RUSH: Mr. Snerdley came to me today and said, “I got an idea to fix the problem in Iran.” I said, “What is it?” He said, “Send Jimmy Carter over there. He’s the architect of the mess in the first place. Let him go over there; we don’t let him come back ’til he fixes it.” The problem is, if we send Jimmy Carter over to Iraq, his solution will be for us to disarm. He fixed North Korea. It’s one of those moves you’d love to see, just like somebody suggesting that illegal aliens cannot vote until they’re citizens just to see the reaction.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to Durham, North Carolina. We got somebody from Durham on the phone who doesn’t want to talk about rape. Bob, welcome to the program. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s good to be with you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Yes. I live about five blocks away from that incident but that’s not why I called. I called about something I heard on the radio today that the president of Iran was making a — was reinforcing a point that you often make about the difference between the effects of diplomacy versus having a credible military force. He is not going to be deterred from developing nuclear weapons, hell or high water, and they keep talking to him, and he just keeps shrugging it off.
RUSH: Well, look it, number one, there is obviously no fear of our military, otherwise Mahmoud and the Iranians would not be doing what they’re doing. It’s the subject of our morning update today, video podcast as well. With our troops on two of Iran’s borders, in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t care. They’re not intimidated because they know that there’s been enough unrest and dissension and they know that the Democratic Party in this country is their ally. The Democratic Party and the American left and the kooks have sufficiently seen to it that there’s no national unity here on the war in Iraq or the war on terror, and that there’s no way the people of this country are going to sit back and watch us go after Iran, not if it’s ever announced in advance and we do the debate like we did leading into Iraq.
But more than that, we know the diplomatic doesn’t work. It’s taken us and gotten us where we are with old Mahmoud, and we let Mohammed ElBaradei — we let the French; we let the Europeans — do their diplomacy. I have mentioned I don’t know how many times — we got a great side-by-side way to compare, a way to deal with these two countries. You got Iraq and you got Iran. On the left side is Iraq. They are no longer a threat. Whatever else is going on there, they are no longer a threat to that region. Nothing happening in Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi government threatens the region, and we’ve dealt with that militarily. 
Go to Iran. What do we do? We deal with them diplomatically, they’ve got nukes. At least they have enriched uranium. Here’s the scary part. This guy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually believes that he will rule and govern Iraq during a “clash of civilizations.” There are analysts who believe that he is spoiling for a fight because he doesn’t think that we have the guts to engage in one, and he doesn’t think we have the ability to win one, and who can blame him? When you open the newspaper, or open your average book, or read a magazine, watch television in this country, and you watch how the president and the war effort are constantly impugned and derided, who could blame old Mahmoud for thinking we don’t have the will or the ability?
So there are some people who are really concerned about this, that Mahmoud thinks that Israel ought to be relocated back to Germany or wherever he wants to put it — and he thinks all this is biblical, or ah ah ah, in the holy Koran, and he thinks that it’s his time. I mean, this guy, he’s insane. Karl Rove is right. We’re dealing with an irrational, unstable lunatic. There’s a great piece on this today by Amir Taheri in the New York Post. Let me share with you a couple excerpts here while I have time. “As the diplomatic maneuvers to pressure Iran to rein in its nu clear ambitions continue, the message one hears in policy circles in most capitals is simple: The key is in Moscow. Of all the powers involved in this showdown with the Islamic Republic, only Russia is in a position to tip the balance between a peaceful resolution or war.” Here’s why.
“Russia is building Iran’s first and, so far, only nuclear power plant near Bushehr. It could slow or suspend the project pending a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. Such a move could strengthen the hands of those within the Tehran establishment that want a moratorium on uranium processing to prevent tension from further escalating. And Russia has another card to play: It has proposed to set up a special-uranium enrichment project for Iran to cover the needs of the Bushehr plant for its full 37-year lifespan. (An agreement now in place has Russia providing the plant’s fuel for its first 10 years.) To sweeten it for the Tehran leadership, the Russian proposal could be modified to have part of the enrichment process done in Iranian facilities and with the participation of Iranian scientists and technicians.” This may lead nowhere, though, because as I said, “Some analysts suspect that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may actually want a military conflict with the United States as the opening shot in his promised ‘Clash of Civilizations.'”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to finish Mr. Amir Taheri’s analysis of the Iranian nuclear situation and how Russia in his mind is the key. Now, after discussing the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is maybe crazy enough to provoke a war with the US because he believes that there will be a clash of civilizations during his time, and he doesn’t think we have the will to fight it nor the ability to win it, Mr. Taheri says, “But even then Russia could either prevent a clash or hasten it by vetoing or voting for a strong resolution in the U.N. Security Council. The Russian position there is crucial because China, which also has a veto, would not be prepared to isolate itself by siding with Iran if Russia sides with the United States. If Russia vetoes, so will China,” and that isolates Tehran. “If Russia doesn’t veto, the most that China might do to please Iran is to abstain.
“The Bush administration knows all this. That’s why it’s starting to build pressure on Russia ahead of this July’s G-8 summit, which Russian President Vladimir Putin is to host. The American calculation is that Putin, having won the presidency of the G-8 for Russia for the first time, is unlikely to start his tenure by splitting the group to please the Iranian mullahs. Yet Putin won’t want to make an unambiguous choice between Tehran and Washington. Russia needs the Islamic Republic for a number of reasons–” So it’s a dicey. It’s a real dicey situation, but according to Amir Taheri, Russia holds the key here in perhaps slowing down the Iranian move toward nuclear weapons and stopping this lunatic from actually provoking a war.
He concludes: “There is one more, and (according to Russian analysts) perhaps more important, factor: Putin can never be sure that, come the crunch, Washington will not strike a deal with Tehran, leaving Moscow in the lurch,” economically, such as what we’ve done in North Korea. I mean, we’re holding out the possibility that we — okay, in order to stabilize these people — that we will help them build their nuclear power plants but we, unlike the way the Clintons and Carter did it, will not see to it they can take what we give them and turn it into nuclear weapons, and if we do that, it might cause some outrage in this country. It will ice Russia out of the situation, and they have a far more economic need dealing with Iran, and they don’t want Iran to go to war either. They have existing military contracts with Iran, and they need to keep Iran functioning somehow rather than at war for those who remain valuable.
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.
