Club Cobra - A dress rehearsal for attack

Shouldn't be long now.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Friday, June 20, 2008

War On Terror: If the free world won't save itself from nuclear terrorism, then the task falls to Israel. The military exercises it conducted this month look like a rehearsal for the job of disabling Iran's nuclear facilities.

It was hard to argue with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week when he declared his Islamofascist regime won in its nuclear standoff with the world's major powers. Referring to Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S., he gloated that "the bullying" nations "have used up all their capabilities but could not break the will of the Iranian nation."

Yet another series of technological and economic incentives has been fruitlessly offered to Tehran by the West as an enticement to abandon its nuclear program. These kinds of carrots have been dangled before Iran's mullahs for years, along with mild economic slaps on the wrist that were destined not to work from the beginning.

What does not seem to get through to the free world's dense diplomats is the fact that a fanatical theocracy cannot be bribed with the kind of currency that nonfanatics value. Perhaps an offer to destroy Israel would make the Jew-hating Ahmadinejad take notice, but it is clear that neither aid nor sanctions has real influence.

Had the world united in waging full economic warfare against the Iranian terrorist state, the threat of the regime's internal overthrow could have forced it to shut down its uranium enrichment — just as a united international effort against Saddam Hussein could have made the Iraq War unnecessary.

Even without a concerted effort against Tehran, however, the U.S. missed the opportunity to engage in a full-scale, long-term public effort to help freedom fighters within Iran oust the heirs of the Ayatollah Khomeini. So the world finds itself in the grim predicament of today.

As for looking to the United Nations to become fed up with Iran's intransigence and at long last authorize military action, Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" comes to mind.

Fortunately, Israel may come to the rescue. Earlier this month more than 100 Israeli fighters, as well as helicopters and fuel tankers, engaged in what may have been a dress rehearsal for attack.

The exercises took place over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece and involved distances exceeding 900 miles. That corresponds to how far Israel is from Natanz, the site of Iran's uranium plant.

Obviously, one of the purposes of the maneuvers was to launch a public shot across Tehran's bow. When those who govern a country deny the Nazi genocide of the Jews, predict the Jewish homeland will be wiped off the map and await the arrival of the 12th imam and an apocalyptic war against the enemies of militant Islam, it's clear that the only language they understand is that of the sword.

Even the clear message that Israel means business seems unlikely to cause change in Iran, however. Which means it's lucky for the world that Israel does mean business.