Consider Sarah Palin's national security argument for developing Alaska's energy supplies as a way of averting Middle East blackmail in light of the following stories from today:
Iran Boasts Its Forces Can Control the Gulf
Iran has the power to control the Gulf as no vessel can cross the vital seaway without coming in range of its sophisticated weaponry, a top aide to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday. Gen. Rahim Yahya Safavi, the former commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, told the official news agency IRNA: "Responsibility for defending the Persian Gulf has been handed over to the naval forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps." Their missiles can cover the entire width of the Gulf and "no ship can cross it without being within range."
IAEA Info Suggests Iran Worked on Nuclear Missile
The UN nuclear monitoring agency shared new photos and documents purporting to show that Iran tried to refit its main long-distance missile to carry a nuclear payload, said diplomats who attended the IAEA meeting Tuesday in Vienna. Iranian officials say the missile has a range of 1,250 miles, enabling a strike on Israel and most of the Middle East. The presentation "showed board members for the first time photographs and documents of work undertaken in Iran on the redesigning of the Shahab-3 missile to carry what would appear to be a nuclear weapon," said Gregory L. Schulte, the chief U.S. representative to the IAEA. He said the senior IAEA official doing the briefing "told us that information they have is very credible."
Italian PM Warns: Ahmadinejad Means What He Says
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday of "lunacy" and warned against taking his words too lightly. "I think we must pay the utmost attention to the lunacy of someone who says, perhaps for internal reasons, that Israel must be wiped off the map," Berlusconi said in a speech to a Jewish organization in Paris.
What if Iran decides to turn the screws after something worse than Hurricane Ike, when much of the US domestic supply is temporarily knocked out? Wouldn't it make sense to have a backup in Alaska?
Consider the Democratic alternative on Iran: their foreign policy guru, Joe Biden, had this wisdom to dispense over the years:
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he was quoted
floating this idea: "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran." Another incident involves his telling Israeli officials that they would just have to
reconcile themselves to a nuclear Iran.
