Aw, let Iran get its nuclear bomb: Everyone’s got one!

Of course, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for the Israelis to lift their six-week air-and-sea blockade of Lebanon. The UN’s Mr. Annan has long been on a verbal binge, angrily scolding Israel for bombing and killing four UNIFIL observers and denouncing what he averred was an Israeli violation of the "ceasefire" (when IDF commandos raided the Bekaa Valley to stop Syria from resupplying the Hezbollah).

In short, the Israelis are pissed off at Annan for his non-stop hectoring – so why should they please him? He was absolutely the wrong person to deliver the right message.

That having been said, the Philippines must resolutely join the group of nations who are demanding, now that the 34-day "war" is technically over, that the IDF’s Navy and its still overflying Air Force enable food, medicines, and other civilian supplies to enter shattered Lebanon by sea and by land. No civilized nation punishes an entire nation, as Jerusalem is now doing by keeping up the cruel blockade after the shooting is over.

True enough, the fragile ceasefire may not hold: both Hezbollah and Israel’s IDF are on a razor’s edge of hostility and suspicion, and any little thing could trigger off renewed hostilities. Yet, while there’s a period of calm, it’s time to let much-needed food, and other vital commodities into the devastated country which has been a battleground for more than a month.

For his part, UN Mr. Annan must stop sounding imperious in ordering the Israelis about. He’s been too partisan, sucking up to the Shiites quite obviously, and trying to posture like some puffed-up Talleyrand when everybody knows his writ in the world body expires on December 31, when his term limits compel him to retire. This is why Annan has been rocketing all over the place, lately to Beirut, then Jerusalem. Why, he even took the wind out of the sails of the stern admonition of the UN Security Council to Iran to suspend uranium enrichment which most Council members believe can be utilized to produce weapons-grade plutonium, instead of just peaceful nuclear energy.

How did he do that? By scheduling for himself a visit to the Iranian capital, Tehran, four days after the Security Council’s deadline for the Iranians to cease and desist. The message this delivered to Iran’s pugnacious, Islamic fire-breathing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and its Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is that the UN Security Council will not crack down even if Tehran defies its deadline.

Annan’s moral leadership in the UN was already severely damaged by alleged financial dealings unethically conducted by his son with the world body in connection with its food-for-oil program in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I submit that he fade into the sunset quietly, so he can depart with some dignity, instead of further roiling the already troubled waters in the Lebanon, Syria and Israel region.

As for the Iran’s nuclear program – which, I must point out pre-dates the Islamic government, having originated in the mid-1970s during the regime of the late, deposed Shah-in-Shah, Reza Pahlevi – so what if those sneaky Iranians want the bomb? They may probably have it already (Sus, "friendly" India has 100 nuclear warheads). So what?

Almost everybody already has nuclear capability – even Israel got it from the French, if you’ll recall. Certainly America’s ally, Pakistan, whose possession of nukes was frowned upon until President Pervez Musharraff became an ally of the US and the West, and the . . . ahem, scourge of Osama and the Taliban, possesses nuclear clout.

In sum, it all depends on who’s got the nukes . . . friend or foe. If so, sanamagan, that madman Kim Jong-il of North Korea has two, even four. Who knows, he may even blow himself up and the rest of the peninsula. (Poor Seoul) if he presses the wrong button.

I was in China – in Hangzhou in fact, rowing with a group of five journalists across romantic West Lake – when the Chinese exploded their first atom bomb in Xingkiang in 1954. When our group met with Prime Minister Zhou En-lai later, in Beijing’s Great Wall of the People, he repeated the party-line which was already being broadcast and expressed all over China: "The Atom-Bomb is only a Paper Tiger."

Beijing’s having gotten a bomb discomfited everybody in the Big League, including the next-door Soviet Union. But travelling around China by air or by train, we didn’t notice any special excitement on the part of the Chinese people we saw – not even the soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army we spotted reading the "Wall Newspapers."

They were more interested, apparently, in getting news about who had won the Ping-Pong championships.

If Tehran gets a nuke, who’ll those nasty Iranians attack? America, the "Great Satan"? Britain? France? If they exploded one in the Middle East, say in Israel, the fallout would kill millions among its Arab neighbors. If the Iranians struck Western Europe, the fall-out would reach Tehran itself. And the entire neighborhood would be polluted for years to come.

As for the USA, Osama – lately glorified by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour – perhaps already has some "dirty bomb" stashed away there, it seems.

It doesn’t pay these days to produce a nuke, except to impress others – not scare them shitless.

Let Iran join the Club, for Pete’s sake. Zhou En-lai was right in 1954: It’s a Paper Tiger.

* * *

Yesterday afternoon, I rang up our Ambassador in Beirut, former Albay Governor Al Francis Bicharra, and he told me that – with more than 6,000 OFWs already having been flown home – slowed down to almost zero the number of OFWs registering to be evacuated out of Lebanon. As a matter of fact, Ambassador Bicharra said that some of our OFWs have begun returning to Lebanon, by land via Syria, or by sea (how they got past the Israeli blockade, naturally, mystifies this writer).

It’s true that our Lebanese friends have been assuring me that with the "reconstruction" phase getting underway, they will soon be recruiting from 100,000 to even 200,000 Filipino engineers, technicians and construction workers – but hold your horses!

I met with our friend, Lebanon’s Consul Joe Awad (actually born and raised in our country, tunay na Pinoy-Lebanese), and he, too, urged a bit of patience and caution. "Let’s see how things pan out," Joe said.

With us at lunch was one of Lebanon’s most prominent contacts in our country, businessman Joe Bicharra (interestingly, a relative of Ambassador Bicharra – their Great Grandfathers had been brothers back in old Lebanon). Joe was very upbeat about peace and the rebuilding of Lebanon, and the coming need for another type of OFW to serve in reconstruction.

He has messages to deliver from ranking officials in Beirut to our head of Task Force Lebanon, Vice-President Noli de Castro. I will try to arrange a meeting between him and Kabayan.

On the other hand, when I asked Ambassador Bicharra over the phone whether Vice-President de Castro had visited them in Beirut, or arrived in Lebanon to coordinate either extraction or food and medical supply operations, the envoy said that the Veep still hadn’t arrived there. I hope this information doesn’t incur our Vice-President’s ire, but I had done the asking. But isn’t it strange? If you’re heading "Task Force Lebanon," shouldn’t one at least go to Lebanon for a day, or two, or three?

My advice to our friend Kabayan is to get to Lebanon to assess the situation – let La Presidenta take care of the Guimaras oil spill problem on the homefront, until she flies off to Helsinki, China and Vietnam.

* * *

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in a bid to recapture the political initiative from the Hezbollah, has promised that his government will give the owners of destroyed homes and properties $33,000 each for reconstruction.

Siniora’s move was prompted by the Hezbollah’s swift PR move of transforming itself from a militant armed militia into "Construction Hezbollah" handing out $12,000 each to Lebanese whose homes, apartments and other property had been destroyed by Israeli bombing and artillery attack. Where did the Iran-and-Syria-backed Hezbollah suddenly acquire those shiny new dollars? You don’t have to be a Nostradamus to conjecture where.

But how far will $12,000, or even the government-proffered $33,000, get a family who – within 24 days – lost the homes and savings accumulated in a lifetime? Not very far. It is estimated 130,000 homes were destroyed by the rampaging Israelis.

Yet, why not blame Hezbollah and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah for having provoked Israel last July 12, by crossing the border and attacking an IDF outpost, slaying eight Israeli soldiers, and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers? Everyone in the Middle East knows, from past experience, that the Israelis go berserk whenever an Israeli soldier is abducted. Sheikh Nasrallah and his Hezbollah ought to have been prepared for the terrible response.

They brought perdition and hellfire down on the heads of all their fellow Lebanese – but the Lebanese aren’t blaming them. It’s Israel they hate (and George W. Bush, too). There is no Win-Win situation over there for the USA.

The Hezbollah may have been battered and damaged, more severely than is glimpsed, but propaganda-wise they won this round.

Which is why, I dourly predict the Israelis will soon be punching in again – particularly when the UN peacekeeping troop-build-up is so slow. The IDF has been humiliated – its myth of invincibility punctured – and it doesn’t like that.