Bomb

In an interview on CNN, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that “we are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor,” from which he derived his conclusion that “we also know, or we believe we know, that Iran has not decided to make a nuclear weapon.”

Monday night, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said simply and clearly, "When it comes to Israel's survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate."

Michael Makovsky and Blaise Misztal write in the Washington Post that President Obama is now trying only to contain Iran:

In a little noticed ruling on Monday, November 28, a Washington, D.C. district court found that both Iran and Sudan were culpable for al Qaeda’s 1998 embassy bombings. As is typical in state sponsorship of terrorism cases, neither Iran nor Sudan answered the plaintiffs’ accusations. But in a 45-page decision, Judge John D. Bates issued a default judgment. The court found that the “government of the Islamic Republic of Iran…has a long history of providing material aid and support to terrorist organizations including al Qaeda,” which “claimed responsibility for the August 7, 1998 embassy bombings.”

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has just published the following article on its website, indicating clearly that the regime seeks a nuclear bomb.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained excerpts from the prepared text of Sen. Joe Lieberman’s speech, “The Future of American Power in the Middle East,” to be delivered Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. It should cause quite a stir.

Here is what Lieberman will say: 

After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speeches, press conferences, and interviews in New York City last week, it’s obvious the Iranian president lives in a parallel universe. This has been difficult for many in the West to grasp. The Western reflex to believe that there are “universal truths” is irrepressible.

MEMRI just published an interesting study that's worth a look:

“U.S. Assures Israel That Iran Threat Is Not Imminent” was the headline in the New York Times last Thursday. The article reported that U.S. officials were telling Jerusalem not to worry. It “would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a ‘dash’ for a nuclear weapon.”

Jeffrey Goldberg’s cover article in the Atlantic about the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran has provoked fierce debate.

The story has been buried by the Western press, but Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy brings it out in an important policy paper.

Sanctions on Iran are beginning to bite, but does it matter?