Leon E. Panetta takes the oath of office.

Since the day when the Iranian stooge, darling of Russia, China and EU, Nobel laureate and wannabe Egyptian president Mohamed ElBaradei departed the chair of the IAEA Director General, and no other Muslim candidate was found to take his place, it was a foregone conclusion that sooner or later IAEA will have to face the truth about the Iranian nuclear program. In that sense, there’s nothing newsworthy in its November report. Whatever the technical details, can anyone be surprised that the murderous fanatical theocracy with regional and even global ambitions seeks the ultimate weapon? Yukia Amano should be praised for bringing his agency to this level of objective reality, pushing  the international bureaucrats to stop lying to themselves and the rest of the humanity (this will probably cost him his re-election – the “international community” does not, as a rule, reward honesty). Yet not one of the Western leaders who are claiming now to be “studying” the report can be surprised by its findings.

In June 2008, freshly minted President of the French Republic Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Jerusalem. Speaking from the Knesset pulpit, Sarkozy proclaimed that “Israel is not alone” and that the Iranian nuclear threat requires “a firm response.” A year and a half later, France ranked third place on the list of Iran’s biggest trade partners. Did Sarkozy not know then what he knows now?

At the top of this chart of infamy, chief among the economic enablers of deranged religious tyranny, was Germany, whose Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had the temerity to accuse the Israeli Prime Minister of “not having made a single step to advance peace.” Having refused so far to sanction the Iranian Central Bank or to recognize the Iranian “Revolutionary Guards” as a terrorist organization of global proportions, Germany reportedly intends to punish Israel by refusing to deliver the submarine which is part of the Israeli deterrent against Iran. Does anyone really believe that Frau Merkel will suddenly rediscover her moral compass now that the Iranian threat has finally been acknowledged?

In Washington, the authors of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, who claimed that Iran is a rational actor and that Iranian nuclear program died in 2003, are not expected to suffer any consequences for this monstrous lie that has enabled Iran to surge forward in its quest for the bomb virtually unopposed. It was Frau Merkel’s own intelligence service, the BND, that in May 2008 had already found evidence of the continuing development of nuclear weapons in Iran. Not since the Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy refused to bomb the railroads leading to Auschwitz have American officials knowingly placed so many Jews in mortal danger. Will they now be called to account?

Time and again, while haranguing Israel to accept dismemberment in the name of peace, Western leaders promise to guarantee the security of the Jewish state. It is doubtful that, even with the best intentions, they can protect Israelis from rockets and suicide bombers. Yet there can be no doubt that, if only the West took its own promise seriously, it could have stopped the Iranian race to the bomb years ago. In the 90s, when Benjamin Netanyahu first warned the world about the Iranian threat, stiff economic sanctions could have perhaps, derailed the program altogether. In 2007, they could have exacerbated internal unrest and brought opposition to Ahmadinejad to the level that could not be contained by the regime. Yet the West traded its promises and its principles for Iranian money and Iranian oil, and now it may be too late even for the “crippling” sanctions that aren’t possible in any case – because of China and Russia.

Faced with the inevitable result of any appeasement – the brutal necessity of confronting the emboldened enemy by military force on his own terms – Western liberals and “realists” are uniformly demanding …more appeasement! The new party line is that since sanctions have failed, Iran “must be engaged diplomatically on the basis of mutual respect.” It seems that the more realistic the Iranian threat towards Israel becomes, the more sympathy Tehran gains from the hip crowd. In the eyes of the “progressives,” Iran is the new victim of American warmongers, and Israel is the villain.

When Obama’s Secretary of Prevention of an Israeli Attack on Iran, Leon Panetta, pooh-poohs the military option as something that can set Iran back “only by three years at most,” the obvious question from Jerusalem should be “as opposed to what?” More ineffectual sanctions which hurt ordinary Iranians but keep the regime intact? More “negotiations” with the genocidal madmen? More “covert activities” that so far brought more media hype than actual results? Accepting his Nobel Prize, President Obama has warned that “there will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” In the words of Hillel the Elder: “If not now, when?!”