Despite as many as 100 explosions which killed at least 38 people in Baghdad, Iraqis defied a desperate insurgency yesterday and turned out in strong numbers to choose a new Parliament. According to The New York Times, “turnout was higher than expected, and certainly higher than in the last parliamentary election in 2005. … Sunnis who largely boycotted previous elections voted in force, and an intense competition for Shiite votes drove up participation in Baghdad and the south.” The NYT went on to describe the election as “arguably the most open, most competitive election in the nation’s long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war.”
The United States still has much work to do in Iraq, but yesterday’s successful election is a major victory not just for Iraqis, but for everyone who wants to see peace and prosperity in the Middle East. Unfortunately there is still at least one nation in the region that is bent on seeing Iraq’s democratic experiment fail: Iran. The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is set to be released in a few weeks, and many insiders fear it is being tweaked to downplay the danger Iran represents to Iraq, the region and the United States. That would be a mistake.
As CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus told CNN this weekend, “Iran has gone from a theocracy to a thugocracy because of the citizens who are outraged by the hijacking of the election that took place last June.” And this thugocracy has responded to internal opposition by doubling down on their nuclear ambitions. Nobody wants to live in a world with a nuclear Iran, but too often we are told our choices are limited between the Obama administration’s do-nothing Iran policy and all out aerial bombardment. There are other realistic and effective steps that can be taken. Specifically, The Heritage Foundation has outlined Ten Steps to a Free Iran, including:
1. Impose and enforce the strongest sanctions.
2. Drop opposition to U.S. gasoline sanctions.
3. Target public diplomacy to expose the regime’s human rights abuses.
4. Facilitate communications among dissidents.
5. Aid opposition groups.
6. Reduce Iran’s meddling in Iraq.
7. Target covert actions to discredit the regime.
8. Modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
9. Expand U.S. military capabilities to defend U.S. interests and allies.
10. Deploy a robust and comprehensive missile defense system.
None of these ten actions constitutes a silver bullet that could dismantle Iran’s thugocracy, but taken together they give the Iranian people a great hope for freedom. That is what makes yesterday’s Iraqi elections so important. A stable and democratic Iraq offers Shiites an alternative model that helps de-legitimize Iran’s Islamist system. Winning in Iraq can be just the first step to bringing freedom to its neighbor to the North.
Quick Hits:
- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates does not see eye-to-eye with President Barack Obama’s nuke-free dreams.
- Responding to reports the White House is considering trying Khalid Sheik Muhammed before a military tribunal, the ACLU is running a full-page New York Times ad showing President Obama morphing into President George Bush.
- Democratic pollster Mark Penn explains why the President should abandon his current health care bill for a step-by-step approach that would attract bipartisan support.
- A Congressional Budget Office report shows President Obama’s bank tax bill would ultimately be paid by you, the consumer.
- According to a new Center for Competitive Politics poll, Americans do still support the First Amendment and the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision.
Three days ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it could take months for new UN sanctions against Iran. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports that, in addition to China, the Obama administration is increasingly worried about gaining the support of other members of the U.N. Security Council, including Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon. While Iran’s ballistic missile program continues to advance, a long-range nuclear missile might not be the biggest threat Iran presents to the United States.
Iran could place a short-range ballistic missile on one of the thousands of commercial freighters sailing in the Pacific and detonate a warhead high above U.S. territory that could take down 75 percent of our nation’s electrical grid. As Heritage fellow Baker Spring explains such a Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack would “cause a cascade of failures throughout the broader infrastructure, including banking systems, energy systems, transportation systems, food production and delivery systems, water systems, emergency services, and–perhaps most damaging–cyberspace. Effectively, the U.S. would be thrown back to the pre-industrial age following a widespread EMP attack.”
Congress has already begun to address this threat. They created the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, who has since issued reports in 2004 and 2008. The Commission concluded: “EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences.”
But now the Obama administration has chosen to ignore the Commission’s findings. Congress can not allow this to continue. Baker recommends:
- Require the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to Produce a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) Describing Which Countries Are Capable of Launching an EMP Strike.
- Press the Obama Administration to Prepare to Protect the Nation’s Cyber Infrastructure Against the Effects of EMP.
- Require the Navy to Develop a Test Program for Sea-Based Interceptors with the Capability to Intercept and Destroy Ballistic Missiles Carrying EMP Weapons Prior to Detonation.
You can read Spring’s full report, here.