Month: December 2006

State Dept Confirms Arafat Masterminded Murder Of American Diplomats

A newly declassified report from 1973 shows that Yasser Arafat personally commanded the terrorist attack that resulted in the murders of Ambassador Cleo Noel and his deputy George Moore, as well as a Belgian diplomat. Moreover, the two murders appear to have been the entire point of Arafat’s attack:

The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yassir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian embassy.
Initially, the main objective of the attack appeared to be to secure the release of the Fatah/BSO [Black September Organization] leader Muhammed Awadh (Abu Da’ud) from Jordanian captivity. Information acquired subsequently reveals that the Fatah/BSO leaders did not expect Awadh to be freed, and indicates that one of the primary goals of the operation was to strike at the United States because of its efforts to achieve a Middle East peace settlement which many Arabs believe would be inimical to Palestinian interests.

The State Department had proof all along that Yasser Arafat not only masterminded this attack, but deliberately plotted to kill American diplomats as a means to pressure the US out of the Middle East. In other words, the PLO/Fatah/BSO conducted a terrorist attack on American interests, murdered Americans, and got away with it. They sat on this information while the US insisted on negotiating with Arafat, even though many suspected he had planned the murders all along.
The State Department should have warned successive administrations from dealing with this terrorist and instead recommended that we capture him and try him for the murders of Noel and Moore. These men worked for the State Department themselves. I guess the lesson here is that State won’t lift a finger to bring assassins of diplomats to justice, a lesson that current diplomats may want to consider now. (via It Shines For All)
UPDATE: Want to know what kind of man Yasser Arafat had murdered? Read Cheat Seeking Missiles for a first-person remembrance of Cleo Noel.

Ford On Iraq

The blogosphere is abuzz today about the Bob Woodward interview that took place in July 2004 with now-deceased former President Gerald Ford about Iraq and other topics. In the interview, Ford criticized the Iraq invasion, opposing the decision and claiming that he would have looked harder for other options:

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford’s own administration.
In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney — Ford’s White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.
“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.” …
The Ford interview — and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 — took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death.

It’s the last part I want to address first. It seems more than just a little craven to issue such biting criticisms to a journalist like Bob Woodward, but then insist that they be released only posthumously. It’s a shame, because Ford had real political courage — no man could have survived the post-Watergate mess without it — but this is a sad denouement. If Ford opposed it, he could easily have spoken out against the invasion, either before or after the interview, and yet he decided to keep his mouth shut until such a point when he did not have to face criticism himself for his statements. I think that’s something on which proponents and opponents of the war could find agreement.
Even in getting to the heart of his argument, though, Ford is just plain wrong. Further sanctions would not have changed anything, which we knew by the time Ford gave this interview. We had imposed sanctions on Saddam Hussein for twelve years, and he still regularly attacked the forces imposing them on him. By summer of 2004, the complete corruption of both the sanctions and the UN program to feed and succor ordinary Iraqis had been completely exposed, and we knew about the billions of dollars both placed into Saddam’s pockets.
In fact, George Bush had planned to impose a slate of so-called “super sanctions” on Iraq just before the 9/11 attacks. That day changed all the calculations. Every Western intelligence service reported that Saddam had continued to retain his WMD stocks, and the UN had reported that Saddam refused to account for known WMD materials throughout the sanctions regimes. The question then became whether we wanted to wait for Saddam to attack us or whether we would end twelve years of low-level war and useless sanctions with a regime that had thumbed its nose at the UN and violated the terms of the cease-fire that kept it alive in the first place.
And by the fall of 2001, the sanctions had effectively collapsed. France and Russia sold Saddam military materials by routing them through Syria in defiance of their own votes at the UN Security Council. Both campaigned endlessly for an end to the sanctions regime, not for an increased set of economic penalties on Saddam. Both wanted to start exercising the oil leases that Saddam arranged as an incentive to lift the sanctions off of his regime.
Ford spent his two years as a non-confrontational President on the world stage. He championed detente and peaceful co-existence with the Soviets, although he never went anywhere near as far as Jimmy Carter, who infamously bussed Leonid Brezhnev just before Brezhnev invaded Afghanistan. Ford was no isolationist, but he didn’t believe in actively fighting for American security abroad in the manner dictated by the Islamist threat. That’s no great shame, but it isn’t exactly a surprise, either. I would not have expected anything else from Ford and would have been surprised had he supported the Iraq invasion. I am a little surprised that he would have taken the easy way out in opposing the effort, however.
UPDATE: Bill Bennett agrees with my first point.
UPDATE II: I took Germany out of the sanctions-breakers, per Ralf in the comments; I don’t have citations for any German sanction-breaking on military equipment.

Message Delivered

The US has delivered a message to Moqtada al-Sadr in the ongoing struggle to contain the violence in Baghdad and end the sectarian militias. A raid by US and Iraqi Army forces killed a high-ranking aide to Sadr who had supplied IEDs used in attacks against Iraqi forces:

A top deputy of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was killed Wednesday during a raid by U.S. and Iraqi troops in the southern holy city of Najaf, sparking protests from Sadr’s followers and complicating an already tense relationship with the powerful anti-American leader.
Hurling rocks and shouting expletives, thousands of angry Sadr loyalists marched through the streets of Najaf after Sahib al-Amiri was shot and killed by a U.S. soldier during an early morning raid. “Agents and stooges!” protesters shouted at Iraqi soldiers and local authorities.
U.S. military officials declined to confirm that Amiri was a Sadr aide, saying only that he had provided explosives for use against Iraqi and U.S. forces. Sadr officials said Amiri was an aide and a lawyer who ran an educational organization that helped orphans and impoverished children. They said he had no connections to illegal activity.
In a statement, the U.S. military said Iraqi and U.S. forces were trying to detain Amiri and shot him only when he pointed an assault rifle at an Iraqi soldier.

Up to now, the US has deferred to Nouri al-Maliki on the question of Sadr, and predictably Sadr has taken the opportunity to grow more aggressive. However, after walking out of the governing coalition recently, Sadr has reduced the deterrent to act against his militias — and the US took advantage of that opportunity in kind.
The message? The US has tired of Sadr and his death squads, and we have apparently decided not to defer to Maliki on that issue any longer. Maliki no longer enjoys much confidence with the US at any rate, and earlier this month was the potential victim of a government reorganization that got scotched at the last minute by Ali al-Sistani. That failure seems to have convinced American forces to switch to Plan B in order to marginalize Sadr.
The intent, according to the American military spokesman, was to capture Amiri, not to kill him. Even the Amiri family said that the soldiers told them they wanted him for questioning when they conducted the raid. Amiri tried to run, however, and once on the roof of his house found himself unable to jump to the next house. They shot him when he pointed a weapon at the forces that followed him onto the roof, at least according to the military; his family doesn’t have an alternate version but says all the gunshots came from the US/Iraqi forces.
What could the Iraqis and the US have wanted to ask Amiri? Besides his efforts at bomb-building, what else did he know about Sadr that made him interesting enough to conduct a joint operation in the newly-transferred province of Najaf? Whatever the answers, Sadr knows that the US might be knocking on more doors in the future, perhaps even his.

Iran Pays For Kassam Attacks In Israel

The Iranian proxy terrorist group Hezbollah transfers thousands of dollars for every Kassam rocket attack launched by Palestinian terrorists from Fatah and Islamic Jihad, the Jerusalem Post reports. The scale escalates if the attack kills or wounds Israelis, and the money originates in Iran:

According to Israeli intelligence information, Hizbullah is smuggling cash into the Gaza Strip and paying “a number of unknown local splinter groups” for each attack.
Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) sources said the Islamist organization paid several thousand dollars for each attack, with the amount dependent on the number of Israelis killed or wounded. …
According to the officials, while Islamic Jihad was behind most recent rocket attacks – including the one on Tuesday night that critically wounded 14-year-old Adir Basad in Sderot – several splinter terrorists groups are also involved and have received direct funding from Hizbullah. … Islamic Jihad gets the money via its headquarters in Damascus while Fatah’s Tanzim terror group and the Popular Resistance Committees receive payment from Hizbullah in Lebanon.
All of the money originated in Iran, the officials said.

Once again, Iran shows why negotiations on any kind of security arrangements for Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East will prove fruitless. Iran occupies the central position for terrorism throughout the region; it assists the militias in Iraq, it supports the Hezbollah push to overthrow the Lebanese government, and now we see that it directly funds the Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli citizens. It even funds Fatah terror groups while Ehud Olmert insists on propping up their leader with a hundred million in cash.
Olmert, meanwhile, has implemented a policy that hopes to maintain a cease-fire that doesn’t really exist. While the missile attacks continue from the PA areas supposedly participating in this cease-fire, Olmert has freed the IDF to attack only “pinpoint” locations where the Kassams originate. Olmert insists that the cease-fire has great strategic importance, because — get this — Israel’s restraint had earned it “a lot of understanding and appreciation” around the world. Not only that, but the cease-fire had given Israel some undefined future “leeway”.
Leeway to do what? Stop abiding by a phony cease-fire? I must have missed all the “appreciation” thrown Israel’s way for its restraint. Israel has shown restraint for years in not giving the Palestinians the total war that for which they have voted and for which they have given ample provocation, and it has bought them nothing from the global community except criticism even from their friends, who sometimes seem to prefer Israel as victim rather than as victor.
I’m all for peaceful solutions, but that takes two sides that want peace. Israel clearly wants peace with the Palestinians, while the Palestinians want Israel and nothing less. And one of the reasons why that remains so is because of Iranian funding for the extremists and terrorists who get richer with every terrorist action. The ISG got it backwards; only when we convince the other states in the region that their support for terrorism carries an existential threat to their regimes will there be peace in the Holy Land, and not the other way around.

Islamists Disappear From Mogadishu

In a lightning-fast collapse, the Islamists in Somalia have apparently disappeared. The largest city in the nation has erupted in gang warfare as tribal chiefs retracted their support for the radical Islamist forces that just days ago issued a call for jihadis around the world to attack Ethiopia:

The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away.
In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control.
Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to the death for their religion and their land, making their disappearance that much more unexpected.
Fortified checkpoints across the city — in front of the radio station, at the airport, at the main roads leading into Mogadishu and outside police stations — were abruptly abandoned Wednesday night, residents said.

This shows the result of a full military response to Islamist provocations. After watching half of their comrades torn to pieces by combat helicopters, one deserter told the Times that the Islamists assumed that the war would be fought like the others in their experience, which meant hardly fought at all. Ethiopia had no intent to allow the Islamists to give tit-for-tat terrorist responses to measured military action, and the Islamists quit when they started dying in droves.
In fact, they quit so fast, they literally left their last holdout completely undefended. By late last night, the former leaders of the UIC had to ask them to return to their posts just so the new internationally-recognized government could take over without any power vacuum. They were too late; their Shebab (youth) armies had already stripped off their makeshit uniforms and blended back into the civilian population.
The UIC collapsed, prosaically enough, when clan leaders demanded the return of the trucks they lent to the Islamists for military operations. Clan leaders took note of spontaneous demonstrations erupting all over the capital against the Islamists and in support of the new government. The loss of the equipment meant that their forces could offer no real resistance to a determined military effort to crush them — and they threw in the towel.
This loss crushes the reputation of the Islamists as dedicated to fighting to the death. They will if they see an advantage in it, and that advantage has been gained by Western reluctance to fight an all-out war against them. Ethiopia, after having been threatened by both a traditional attack from Somalia and a guerilla/terrorist war, responded with overwhelming force, and they crumbled. Somewhere there is a lesson for the West.
UPDATE: The Baidoa government now claims that it has captured Mogadishu:

A Somali lawmaker said the government had captured the capital Mogadishu on Thursday after Islamist rivals abandoned it, but a government spokesman could not immediately confirm the report.
“The government has taken over Mogadishu. We are now in charge,” MP Mohamed Jama Fuuruh told Reuters by telephone from Mogadishu port.
But government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari was more cautious. “We are taking control of the city and I will confirm when we have established complete control,” he said.
Earlier he said Ethiopian and Somali government troops held the main routes into the capital and were poised to capture it.

Either way, their first item of business has to be gaining control of the streets and imposing order on the capital. Ethiopian troops will have to assist in that if the Somali government is to succeed.

Belarus Doubles Down

Belarus has decided to call Vladimir Putin’s bluff on the standoff over energy prices and transit rights. Instead of acquiescing to Putin’s demand for half of Belarus’ revenues from its pipeline service to Europe and a doubling of their own energy prices, Belarus has threatened to shut off the pipe altogether, interrupting service to Europe and cutting off revenues to Gazprom:

Belarus has implicitly threatened to stop Russian gas deliveries through its pipelines to Western Europe unless Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom takes back its demand that Minsk pay steep price increases in 2007.
“We are inter-dependent. If I don’t have a domestic gas supply contract, Gazprom won’t have a transit deal,” Belarus’s Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko said at Minsk airport late on Tuesday after his return from failed talks in Moscow.
About 80 percent of Russian exports to Europe are pumped via Ukraine, with the rest going through Belarus. Russia supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas to more than 20 countries.

If that’s implicit, then I’d hate to hear an explicit threat. The Belarussian envoy made it pretty clear that Russia needs to consider all of the implications of its threats. The Belarussians may figure that they have nothing to lose from their brinksmanship, considering the difficulty they will have in paying the new prices. Dictator Alexander Lukashenko has already started warning people to find alternate means of heating their homes this winter, and that will be even more urgently necessary with the latest developments.
Putin may withstand a standoff better than Belarus, but that will only be seen in the event — and Putin has a lot to lose in Belarus besides some energy sales. Lukashenko may well decide to play footsie with the West, a move that could put an end to Putin’s long-range goal of reabsorbing Belarus. He already has NATO members on his borders in the Baltics, and Ukraine could also eventually go that way. A breakaway Belarus could isolate Putin even more from Europe and threaten his influence on the entire region, especially in the Caucasus, where Putin has enough trouble.
Europe may feel constrained by a potential energy crisis, but Belarus only accounts for 20% of their imports. Putin could try driving the difference through Ukraine, but that would give Victor Yushchenko even more leverage than he has now, after facing down a similar situation last year with Putin. The Russians have the ball in their court now, and they have to decide whether losing 20% of their revenue this year and possibly losing all influence in Belarus is worth the price hikes and the shakedown racket that Putin wants to implement.

Reid On Ford Funeral: I’m Busy

The death of a former President usually means that the leadership of all three branches of the government gather to mourn on behalf of the nation and to pay final respects to those once chosen to lead it. These events come rarely and allow for a moment of ceremonial unity in the political world. Not every politician attends, but leadership is expected to make their appearances.
However, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his chief deputy Dick Durbin apparently can’t be bothered. They had a junket scheduled to tour Macchu Picchu, and by golly, no dead President will convince them to reschedule:

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will miss the state funeral for former President Gerald Ford at the Capitol Rotunda on Saturday night, opting instead to lead a delegation to South America with an expected stop at the Machu Picchu Inca ruins.
Reid, D-Nev., left Wednesday afternoon from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland with a bipartisan group of five other senators, including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the incoming assistant majority leader, for what has been described as a weeklong visit to Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.
The highlight of the trip is said to be separate meetings with the presidents of the three nations, with the last one scheduled in Peru on Tuesday morning.
“They would be difficult to cancel,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said via mobile phone as the congressional delegation took off in a U.S. military plane.

Baloney. It’s not hard to cancel; all one has to do is to contact the consulates of those nations and explain that when one of our former Presidents pass away, elected leadership is expected to attend the funeral. Nor is it the case that Ford died after they left the country, as the junket started with an afternoon flight today.
They do have an excuse, however. Their spokesman noted that relations with the three nations are in need of improvement. Apparently, Reid has a deadline for improved relations that requires him to accomplish it on the day of Gerald Ford’s funeral.
What a classless act, and Reid, Durbin, Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar should be ashamed of themselves. If Harry Reid can’t figure out that his new position as Majority Leader carries some extra responsibilities, then perhaps the Democrats need to find someone who does understand it.
UPDATE: Hugh says — Turn. The. Plane. Around.

Belarus Gets The Ukrainian Treatment From Its Pal

Despite its insistence on remaining the last dictatorship of Europe and a lackey of Russia, Belarus has found out the limits of friendship with Vladimir Putin. It turns out that Putin wants to stop charging the Belarussians “friend” rates for natural gas, charging them double now and forcing them to give half of its revenue for pipeline services to the Russians (via The Florida Masochist):

Residents of Belarus’s capital stocked up on warm clothes and electric heaters as fears rose Tuesday that Russia would soon cut off the natural gas supply on which the country depends.
Russia says Belarus must pay more than twice as much for gas next year — and even more later — and turn over a half-share in its pipeline system, a major transit route to Europe, if it wants to avoid a New Year’s gas shutoff. …
The dispute strongly echoes last year’s crisis between Russia and Ukraine, which briefly disrupted supplies of Russian gas to Western Europe. But in that case, Russia’s price demand was seen as political pressure against a Western-leaning government; this time it is against a country whose longtime leader has close ties with Moscow.
Belarusan opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich suggested Gazprom’s demands were aimed at forcing President Alexander Lukashenko to cede control over the pipeline network and other attributes of sovereignty in exchange for continued Russian support for his authoritarian regime.
“Through energy pressure, the Kremlin is trying to force Lukashenko to integrate according to the Russian scenario, which is extremely dangerous for Belarus,” Milinkevich said.

The last we heard from this former Soviet republic on Russia’s western border was this spring, when Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko jailed his opposition for “unsanctioned” protests. Alexander Milinkevich had led the rally to highlight oppression on Europe’s doorstep, as well as to urge Belarus to leave the Russian orbit and align itself with the freedom of the West in Europe. Belarus’ large Polish contingent wants closer relations with Poland as well.
Lukashenko did Putin’s bidding, stopping a repeat of the Orange Revolution that occurred in neighboring Ukraine last year. His reward for his loyalty to the growing Putin empire? A takeover of Belarussian energy transfers that bears more resemblance to a bust-out on The Sopranos. Not only does Putin want to charge Belarus essentially what he charges Ukraine for their energy, but he wants a large piece of the little action Belarus gets from having Russia’s pipeline to Europe run through their country.
This is a ballsy move for Putin. Lukashenko might well start looking to better-deal Russia by looking westward for assistance, although it’s not likely. Europe cannot supply Belarus with energy, considering that they get it from Russia through Belarus now. If Belarus and Ukraine acted in concert to shut down Russian exports to Russia, however, they would get everyone’s attention very quickly — but they couldn’t survive the winter with an energy boycott in place.
Putin has Lukashenko where he wants him, for the moment at least. However, Lukashenko now knows that kissing Putin’s rear gets him zero discount on goods and services and Putin’s hand thrust deep within Lukashenko’s pocket. If Lukashenko and Europe can find another distribution channel for energy, Lukashenko might rethink the relationship between Minsk and Moscow — or Belarussians might find someone who will.

Sane, Relatively Speaking

With the Minneapolis Star-Tribune changing hands from the McClatchy Company to the private investment group Avista Capital Partners, one has to wonder what effect the Strib’s readers will see as a result. As I noted yesterday, the group’s website gives little indication of their political bent; they describe their media acquisition strategies thusly:

Avista targets companies that have strong, often proprietary, positions in attractive niche sectors of the content-creation, content-packaging and content-distribution segments of the media industry. These businesses are characterized by stable cash flows, attractive margins and low capital-expenditure and working-capital requirements.
Avista prefers media businesses with lower technology risk and those that offer the opportunity to capitalize on Avista’s operating expertise to build more robust revenue growth. In addition, Avista has particular interest in well-branded companies that can exploit additional and emerging distribution channels and/or improve the geographic reach of their content. Avista believes attractive investment opportunities will be found in niche markets and mid-sized companies that are not the focus of most mainstream media investors.

The current publisher of the Strib, J. Keith Moyer, described it differently to Strib employees, as Fraters Libertas noted. Moyers wrote that “They are progressive, very smart, good-hearted people who believe that no other media platform can reach a local audience as effectively as newspapers.” It’s hard to know whether he meant progressive in political terms or as a description of their management style. Brian “St. Paul” Ward drew an inference of the former from looking at a couple of the political contributions of Moyer’s new Avista boss, Christopher Harte.
I decided to take a closer look at Harte’s political activity, given the far-left positions taken now by the Strib’s editorial board. His donation activity doesn’t seem very strident or extreme, especially in comparison to the Strib. While definitely a Democratic partisan, his money appears to go towards more centrist candidates. In the 2006 cycle, this seems especially true.
The only two contributions listed at Open Secrets went to two Democrats associated with moderation — $2K to Joe Lieberman and $1K to Hank Johnson, both contributions coming in the primaries. Lieberman faced off against the netroots candidate, Ned Lamont, while Johnson challenged Georgia loon Cynthia McKinney. I find it interesting that of all the races this last cycle, Harte only chose to contribute to these in the primaries (reporting is still out, I believe, on the general election contribution cycle), and that he chose the more moderate candidates.
Perhaps this will make little difference, as Harte has apparently committed to Moyer to keep current management in place, including Moyer himself. However, the massive drop in the Strib’s value means that Harte and Avista will have to address the root causes of the erosion sometime, and the strident nature of the Strib might garner the attention of a man who puts his money towards moderation. And, quite frankly, anything at this point would be an iimprovement.

So The Message Got Delivered, Then

Iran has acknowledged that its oil industry has fallen on hard times, and guess who they blame for their troubles? The Great Satan, this time, might not mind:

Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh has lamented that the development of Iran’s oil industry was suffering from US pressure.
“Iran has been under different sanctions for years and many companies have not been able to cooperate with our country for fear of US pressures,” Vaziri Hamaneh said, according to the semi-official news agency Fars on Tuesday.
“They even do not easily deliver some dual-purpose equipment that we had previously bought. They cause trouble for us under different pretexts,” he said.

Thanks for confirming the receipt of our messsage, Vaziri! Their own government has made it clear that they see us as an enemy at conferences where attendees were asked by their president to imagine a world without America and Israel. I guess imagining that would also imagine a world without the spare parts they need to fix their production issues at their oilfields.
The fact that they even offer this as an excuse demonstrates the tough economic position in which the existing sanctions from the US has placed Iran. Even with the weak-kneed sanctions offered by the UN this week, those woes will only increase. As the economic noose tightens, the Iranians — who by and large oppose Ahmadinejad’s excessive provocations — will start preparing political nooses, or perhaps even real nooses, if their disaffection grows large enough.
An internal removal of the mullahcracy and the establishment of a real democracy offers the safest and most effective path to prevent nuclear proliferation. The US and the West should insist on strict enforcement of the economic sanctions to expedite this development and to thoroughly discredit the theocracy that placed Iran in this poor position. At this rate, it looks like Iran will be unable to export oil by 2015, but their final economic collapse will happen long before that. If we can remain firm, we could avoid a lot of the bloodshed that would accompany our other options to stop Iran’s nukes. (via It Shines For All)