We are told that "crippling sanctions" have been imposed on the Assad regime in Syria. We are told, with ever greater fervidness, that "crippling sanctions" have been imposed by the Obama Administration on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

No.

Sanctions that do not "cripple" are not "crippling sanctions." It is the same with Iran where, we are endlessly told, the Obama Administration, in its fourth year instead of its first year, that is much too late and much too loopholed, has "imposed crippling sanctions." But Iran, that is the Islamic Republic of Iran, is not "crippled." So the use of that phrase "crippling sanctions" is falsely comforting.

Those whose duty is to protect the people of Israel are one whit comforted by that insidiously reassuring phrase "crippling sanctions." It is a phrase that obfuscates, or even hides, a terrible reality:  the relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons by the Islamic Republic of Iran, one which will end, if the Obama Administration continues on its present disastrous course (it is not the Israeli government that is on "a disastrous course" but those who, not assuming their obligations as a great military power, are leaving it up to Israel to fend for itself, and while the Israelis, we all have allowed ourselves to believe, will somehow come through, a glance at a map, and considerations of distance and enemies all around, and an American "ally" that cannot be trusted with secrets, or be counted on to understand Islam, and thus to grasp the threat that nuclear weapons, in the hands of those who run the Islamic Republic of Iran, are akin not to nuclear weapons in the hands of the calculatiing Soviets or the Communist Chinese, but rather akin to nuclear weapons in the hands of Adolf Hitler who, had he possessed them in the last months of the war, and even knowing that the Americans also had such weapons, and would have used them to raze Nazi Germany to the ground, would not have hesitated one minute to use them. Are the fanatics in Teheran, awaiting the Twelth or Hidden Imam, who run the Islamic Republic of Iran more like those grey sober dull calculating men in the Politburo, or are they more like Adolf Hitler and his most fanatical followers?

You know the answer to that.

So the next time you read or hear the phrase "crippling sanctions" make sure you are not comforted, or that you allow others to allow themselves to believe that the sanctions now in place are "crippling." Look at the Non-Aligned Nations Summit now meeting in Teheran. Look at the military aid being extended to Syria. Does the Islamic Republic of Iran look like it has been "crippled:" by sanctions? Has the nuclear porject ever, in the twenty years since israel first started to warn about it, been slowed down by anything other than covert Israeli action? No.

And now the only thing, apparently, that will stop the regime from acquiring weapons, or from acquiring the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, an ability that can be translated, within weeks (while the West would of course dither)into such weapons, is tiny Israel, doing what it can to set the program back, and hoping that the American government, whoever is in charge, will finally emulate the Israelis, and with much greater resources, inflict whatever damage may, in the future, be necessary to keep the Iranians from successfully restarting their most cherished project.