Totten is guest-hosting at Instapundit. An informal, interesting discussion about the Middle East:
‘Most US military sources I’ve spoken to are familiar with Iraq and the Persian Gulf but know relatively little about the Levant (the Eastern Mediterranean) and even less about distant North Africa. Francona knows Iraq and the Gulf, and the Levant and the crucial parts of North Africa.’
Francona from the interview:
‘The only country that ever seriously embarked on a nuclear weapons program and failed to develop a bomb is Iraq, and that’s only because the Israelis stopped it. Every other country that had the will and the material support has succeeded. No one has ever been stopped by technology. Everyone has been able to acquire the fissile material by hook or by crook. It’s no longer magic. It just isn’t.
Non-lethal methods are always better than blowing things up, but I don’t think anything will stop the Iranians short of war. You and I were at the same briefing about this in Israel. The Israelis think Iran can’t be deterred, and I think they’re right.
So we have to do one of two things. We either tell the Iranians that we won’t allow them to develop nuclear weapons, and that we’re prepared to physically stop them, or we start planning for the day when Iran has the bomb’
Related On This Site: From Reflections Of A Rational Republican: ‘Are Airstrikes Imminent In Iran?’…From Reflections Of A Rational Republican: ‘Will Israel Attack Iran This Spring?’
Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest: ‘Iran: Keeping The World’s Oddest Couple Together’…Materialism and Leftism Paul Berman On Bloggingheads: The Left Can Criticize Iran
…From Michael Totten: ‘An Interview With Christopher Hitchens’…From Abu Muqawama: ‘Mubarak And Me’…From Michael Totten: ‘The New Egyptian Underground’…Michael Totten At The American Interest: “A Leaner, Meaner Brotherhood”
