Sarah Palin has an excellent column in USA Today in which she calls on Obama to seize the moment and show leadership in stopping Iran.

Palin says we should use the same strategy against Iran that we used during the Cold War. We should use every tool at our disposal to support the opposition and foment unrest from within.

But we also need to encourage a positive vision for Iran. Iran is not condemned to live under the totalitarian inheritance of the Ayatollah Khomeini forever. There is an alternative — an Iran where human rights are respected, where women are not subjugated, where terrorist groups are not supported and neighbors are not threatened. A peaceful, democratic Iran should be everyone’s goal. There are many hopeful signs inside Iran that reveal the Iranian people’s desire for this peaceful, democratic future. We must encourage their voices.

When the brave people of Iran take to the streets in defiance of their unelected dictatorship, they must know that we in the free world stand with them. When the women of Iran rise up to demand their rights, they must know that we women of the free world who enjoy the rights won for us by our suffragist foremothers stand with our sisters there. When Iranians demand freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and freedom to simply live their lives as they choose without persecution, we in the free world must stand with them.

We can start by supporting them with diplomacy and things such as radio broadcasting, just as we did with those who suffered under the former Soviet Empire. Most of all, we should support them with confidence in the rightness of the ideals of liberty and justice.

She rightly points out that based on the Wikileaks cables, the Arab world is with us and against Iran. We now know that behind the scenes Arab leaders are telling us to do whatever it takes to stop Iran from getting nukes.

I agree with Palin on this. The way Obama did nothing while protesters were murdered in the streets of Tehran was a disgrace. We are allegedly a beacon of freedom yet we said nothing while a tyrannical government murdered its own people.

I’m in favor of doing everything short of a ground invasion. We simply do not have the manpower for a large scale invasion. We could do Special Ops teams if necessary, but that’s it. However, I don’t think it would come to that.

We have many tools at our disposal before we get to actual military strikes. CIA needs to go old school and foment unrest by spreading money, arms, and intelligence around. We should fund anti-government groups who can bomb Revolutionary Guard facilities and assassinate key leaders.

It’s time to move past the phony paper pushing at the UN and start causing mayhem and turmoil inside the country.

I realize Barack Obama doesn’t have the balls or the will to do any of this stuff, but I suspect Israel will do what it can until we get a president who will.

From The NYT:

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Iranian negotiators had agreed to a draft of a deal to ship much of Iran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel to Russia, but cautioned that it would still have to be approved by Friday in Tehran and Washington.

The draft, which came after three days of talks here, adds important details to an agreement in principle made on Oct. 1, after a preliminary round of negotiations. If approved, the deal would commit Iran to temporarily exporting 75 percent of its known stockpile of low-grade nuclear fuel to Russia for additional enrichment. Negotiators say that would prevent the possibility that Iran could turn the fuel into weapons-grade material anytime soon.

I don’t buy a word of this. First of all, anything the head of the IAEA says is suspect to begin with. Secondly, the keywords in the above paragraph are “known stockpile”. The Iranians have never been honest about their nuclear program and there’s no evidence to suggest that has changed.

Exporting 75% of the fuel we know they have means nothing as long as they keep 100% of the fuel they’re hiding and continue to enrich in secret.

This entire thing is a farce and unless Israel takes military action the Iranians will become a nuclear power.