Sanction — Before it’s Too Late

By: Richard Z. Chesnoff.

The Mideast mess just gets messier. Last week's Palestinian election win by the Islamist terrorist party Hamas was bad enough. Now we face a growing nuclear threat from the Islamo-facist regime in Iran.

Let's not make any mistakes here. The Mad Mullahs of Tehran want a nuclear weapon and despite a flood of international objections, they continue investing mega-millions of their oil money in developing and building one. Once a nuclear bomb is in their hands, Iran will use it – or the threat to use it – to advance its radical agenda.

That includes recent promises by Iran's new inflammatory President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “to wipe Israel off the map” and “to produce a world without America,” something this thug/politician swears is both “attainable, and surely can be achieved.”

The Iranian leader's “intelligence adviser,” Hassan Abbassi, has obliged us with more specifics. A stunning new policy paper from the Washington-based anti-terrorism Committee on the Present Danger, includes quotes from Abbassi detailing “a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization.” The committee, which is led by the likes of Sen. Joe Lieberman, former Secretary of State George Schultz and former CIA head James Woolsey, says Abbassi boasts that “we must make use of everything we have on hand to strike at this front by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles.”

To ignore such blatant threats would be as foolish as ignoring Adolf Hitler's threats when he first published “Mein Kampf.”

So what can be done? Pleas from the UN, the United States, the European Union and even China for Iran to limit its nuclear activities have gone unheeded. Even a proposal by Russia to accommodate Iranian energy ambitions by having Moscow monitor Iranian nuclear waste so it can't be used for weapons development has been rejected by Tehran up until now.

Some believe that only military action will stop the Iranian nuclear march. Rest assured, contingency plans have already been drawn up in more than one world capital – Israel's included.

But there are other options. One, suggested by the Committee on the Present Danger's policy paper includes a series of smart sanctions – economic embargos and restrictions that target the Iranian leaders, not the Iranian people.

For example: some 35% of Iran's lucrative import-export business is directly controlled by corrupt mullahs and their crooked minions who've grown fat on oil and business profits. Put the squeeze on them.

Another would be to create an international tribunal that would gather evidence and begin to try the mullahs for human rights offenses against their own people, not to mention their ongoing open support of terrorism.

The Iranians have begun moving government funds out of Western financial institutions. But they can't hide them everywhere.

There is also a desperate need to increase open support for legitimate Iranian opposition groups. The global fight with Iran is with its government, not its long suffering people. Iran doesn't need war. It needs a regime change.

The din of the alarm is deafening. Putting our fingers in our ears would be a tragic mistake, one we could all live to regret – if we survive.