Bad news always seems to break on the weekends:

On Fri­day (September 25, 2009), Obama and Euro­pean allies rolled out what they hope is their most con­vinc­ing argu­ment yet of Iran­ian inten­tions: intel­li­gence sug­gest­ing that a pre­vi­ously undis­closed site is a well-hidden ura­nium enrich­ment plant capa­ble of help­ing build at least one nuclear bomb a year.

As Obama met with world lead­ers in New York and Pitts­burgh last week, Obama gave the clear­est sig­nals yet that he is giv­ing up on “engage­ment” — his trade­mark cam­paign theme — in favor of tough eco­nomic sanc­tions he hopes will finally break the will of the Tehran regime. (American Chronicle | Secret Ura­nium Enrich­ment Plant in Iran Changes U.S. Strat­egy).

Over the weekend, Iran upped the ante with the test firing of the longest-range missiles in its arsenal:

Iran fired two of the longest-range mis­siles in its arse­nal today ahead of a con­fronta­tion with for­eign pow­ers over a pre­vi­ously undis­closed secret nuclear facil­ity later this week.

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard is reported to have suc­cess­fully launched a Shahab-3 and a Sejil mis­sile, both of which are capa­ble of car­ry­ing nuclear war­heads with a range of up to 1,200 miles – which would put Israel, most Arab states and parts of Europe, includ­ing much of Turkey, within its range. (Times Online | Iran test-fires nuclear mis­siles capa­ble of hit­ting Israel and parts of Europe).

Iran’s secret ura­nium enrich­ment pro­gram and the test fir­ing of short and long range mis­siles are going to dom­i­nate Obama’s for­eign pol­icy focus for at least the rest of the year.

War with Iran Would be Folly

It’s crit­i­cal the US & the UK do not over-react. The pres­sure will be on Obama to pre­empt a strike. While that’s not his incli­na­tion, the pres­sure will grow. Attack­ing Iran, how­ever, would be folly:

There is no viable mil­i­tary option for deal­ing the Iran­ian nuclear threat, and efforts by the Israeli gov­ern­ment and its sup­port­ers to link that threat to progress in peace with the Pales­tini­ans and Syria are “non­sense” and an obsta­cle to the Arab-Israeli and inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion essen­tial to chang­ing Iran­ian behavior.

That’s the con­clu­sion of Keith Weiss­man, the Iran expert for­merly at the Amer­i­can Israel Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (AIPAC), speak­ing pub­licly for the first time since the gov­ern­ment dropped espi­onage charges against him and his col­league, Steve Rosen, ear­lier this month.

There’s no assur­ance an attack on Iran’s nuclear facil­i­ties – even if all of them could be located – would be any­thing more than a tem­po­rary set­back, Weiss­man told me. Instead, a mil­i­tary strike would unify Ira­ni­ans behind an unpop­u­lar regime, ignite a wave of retal­i­a­tion that would leave thou­sands dead from Teheran to Tel Aviv, block oil exports from the Per­sian Gulf and prob­a­bly neces­si­tate a ground war, he said.

“The only viable solu­tion is dia­logue. You don’t deal with Iran with threats or preach­ing regime change,” said Weiss­man. (THE JERUSALEM POST | There is no military option in Iran).