President Barack Obama has lobbied Russian and Chinese leaders, Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao respectively, at the APEC summit in Honolulu yesterday for support in dealing with growing tensions between Israel and Iran over Iran’s advanced nuclear arms program. Russia and China have often been a hindrance to tightening restriction on Iran, and many reports have suggested that Iranian technology is largely of Russian origin and thus there may be a vested financial interest in the status quo. The recent International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program along with leaked Israeli intelligence from Israel’s own Shin Bet and Mossad agencies points to the likelihood of military action between Israel and Iran which would inevitably involve the United States. Reports from the U.K. have also corroborated this notion. As North Korea has demonstrated, a nation does not require material wealth to have nuclear weapons. Perhaps North Korea‘s nuclear weapons are not as advanced as Kim Jong-il would like, but nonetheless an impoverished Stalinist dictatorship, cut off from the outside world and apart from its economic system, has nuclear weapons. This alone makes the prospect for a nuclear Iran a likelihood given the passage of time but also suggests that their weapons will be of a quality and level of sophistication much greater than those in North Korea.

[FoxNews]