An Iranian nuclear weapons program in what used to be ‘Syria’

Hezbollah: the victors of the Battle of Qusayr – site of a suspected nuclear facility – celebrate in 2013. (Image via Mondoweiss)

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

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Walk-out: Cruz rebukes anti-Israel audience at Iran-linked ‘defend Christians’ conference

Decisive.

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Obama’s Cuban missile crisis

What a coup it would be, for Team Obama to turn two weeks of dithering and squandering American credibility on the Syria question into a narrative of courage under fire and successful brinkmanship.

Could it happen?  It happened for John F. Kennedy.  Granted, he had Arthur Schlesinger to write a narrative for him afterward.  And his administration did a better job of keeping secrets than the Obama administration does.  It was only years later that the public began to realize how big a concession it was to Nikita Khrushchev to resolve the Cuban missile crisis by secretly removing U.S. theater ballistic missiles from Turkey.

Yes, I think Assad did it

I’ve been hearing about an analysis from Yossef Bodansky, reportedly alluded to by Rush Limbaugh today, in which Bodansky suggests that U.S.-backed rebels were actually behind the chemical attack in east Damascus on 21 August. (Warning: you may not be able to bring the link up on the first try.  The avalanche of clicks from Rush’s listeners seems to have the site hammered at the moment.)

I don’t believe the rebels did this (which doesn’t mean I mistake any of them for the Green Mountain Boys or the Bluecoats at Bunker Hill.  It just means I don’t think they conducted this attack).  The character of the attack continues to finger the Assad regime, a theme developed by France’s recently released national intelligence estimate.  If you don’t have the means to read it in French or run translation software on it, Foreign Policy has a pretty good write-up.

Here are the key points from the French assessment

A “Johnny Football suspension” for Assad; *UPDATE*

My colleague Howard Portnoy highlighted yesterday the report that a U.S. official who had been briefed on the planning for a strike on Syria characterized the objective as “a level of intensity ‘just muscular enough not to get mocked’ but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia.”

As Howard says, it’s too late for the “not getting mocked” objective.  The mocking, moreover, is not because people don’t like Obama; it’s because watching him and his administration burble and leak their way through this exciting national-security moment is like watching a toddler try to be devious.