An Air Strike By A Threatened Israel May Be Last Chance To Stop Iran

No Chance Seen For U.S. Strike On Iranian Nuclear Facilities

Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, but major nations aren’t taking available steps that could bring Iran to terms and force it to abandon its nuclear ambitions, key members of Congress said.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking Republican on the House Select Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee terrorism, nonproliferation and trade subcommittee, spoke in a teleconference of The Israel Project.

"Sometime in 2009" the Iranian nuclear production program will have sufficient fissile materials so that Iran can build its first nuclear bomb, Hoekstra said.

And there is no chance that U.S. military forces will launch a strike to annihilate Iranian nuclear facilities, Hoekstra predicted. "I don’t see the American people at all" backing a military option against Iran, which obstinately defies world opinion and U.N. wishes.

"Iran continues to move forward aggressively with its nuclear program," Hoekstra said.

And economic sanctions have had no effect in forcing Iran to abandon that nuclear program, Sherman said.

"Those who run Iran are willing to endure a very high level of pain in order to get nuclear weapons," Sherman said.

But the pain could be ratcheted far higher, if only developed nations would have the courage to take available steps, he said.

For example, blockading gasoline shipments to Iran and cutting off international loans to Tehran could be accomplished, but for the reluctance of some interests and nations.

Aside from economic sanctions and negotiations that so far have produced no results, there remains the military strike option.

But "military action … is very unlikely from Washington, and unlikely from Jerusalem," he said.

Any strike, to be successful, would have to involve several days of bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. Leaders of some nations fear the price of oil would rise, weakening an already free-falling world economy.

But Sherman said strikes, even for several days, would have no real effect: the price of oil has toppled from $145 a barrel to about $40 or so recently. And the world already is in a recession.

Also, cutting off shipments of refined petroleum products such as gasoline into Iran could produce intense pain in the Iranian economy, "but we don’t do" such a blockade/embargo, Sherman noted.

As well, the United States could stop its corporations from doing business with Iran, and demand that the World Bank cease distributing further traunches of loans to Iran, while further moving to ban lawsuits against financial fund managers that disinvest in Iranian firms, he observed. But those steps haven’t been taken.

He warned that letting Iran obtain nuclear weapons would be folly.

While the United States plans to build the European Missile Defense system to guard Europe and the United States against missiles launched from Middle Eastern nations such as Iran, that merely closes off one route for delivering weapons of mass destruction to Europe and America, Sherman noted.

If that route is blocked, "smuggling a nuclear weapon into the United States is quite easy," he said.

At this point, the nightmare threat posed by Iran is looming ever closer, with Sherman terming it "five minutes before midnight" if Iran is to be prevented from going nuclear.