A New Hope Vs. Iran

From IBD:
Posted 5/22/2006

Military Strategy: Like the Reagan approach to detente with the Soviet Union, President Bush is thinking outside the box regarding Iran. He's applying the Reagan idea that helped win the Cold War: missile defense.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told CNN on Sunday that Iran is only months away from the ability to build a nuclear bomb. Since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, Olmert's remarks might be a signal that Israel is considering launching a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities soon.

As Iran presses ahead on its nuclear program and prepares to force its Jewish and Christian citizens to wear Nazi-esque garments that identify them by religion and ethnicity, the U.S. is not sitting by.

The Bush administration is seeking to provide sophisticated anti-missile technology to other Persian Gulf states and establish a missile defense base in Eastern Europe to defend against possible Iranian attacks using nonconventional weapons carried by advanced ballistic missiles.

Recall that in April Iran claimed that it had tested a medium-range multiwarhead missile that can evade radar, and its Shahab-3 rocket can reach Israel and Turkey.

Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, last month proposed the idea during visits to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iran has a history of trying to destabilize its neighbors, and Joseph told The Los Angeles Times that the countries "as a whole are very receptive to the message."

A team of State Department officials returned to the Persian Gulf last week to follow up. The plan is being used as part of the diplomatic effort to pressure Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment program.

In the former Soviet bloc, the White House wants to deploy 10 anti-missile interceptors, which would be an unprecedented increase in U.S. influence there. The New York Times reports that a specific recommendation will be made this summer to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but sites under consideration include the Czech Republic and Poland.

The plan would be to set up something nearly identical to the anti-missile facility at Fort Greely, Alaska, which boasts of being "the first line in America's missile defense" and where a half-dozen missiles can intercept long-range attacks from North Korea. The total cost is estimated at $1.6 billion.

Initial costs would be a mere $56 million to begin engineering work, but the proposal faces opposition in the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee because of the technical challenges.

We can't for the life of us (if you'll excuse the expression) understand why: As defense projects go, the bang for the buck here in terms of defending innocent lives looks too good to pass up.

Russia's military chief Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky groused about Poland hosting a missile defense base, remarking that "countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk." That's highly reminiscent of the counter-intuitive logic missile shield opponents have always used.

And Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman described the European anti-missile base as "not a proposal designed to counter Russia's offensive missiles," since the small number of interceptors would not be effective against Russia's level of weaponry.

During his presidency, Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was ridiculed as a dangerous provocation that would never achieve its intent and that was mockingly called "Star Wars." But Reagan described it differently when he unveiled the idea on March 23, 1983: "I've reached a decision which offers a new hope for our children in the 21st century," he said.

New hope indeed. Now that we're in the 21st century, we know that Reagan's SDI was a deathblow that sent Soviet communism to the ash heap of history. President Bush today has made a similar decision to take concrete steps that will protect the free world against the possibility of Iran — or some other future menace — being armed with the deadliest weapons ever devised.

We call that leadership.