Playing the rope-a-dope

With the group of 5+1 dawdling, Israel sits and waits for American mandate on military action.

By JERROLD L. SOBEL
Iran nuclear talks in Istanbul 300 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS/Tolga Adanali/Pool)
Iran nuclear talks in Istanbul 300 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS/Tolga Adanali/Pool)
For those of you old enough to remember, during their epic heavyweight battle in 1974 known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” Muhammad Ali made famous a defensive ploy known as the “Rope-a-Dope.”  Flailing on the ropes, the former boxing great feigned defeat by then world heavy weight champion George Foreman. Allowing Foreman to throw punches until he was overcome by exhaust, Ali went on to defeat his much larger foe.  
Today, Iran is proving that Muhammad Ali's clever ploy works not only in the boxing ring, but in the international ring of global politics.
Since July 2006, following a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stating that Iran’s nuclear program far exceeded civilian purposes, seven UN Security Council resolutions have unsuccessfully tried to reverse this policy.
Each passed resolution has demanded that the Iranians suspend their uranium enrichment activities—legally binding Iran to initiate said suspension.  Predictably, Tehran has refused and continuously scoffs at the pity pat sanctions imposed by the Obama administration.
Hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and clearly unimpressed with the empty rhetoric and wrist slapping of the international community, the Ayatollahs and their mouth piece, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defiantly continue their development of enriched uranium.  
The most absurd aspect of this sordid affair is the propensity of US President Barack Obama to double down on defunct policies.  
With a similar conviction to that of Neville Chamberlain at the 1938 Munich Conference, and then-president Jimmy Carter during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, Obama is either too timid or too naive to recognize the fact that tyrants dead set on mayhem do not respond to talks and hand slaps.  
Rather than drawing a definitive line in the sand and threatening military action by a certain date, the president is content go along with the Iranian charade — playing the part of George Foreman in this international boxing match.
Does history have a way of repeating itself?  Not exactly, but close enough.  
As it was tragically farcical to believe that Hitler would be satisfied with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia following the annexation of the Sudetenland, the same is true today. Trying to hold reasonable, progressive talks with the rogue Iranian cabal headed by “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Sayyid Khamenei, is equally ludicrous.  
Since the downfall and betrayal of the Shah by the Carter administration, Iran has been an ardent supporter of international terrorism.  Iran has been implicated in countless assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings directly by its own operatives and indirectly by the regime's terrorist proxies.  
Amongst these Iranian terrorist surrogates, first and foremost is Hezbollah — financed, trained, and supplied by Tehran with the support of their closest friend and ally, the butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad.
These sweethearts, along with other splinter groups have proudly accepted responsibility for the following attacks: the 1982-1983 Tyre headquarter bombings, the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut that left 58 Americans dead, the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks that killed 240 Marines, the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847 holding 39 captive for weeks and the murder of 1 sailor, the bombing of the Israeli Embassy that left 29 dead in 1992, the bombing of the Jewish Community center in Argentina in 1994 resulting in 94 fatalities, the 1996 Saudi Arabia attack on the Khobar Towers that killed 19 servicemen, the firing of thousands of rockets into northern Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.
It is Iran, the ringmaster of these vicious monsters, that the group of 5+1 (US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany) hopes to dissuade from its present course of action.  
Not foolish enough?  How about throwing in the fact that one of this so-called group of five is Russia, Iran’s good friend and trading partner.  Another group member is China, a nation so in bed with the regime that in 2009, Chinese President Hu Jintao clearly reaffirmed his commitment to Iran by stating, “We are quite confident that friendly and profound economic relations between the two countries should continue forever.”
Talk about the wolves guarding the hen house.  
On September 12, 2011 Iranian and Russian officials celebrated their joint project: the opening of Iran’s first nuclear reactor in the port city of Bushehr.  US officials expressed fears that it might be a cover for a nuclear weapons program at other sites.  Now there’s some astute thinking.
China in turn, driven by economic ties and sympathy with the Iranian position, has defied the most grievous sanctions against Iran and is still very active in the Iranian oil patch — paying mainly lip service to a ban on Iranian energy investment.
Could this situation reach even higher levels of absurdity?  Of the countries assigned the task of curtailing the Iranian nuclear program, 33percent are allies and trading partners of this rogue state.
Sanctions, condemnations, talks and more talks. Round and round we go in a perpetual game of ring around the rosie while the Iranians enrich greater quantities of weapon grade uranium and bury it deeper into mountains.
In April, after first agreeing to talks in Turkey, the Iranians bid for time by suggesting Iraq or China as the venue, balking that Turkey – a NATO member – is participating in the shield project designed to thwart their missiles.
What was accomplished? Nothing. Iranian officials agreed to not to let the negotiations reach a dead end.  That's it; no tangible solution was reached. Onto to Baghdad they went for, you guessed it, more talks.
At the conclusion of the Baghdad conference a spokesman for Ban Ki Moon, UN secretary-general, had the following to say:
“Ban Ki Moon was satisfied with the good intention of the parties for the delivery of the negotiations to a conclusion and he welcomed the continuation of these negotiations in the Russian capital Moscow on 18 June,” stressing that “Moon supports always the continuation of negotiations to reach a comprehensive solution on Iran’s nuclear program."
Glaringly missing from this statement is anything about Iranian compliance with previous UN resolutions or a willingness to cease and desist further uranium enrichment.  
Instead, next stop Moscow for more of the same.  Tick tock, tick tock.  The days and weeks tick by and the Iranians move closer to perfecting a nuclear weapon, and the means of delivering it.  
What’s even odder is that Israel, the country most affected by these talks, is not a party to them.  
Despite continuous threats of annihilation since the Islamic Republic's 1979 revolution, Israel has been asked by successive administrations to withhold military action and to allow gradually ratcheted sanctions and talks to take hold.  
Unfortunately, while the group of 5+1— residing thousands of miles away – have time to dither and allow the Iranians to engage them in a game of rope-a-dope,  Israel, just 900 miles from Tehran and the professed target of Iranian angst, sits and waits for American mandate on military action.