Letters: Hoping that Iran will just go away won't work
The Iranians learned their lessons well from both North Korea and Iraq. They continue to play a diplomatic rope-a-dope, offering hypothetical concessions and then retreating in the face of concrete proposals. The Iranians certainly delayed granting access to the recently discovered nuclear facility long enough to sanitize the installation of any evidence of a weapons program. Blix also assumes a level of rational thought from a regime that denies the Holocaust, while threatening the Israelis with another.
The North Koreans kept their program hidden until they had reached the capacity to weaponize uranium. The Iranians certainly are following this model.
In a letter to his sister, Neville Chamberlain lamented that if only the dictators would present their demands in the normal diplomatic fashion, he would be able to accommodate them. The inevitable result of this thinking was the Second World War.
If, as is likely, the Iranians do achieve a nuclear capacity, it is only the threat of retaliation that will prevent the unthinkable.
Craig J. Firestone
Huntingdon Valley




