RICE: NO DEADLINE FOR IRAN

(MSNBC/AP) :

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that Iran cannot delay indefinitely accountability for a suspected nuclear weapons program, but said the United States has set “no deadline, no timeline” for Tehran to act. ... “I’m quite clear and I believe everybody is telling the Iranians that they are going to have to live up to their international obligations,” she said. “It is obvious that if Iran cannot be brought to live up to its international obligations, in fact, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) statute would indicate that Iran would have to be referred to the U.N. Security Council” for possible sanctions. “I think the message is there,” Rice said. “The Iranians need to get that message,” she said, adding that Tehran should know that “there are other steps” the international community can take.

Like the withdrawal of troops from Iraq - there is no artifical timetable. Instead CONDITIONS will dictate responses and actions. This is FINE; all timetables do is tip-off the enemy. What's ABSOLUTELY clear to me is that a UNSCR is next and it's coming sooner rather than later. And that it'll be followed by military actions if Iran balks at REAL cooperation - including ending ALL TIES to anti-Zionist terror groups.

I think military counter-actions against Iran are INEVITABLE and that they will be more like Clinton's 1998 attacks against Saddam (links to Clinton's speech) - called OPERATION DESERT FOX (links to CNN news story about the operation) than like either the Afghan or the Iraq wars; IOW, it will be a series of devastating cruise missile attacks which will destroy Iran's nuclear program and their military, and much of the economic infrastructure. If it doesn't lead to a collapse of the Iranian mullahs' tyranny, at least it will buy us a decade free of Iranian nuclear blackmail.

If - in the next one or two months - there is a democratic revolution in Iran, then ALL BETS ARE OFF - because a democratic Iran might actually quickly become an ally. But IMHO: a democratic revolution in Iran is unlikely to occur in a time-frame that would effect the need for a military strike - that's one reason the mullahs have been rushing to get the bomb: they need to get it before there is a revolution.