“Vanity of vanities” is how some translate the opening of King Solomon’s somber view of life in the book of Ecclesiastes. It has been observed that a more accurate translation would be “futility of futilities.”
The verse was written for North Korea.
And Iran.
But not, we fervently pray, for the opponents of the nuclear madness in both countries.
Secretary of State John Kerry is completely wasting his time demanding that North Korea end its nuclear program in return for all manner of bribes (“incentives”) from the West. It is perfectly obvious: North Korea gets a lot more free food and other items from the West precisely because it has a nuclear program. This program is the best instrument of blackmail that North Korea — or Iran — could devise.
For years, North Korea has received hundreds of thousands of tons of free food because, of course, it might consider, or might negotiate about, reducing its nuclear program. Which, of course, it never does. Because if it ever did, it would no longer have the blackmail tool to enable it to come back and demand more free food on the basis of another vague, never-carried-out and never-to-be-carried-out negotiation on ending its nuclear program.
Obama cannot say he was not warned. It is perfectly obvious that no sanctions will ever stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear program. However the sanctions may hurt, they are but the smallest price to pay for the blackmail that Iran will succeed in exercising if it ever does get a nuclear bomb. And that’s not even talking about the strategic blackmail, just the financial blackmail.
Of course, Iran does seek to extort much more than money from the West. It seeks to impose its will on the world, after it succeeds in imposing its will on the Middle East; not to mention threatening Israel with extinction, and possibly even trying to execute that stated goal.
The history of the failure of the West to stop North Korea’s nuclear program is instructive, painfully instructive. The entire sanctions strategy in regard to Iran has, in its essence, already been tried against North Korea. Tried, and failed. Going all the way back to the first Clinton administration, American leaders have been suckers. There is no other word. North Korea held out every manner of promise, implied or explicit, that it would end its nuclear program if . . . fill in the blank. If the West did this, if the West did that. Every American president figured that he was smarter than the North Koreans, that he knew how to negotiate with a totalitarian government, knew just which “incentive” would pull North Korea back from its nuclear pursuit. Not a single American president was right.
Obama isn’t, either. His problem is worse, however. He must not only face up to the fact that no sanctions and no other diplomatic effort will stop Iran. He must also deal with the failures of previous presidents to do the right thing with North Korea, that is, to put a stop militarily to its nuclear plans.
To those who articulate the potential horrors of military action against Iran’s nuclear program, let them ask: Which is worse? Military action now, or the prospect of another North Korea, with its clear advancement in nuclear technology and the absolutely inevitable accompanying threats to use it? That is precisely what would follow from an Iranian nuclear bomb.
The time for Obama to “persuade” Iran to change course is past. If the Obama administration, with or without Israel, can end Iran’s program by such means as the assassination of its scientists, or the corruption of its computer programs, so much the better. But these means seem highly unrealistic as a guarantee to end Iran’s program (as opposed to delaying it), given the scope of Iran’s program, its advancement, its clear-cut blackmail benefits (from Iran’s perspective), and its proliferation in all manner of facilities, seen and unseen.
North Korea should be an object lesson on how to deal with Iran. Let us wake up before it is too late.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
