Will Obama declare war against Iran?

This article comes from the Conservative Review by Pat Buchanan. It is thought THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - February 9, 2010

Will Obama Play the War Card?
by Pat Buchanan

Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up
this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to
play.

Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for
a negotiated end to Iran's nuclear program and impose the
"crippling" sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be
on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight
to war.

And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of
adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in
the Senate.

Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him
at the president's side, could assure his re-election. Last
week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a
bill to put us on that escalator.

Senate bill 2799 would punish any company exporting
gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a
limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of
the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes.

And cutting off a country's oil or gas is a proven path to
war.



In 1941, the United States froze Japan's assets, denying
her the funds to pay for the U.S. oil on which she relied,
forcing Tokyo either to retreat from her empire or seize
the only oil in reach, in the Dutch East Indies.

The only force able to interfere with a Japanese drive into
the East Indies? The U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Egypt's Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1967 threatened to close the
Straits of Tiran between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba to
ships going to the Israeli port of Elath. That would have
cut off 95 percent of Israel's oil.

Israel response: a pre-emptive war that destroyed Egypt's
air force and put Israeli troops at Sharm el-Sheikh on the
Straits of Tiran.

Were Reid and colleagues seeking to strengthen Obama's
negotiating hand?

The opposite is true. The Senate is trying to force Obama's
hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making
him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating
track and put us on a track to war -- a war to deny Iran
weapons that the U.S. Intelligence community said in
December 2007 Iran gave up trying to acquire in 2003.

Sound familiar?


Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made clear the Senate
is seizing control of the Iran portfolio. "If the Obama
administration will not take action against this regime,
then Congress must."

U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those
elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and
re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate
bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem
almost diabolically perverse.

For a cutoff in gas would hammer Iran's middle class. The
Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia on their motorbikes
would get all they need. Thus the leaders of the Green
Movement who have stood up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the
Ayatollah oppose sanctions that inflict suffering on their
own people.

Cutting off gas to Iran would cause many deaths. And the
families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and
the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward
those who killed them.

And despite the hysteria about Iran's imminent testing of a
bomb, the U.S. intelligence community still has not changed
its finding that Tehran is not seeking a bomb.

The low-enriched uranium at Natanz, enough for one test,
has neither been moved nor enriched to weapons grade.
Ahmadinejad this week offered to take the West's deal and
trade it for fuel for its reactor. Iran's known nuclear
facilities are under U.N. watch. The number of centrifuges
operating at Natanz has fallen below 4,000. There is
speculation they are breaking down or have been sabotaged.


And if Iran is hell-bent on a bomb, why has Director of
National Intelligence Dennis Blair not revised the 2007
finding and given us the hard evidence?

U.S. anti-missile ships are moving into the Gulf. Anti-
missile batteries are being deployed on the Arab shore.
Yet, Gen. David Petraeus warned yesterday that a strike
on Iran could stir nationalist sentiment behind the
regime.

Nevertheless, the war drums have again begun to beat.

Daniel Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by
the Jerusalem Post -- "How to Save the Obama Presidency:
Bomb Iran" -- urges Obama to make a "dramatic gesture to
change the public perception of him as a lightweight,
bumbling ideologue" by ordering the U.S. military to
attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack
today and will "presumably rally around the flag" when the
bombs fall.

Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card
and make "conservatives swoon," in Pipes' phrase, to save
himself and his party? We shall see.

---------------------------------------------------------
END OF Conservative Review

Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved.
Please feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.

provoking.