The era of Olmert has ended and the era of Netanyahu has begun. In the midst of the financial crisis, Israel faces the looming threat of Iranian nukes.
The can that everybody has kicked down the road over the last decade has finally come to rest, and it can’t be kicked any farther.
The EU spent years dickering with Iran, to no avail. Now Barack Hussein Obama seems to think he can talk to the mullahs and persuade them to give up their nuclear ambitions via the power of “dialogue”. But most of the rest of us don’t believe in such foolishness.
Iran has decided that the End of Days is at hand, that the Islamic Republic has its part to play in the Shiite version of Armageddon, and that nuclear weapons are part of the plan. All indications are that the regime will not change its mind unless it is forcibly deterred.
And who will do the deterring? Bibi or The Messiah?
The new prime minister has sent a clear message to the new president: if the USA doesn’t act, then Israel will have to. According to The Atlantic:
Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran — or I Will- - - - - - - - -
In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — and quickly — or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.
“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”
History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.”
But Netanyahu also said that Iran threatens many other countries apart from Israel, and so his mission over the next several months is to convince the world of the broad danger posed by Iran. One of his chief security advisers, Moshe Ya’alon, told me that a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. “This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region — Washington or Tehran?”
So here we are at the “hinge of history”.
The Year of the Jackpot has arrived at last. It may be this year, or it might be 2010. It may even go all the way to the end of the Mayan epoch in 2012.
But it will be here soon.
Hat tip: islam o’phobe.
As I 
Muammar Qaddafi stormed out of the Arab Summit in a huff after insulting the king of Saudi Arabia. At the same time, Saudi women are fighting to keep gyms from being closed to them.
