Bad signs

1. Iran introduces more Internet censorship (from The Guardian, via Tigerhawk):

Iran yesterday shut down access to some of the world's most popular websites. Users were unable to open popular sites including Amazon.com and YouTube following instructions to service providers to filter them.

Similar edicts have been issued against Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia, IMDB.com, an online film database, and the New York Times site. Attempts to open the sites are met with a page reading: "The requested page is forbidden."...Some news sites, such as the BBC's Farsi service, are also blocked.

2. John Bolton resigns as US ambassador. Tough straight talk no longer to be heard at the UN.

3. The Jerusalem Post reports that a new security assessment by (I think) its own defence force is that the US will not take any pre-emptive strike against Iran:

Predicting Iran will obtain nuclear weapons by the end of the decade, the defense establishment's new and updated assessment for 2007 does not foresee the United States undertaking a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear installations, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The chances of an American strike are deemed "low," according to assessments by the security establishment. Israel also believes that international diplomatic efforts to stop Iran will fail, security sources said.

The article goes on to explain that there is little hope of very effective sanctions due to Russia's role.

I guess we all knew this before, but the bad aspect is that such reports confirm to Iran that they appear to be in the clear, except perhaps if Israel decides to take matters into its own hands. But I think there is still considerable doubt about how Israel could conduct such an attack without America's direct involvement.

A lengthy article in the Jerusalem Post notes all the problems with the various possible approaches, and comes up with this variation on a diplomatic solution:

Nuclear Defusing might help the parties back off from the brink by changing their expectations so as to dispose them to take measures that would be otherwise inconceivable. It includes making Israel - Iran's avowed nuclear target - a member of NATO and the quid pro quo agreement of Israel to move rapidly to a permanent two-state solution, more or less along the Clinton Plan, and to a peace treaty with Syria in return for the Golan Heights.

Placing Israel under NATO's nuclear umbrella would go a long way toward deterring Iran from threatening or attacking Israel with nuclear weapons. But will NATO, in particular its European members, accept Israel?...

With an increasing Muslim population, sounds kind of unlikely, doesn't it? I reckon if France indicated it was taking this proposal seriously, it would be romantic walks by car fire in Paris for a few months at least.

The end game is meant to be this:

Once Israel is embedded in NATO, and Israelis and Palestinians have embarked on a long-term truce and adopted peaceful coexistence, the international community will promote regional arms control involving NATO, Iran, and other Middle East countries.

In one or two generations the Middle East could become a nuclear weapons free zone.

I'm not going to hold my breath hoping for this approach to get off the ground.

(Readers who have not been here before are also referred to my previous musings about attack by Electronic bomb. That's assuming they exist and work..)