The watchdogs for the agreement on Iran limiting storage and production of nuclear materials have confirmed that Iran is violating the agreement. The Iranian government has confirmed this. This US pulled out of the agreement because it was not an effective deterrent for Iran to proceed with the construction of a nuclear weapon. The iranian now argue that if the US can pull out, so can we. I wonder if this wasn’t what they intended all along. In any case, the next step SHOULD be for all the rest of the world to put the economic sanctions back in place, and do it immediately. There should be no appeasement and no waiting.
I believe that Iran was behind the several attacks on merchant ships near the Straits of Hormuz. Such attacks used to be considered a cassus belli. If you consider that Iran is busy exporting terror to Yemen and Iraq and arming terrorist groups in Syria, Lebanon, and the Gaza strip, then the fact that other nations are not actually preparing for an open war against Iran seems even harder to digest. Israel has openly attacked weapons transfer sites in Syria used by Iran to funnel missiles to her Hizbollah proxy in Lebanon. Would not a similar step by an American led coalition against Iranian nuclear sites and missile bases be a reasonable next step? Even an independent strike by any of the many parties facing the horrible threat of a nuclear armed Iran might be acceptable. It would be even more credible if there were some guarantees given by others that whoever perpetrated such an attack would be protected from Iranian retaliation.
Full scale war is a really awful option. Strong action against totalitarian regimes might be able to keep the escalation from going too far, and such a choice would be best made sooner, rather than later.
Wetherhorn 