U.N. GIVES UP ON STOPPING IRAN'S NUKES

ElBaradei: West "Fails" on Iran Nuclear Fuel (BBC News)
International efforts to halt Iran's uranium enrichment program have been "overtaken by events," the head of the UN's nuclear agency has said. IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei said Tehran now possessed "the knowledge about how to enrich." In an interview with the New York Times, he said the focus should now be on trying to stop Iran from going to industrial-scale production.

EL BARADEI MAKES IT SOUND AS IF IRAN'S PROGRESS WAS INEVITABLE. IT WAS NOT. IT ONLY OCCURED BECAUSE OF THE NEGLIGENCE OR COMPLICITY OF EL BARADEI AND HIS ILK AT THE U.N., IN RUSSIA AND ELSEWHERE. SINCE THE WORLD HAS ABDICATED ITS RESPONSIBILITIES, IT'S TIME FOR THE U.S. AND ISRAEL TO ACT:

We must attack Iran before it gets the bomb (Telegraph UK)
Iran should be attacked before it develops nuclear weapons, America's former ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday.

John Bolton, who still has close links to the Bush administration, told The Daily Telegraph that the European Union had to "get more serious" about Iran and recognise that its diplomatic attempts to halt Iran's enrichment programme had failed.

Iran has "clearly mastered the enrichment technology now...they're not stopping, they're making progress and our time is limited", he said. Economic sanctions "with pain" had to be the next step, followed by attempting to overthrow the theocratic regime and, ultimately, military action to destroy nuclear sites.

Mr Bolton's stark warning appeared to be borne out yesterday by leaks about an inspection by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Iran's main nuclear installation at Natanz on Sunday.

The experts found that Iran's scientists were operating 1,312 centrifuges, the machines used to enrich uranium. If Iran can install 3,000, it will need about one year to produce enough weapons grade uranium for one nuclear bomb. ....

Mr Bolton said: "It's been conclusively proven Iran is not going to be talked out of its nuclear programme. So to stop them from doing it, we have to massively increase the pressure.

"If we can't get enough other countries to come along with us to do that, then we've got to go with regime change by bolstering opposition groups and the like, because that's the circumstance most likely for an Iranian government to decide that it's safer not to pursue nuclear weapons than to continue to do so. And if all else fails, if the choice is between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to look at the use of force."

President George W Bush privately refers to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has pledged to wipe Israel "off the map", as a 21st Century Adolf Hitler and Mr Bolton, who remains a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, said the Iranian leader presented a similar threat.

"If the choice is them continuing [towards a nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you're at a Hitler marching into the Rhineland point. If you don't stop it then, the future is in his hands, not in your hands, just as the future decisions on their nuclear programme would be in Iran's hands, not ours."