purchased a nuclear weapon or weapons from Pakistan as insurance against any interruption to their own program.

The book begins with the Israelis obtaining this information and realizing that they have at most a week to prevent the program from becoming fully operational. The story revolves around the 35 members of an Israeli nuclear submarine, who may need to take part in operations against Iran, or serve as a second strike deterrent after an Israeli strike at the Iranian facilities.

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