Here is a disturbing article rabbis everywhere ought to be addressing to their communities. The Obama Middle East policy has been a failure, and things do not look good.

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Iran, Hezbollah, and the Bomb

BY William Harris

May 7, 2010 12:00 AM

When Iran gets the bomb, the nuclear club will have a crucial new feature. Without an Iranian bomb and barring regime change in Pakistan, we know that no nuclear power will transfer a device to a private army of the religious elect like Hezbollah in Lebanon. With an Iranian bomb, such assurance instantly ends. This is a looming, tangible state of affairs-in contrast to the hype about loose nuclear materials at the April 2010 Washington nuclear security summit.

Proponents of containing a nuclear Iran in and around the Obama administration conceive of deterring Iran in standard realist style. The Islamic Republic of Iran, however, has become a hybrid of the government of God and ruthless militarized mafias. It is well practiced in long-range subversion, intimidation, and weapons smuggling. It may be confidently expected to shred so-called containment, especially when equipped with a nuclear aura and facing the quivering potentates of Arabia.

In any case, Iran has a strategic extension across the Middle East to the Mediterranean that puts it beyond containment. On February 25, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah met in Damascus to celebrate their alignment and its achievements. The Syrian-Iranian partnership has enabled the Syrian ruling clique to go from strength to strength in dealing with the West and the Arabs. Syria only looks forward to more gains from the partnership as Iran moves toward the bomb. At the tripartite summit, Assad mocked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s call for Syria to steer away from Iran.

What of Hezbollah? Thanks to Western promoted demoralization of the West’s own friends in Lebanon, Hezbollah has advanced from commanding a large part of Lebanon to effectively commanding the Lebanese state. This is the fruit of the West’s courting of Bashar al-Assad, and pressing “consensus” with absolutists on the Lebanese. As a result, Lebanon is more than ever the business end of Iran’s Middle Eastern operations.

Hezbollah is integral to the ruling clerical and military establishment in Iran. It has pledged itself to supreme guide Ali Khamenei, and from the perspective of Iran’s leaders it is a wing of their apparatus. The party’s formidable armory, fortified territory, and intelligence capability give it credibility as a base for Iranian strategic weaponry bordering Israel, in the heart of the Arab world, and half way to Europe. Continue Reading