First, some background. (I realize the timetable of “about five months” for Iranian warhead capability will be controversial and I have no source to cite other that to leave a comment I made in reference to criticism in this regard, at the bottom of the article, in defense of my position.)

Watch, Google turns to NSA after China Cyber Attack, for Russia Today’s hostile view of the coming cyber war between the United States and China. More hostile Russia Today video at Tarpley: US gov uses Google proxy to attack China, Is China about to give in to the US?, which is more about the new proposed fourth round of sanctions against Iran, and for a general idea of what’s going on in cyberspace, see The Great Cyber Wall of China, about Google’s move from mainland China to Hong Kong.

Recently there has been a distinct thaw in U.S. – Chinese relations. In the context of the censorship battle and Chinese web filtering, and ongoing simmering cyberwarfare between the United States and China, as well as disputes about currency rates (the “dirty float” by China in currency exchange rates), and also disputes over tariffs, what we are seeing is an ongoing internal dispute within China between two factions. There is a group of “globalists” who want to more realistically fix the out-of-balance currency rates and to at least some extent reduce Chinese filtering of the internet, and are more realistic about foreign exchange and the problem of the U.S. trade deficit, versus the new guard or “youth league”, who want to continue to keep China’s currency low, yet fight tariffs and also have a strong “sovereignty”, and strong filtering of the internet. The globalists are at least somewhat supportive of the proposed fourth round of sanctions against Iran coming up at the U.N. security council, while the more nationalistic “youth league” is pro-Iranian and is pushing for China to veto these sanctions.

In UPI’s article Israel calls for sanctions against Iran, (UPI.com, April 19, 2010), it is claimed that “China has agreed in principle to join the four other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to support the sanctions.” This, if true, represents a strong diplomatic victory for the United States, and is hopeful in terms of lessening the growing sense that military action against Iran might be necessary. The theory is that strong enough sanctions would force Iran to de-militarize their nuclear program, which all the evidence we have points towards.

The best U.S. intelligence places a pressing time limitation on how long diplomacy and sanctions have to work out some agreement with Iran. Our intelligence believes Iran will possess a nuclear warhead capable of being fitted on one of their intermediate range missiles, which could for example strike Tel Aviv, in about five months. The United States very likely, and Israel with strong certainty, would never allow this to happen before taking offensive military action. Thus, sanctions remain the best hope of maintaining peace in the region, and there is a very definite time limitation involved.

The next leader of China will in all likelihood determine which faction wins in China. Meanwhile, despite a recent thaw between the U.S. and China, the extent to which China will support strong sanctions against Iran in the U.N. Security Council remains a mystery until the Security Council meets. China could for example insist on watering down the sanctions until they don’t have the necessary force to challenge Iran sufficiently so that they de-militarize their nuclear program. Enrichment hit 20 percent over a month ago, while only some three percent enrichment is necessary for nuclear energy purposes. The U.S. “reasonableness” towards China on trade and tariff issues and our not pushing the internet filtering issue strongly at this point has everything to do with our need for China to be supportive of strong sanctions (which will include bans on foreign banking in Iran and Iranian banking outside of Iran) when they come up at an upcoming U.N. Security Council meeting. The underlying issues between our governments have not been solved, nor are they likely to be solved before the next leader of China emerges and either the globalists or the youth league emerges as the dominant faction there.

The U.S. government and western news sources have largely put out tentative reassurances that all will be well with regard to China being supportive of strong sanctions against Iran, but we have nothing official yet from the Chinese. There is a strong possibility that if China will not go along with these sanctions and vetoes the measure at the Security Council, we will be a lot further down the road to more probable military action against Iran. This is geopolitical gamesmanship of the highest order, with consequences of the strongest nature for world peace and stability.

UPDATE: Highly recommended is today’s Setting the trap on Iran, The Washington Post, Wednesday, April 21, 2010, by David Ignatius, excerpt quoted verbatim:

The Obama administration’s strategy as it devises sanctions for Iran is to build a sticky trap — so that the harder the Iranians try to wriggle out of the sanctions, the more tightly they will be caught in the snare.

It’s a clever idea. But even if it works with mousetrap precision, it’s unlikely to stop the Iranian nuclear program. That’s one reason why Defense Secretary Bob Gates and other officials are pressing to explore the “what-ifs” about Iran — and to accelerate planning for contingencies that could arise as the confrontation deepens.

The White House didn’t like the New York Times’ characterization of a memo Gates wrote in January as a “wake-up call,” given all the work the administration has already done on Iran. But the Times’ story captured the urgency with which Gates and other officials see the problem — and their fear that sanctions, however well constructed, may not do the trick.

Gates’s memo called specifically for “prudent planning and preparation” for the showdown with Iran, according to one senior official quoting from the text. The defense secretary requested that the “principals committee,” the top officers of the National Security Council, discuss the range of issues and options that might arise.

See, Neocons Dismiss The Views Of The Military (Again) To Call For (Another) Preventive War, Think Progress, The Wonk Room, April 20, 2010, by Matt Duss, excerpt quoted verbatim:

This time it’s chief neocon cleric Bill Kristol — who’s probably been more wrong more times about more things than any other figure in American political life — dismissing as “silly” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen’s recent suggestion that a military attack on Iran could be just as destabilizing to the region as a nuclear-capable Iran….

Watch, Nuclear Next Step, on Evans Liberal Politics “News About Iran” page, wherein it is claimed that Iran had as of April 10th publicly announced that it had developed new nuclear fuel centrifuges which are five times as fast as previous centrifuges Iran possessed.

See, Iranian missile may be able to hit U.S. by 2015, Reuters, April 19, 2010, by Phil Stewart and Adam Entous.

See, Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System, The New York Times on Evans Liberal Politics, April 20, 2010, by John Markoff.

See, Agencies Suspect Iran Is Planning New Atomic Sites, The New York Times, March 27, 2010, by David E. Sanger and William J. Broad.

See, G8 ministers call for strong measures against Iran, Evans Liberal Politics, March 30, 2010, by Reuters.

Comment made by Paul Evans on the Daily Kos version of this article:

I can’t remember where I got my intel on the warhead completion timetable. It may have been BBC or the Guardian, but nonetheless, two or three months ago I read in a credible source like one of those that there was good western intelligence to the effect that we felt there was about seven months until Iran had warhead capability. Saudi Arabia, about then, cleared the use of Saudi air space by the Israeli air force. Would they have need to do such an embarrassing thing if something were not pressing, time wise? Wouldn’t they have avoided doing that until rather late in the game? This is not mere speculation but information I picked up from credible sources. The Israeli air force has “dry run”ned the bombing mission twice now, the second time with fighters fitted with tanks designed to go the distance to Iran and back. This is a very serious situation and I stand by my facts.

A second comment I made supporting my position was titled “The point is the prevailing neocon responses to this,” meaning the nuclear situation with Iran:

Israel in under the control of a neocon government and will not allow Iran to have a nuclear warhead without attacking. They have dry runned the bombing mission twice, the second time accompanied by fighters with capacity to go the distance to Iran and back. Saudi Arabia has cleared the use of Saudi air space by the Israeli air force. These are facts. Would the U.S. allow Israel to “go it alone”? In Final Destination Iran from The Herald, I place the matter in perspective. We have moved all our “Blu” bunker buster bombs (195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs) to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. That (isn’t) just for show but is a negotiating tool to use with Iran, and, in the final analysis is evidence we may well join in in any Israeli response to Iranian warhead capability.

From that last mentioned article: “‘They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,’ said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. ‘US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.’”

See, Final Destination Iran, The Herald, March 15, 2010, by Rob Edwards, with commentary by Evans liberal politics owner Paul Evans, excerpt quoted verbatim:

This timetable of five months for nuclear warhead capability should not be taken as “written in stone” and is controversial. Weasel over at Daily Kos has provided us with a less deadly time frame in his source Officials Say Iran Could Make Bomb Fuel in a Year, The New York Times, April 14, 2010, by David E. Sanger. This does not lessen the danger, it only makes it less immediate:

WASHINGTON — Two of the nation’s top military officials said Wednesday that Iran could produce bomb-grade fuel for at least one nuclear weapon within a year, but would most likely need two to five years to manufacture a workable atomic bomb.

The carefully worded testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee provided the most complete recent public assessment of how much time President Obama and his allies have to head off an Iranian nuclear weapons capability.

But the witnesses’ back-and-forth with committee members also raised questions about how deeply the Iranian program had been infiltrated. It came only days after Mr. Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that once Iranians had the capability to assemble a weapon, American intelligence might not be able to determine when they actually produced one.

The time frame presented in the testimony of Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the military’s most experienced officers on nuclear matters, was roughly in line with the finding of a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. That document, which is about to be updated, said that Iran would probably be able to produce a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015, while cautioning that there was no evidence that the Iranian government had decided to do so.

Two things are noteworthy here. The article is questionable in at least these two regards: First, the intelligence establishment has a long history of “snowing” the Senate Armed Services committee. Secondly, there is very direct evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons capability in the fact of its achievement of 20 percent enrichment (3 percent being the level necessary for peaceful purposes. There is however the fact that higher enrichment is necessary for certain medical purposes.)

The Final Word on this subject belongs to a commenter at Daily Kos, killjoy:

The Chinese government resisted all American entreaties about sanctions on Iran until the Saudi Arabian oil minister went to visit them in March. Overnight Beijing is willing to talk about sanctions on Iran and even North Korea.

The U.S. has quietly erected a ‘missile shield’ of sorts pretty much the length of the south shore of Persian Gulf in the last few months with Patriot-3s.

The fundamental analysis in Washington is, I believe, that the Middle East has simplified to a kind of Cold War situation of nuclear threats, efforts at mutual containment, and proxy war(let)s with its ‘superpowers’ the current hardline right governments in Tehran and Jerusalem. The two are in a sense propping each other up now- their reasons for existence in the militarist forms they’ve adopted is that their utility to their peoples has narrowed and continues to narrow to merely opposing each other.

We do know how this sort of game ends. It’s a long drawn out stalemate until one or the other collapses from within because its people wants/needs to live in the Modern world. And without an opponent to sustain its belligerence and justify its war economy and internal injustices, the other soon crumbles as well.

Iran is involved in stoking every Middle Eastern conflict from Gaza to Yemen, Lebanon and Kurdistan. The U.S. and/or Israel generally prop the opposite side. Should Tehran and Jerusalem stop propping each side, a lot of these lesser Middle Eastern conflicts would soon end in negotiated settlements. In most of them the populations and organizations are exhausted and impoverished and bled out, and they know quite well what they’ll settle for and is proper.

But like the Cold War it all drags on decades longer than any commoner would like. The will to truly carry on to total victory disperses in the population- it just becomes self asserting cant for instrumental political purposes- and concentrates ever higher in the political hierarchy as it diminishes in total quantity. Until only shadowy cliques and gray eminences in high places remain the True Believers.

Also of interest: Google Makes Government Requests for User Info Public, Mashable, April 20, 2010, by Samuel Axon:

Google just introduced an app called the Government Requests tool. It’s a Google Maps app that shows how many requests each nation’s government has made for users’ personal information or for the removal of URLs from Google’s search index.

I’ve been getting a lot of traffic today from McLean, Virginia…. Just thought I’d entertain the boys with a little useful information…. ~ Paul Evans

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