Axis in Action

From Investors Business Daily:

Posted 2/1/2006
Terror Network: The bad news is North Korea may try to supply Iran with plutonium for atomic weapons. The good news is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld foresaw this kind of threat and is already acting against it.
London's Sunday Times reports that diplomats and intelligence officials are keeping an eye on the Iranian embassy in Pyongyang, fearing these two players in the "axis of evil" will forge a deal to give Iran access to communist North Korea's increased stockpile of as much as 53 kilograms of the fissile material.

The Times cited Tehran sources who claimed Iran's Revolutionary Guards have established their own unconventional links with the North Korean regime. The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported Iran is preparing for uranium enrichment, which can supply fuel for bombs, at its Natanz facility in central Iran.

Meanwhile, Rafi Eitan, a veteran of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, told the Jerusalem Post this week he's convinced Iran already has a uranium bomb. Iran is also in possession of cruise missiles bought from communist China.

Iran's ability to use missiles to deliver nuclear warheads is not the only worry. Last September, Iran's radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that "Iran is ready to transfer nuclear know-how to the Islamic countries due to their need."

With Ahmadinejad calling for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map and publicly doubting the Nazis' genocide of the Jews, there are fears his regime would provide nuclear technology and materials to terrorists with designs on Israel, Europe or the U.S.

Fortunately, the U.S. has been anticipating the prospect of terrorists going nuclear. The Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, to be sent to the president this week, will recommend a new Weapons of Mass Destruction joint task force. The quick-response unit would be made up of several hundred Special Operations troops and intelligence personnel, The Washington Times reported.

The goal is to have in operation a streamlined force that would work with anti-terrorist forces of other countries and be capable of interdicting or preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction before a terrorist group carries out an attack.

By next year, the Army's 20th Support Command would form the core of such a force, which would be empowered "to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally," according to declassified elements of the Quadrennial Review.

The review will also recommend expanding Special Ops forces by nearly 8,000 troops next year for anti-terrorism purposes. That would be the highest level of these forces since the Vietnam War.

What's happening in Iran is a scary reminder that the war on terror will be full of unpredictable challenges. It's encouraging to see that the Pentagon isn't wasting time in adapting to them.