What do you suggest be done about the Iranian situation, Frodo?
It's easy to dismiss all the available options, but doing nothing will have a cost too, at some time in the future.
This is clearly a dangerous regime with great potential to bring destructive war to the region, and to the United States. The countries around it are weak and will probably be intimidated enough to buckle to a nuclear-armed Iran.
Iran could use its nuclear weapons to intimidate the region into declaring economic warfare on the west by curtailing oil production and driving the price through the roof.
There are no easy answers to this problem, but I think we should be mindful of the potential costs of doing nothing.
Dazzleman -I see no reason why we can't simply contain Iran as we did the Soviet Union for over a half-century. It is the least dangerous option out there, and though it is a dangerous regime, it nonetheless is a regime that values its own self-preservation. They are rational beings. Iran is not the equivalent of Al Qaeda which cannot be contained like any other nation-state and therefore must be hunted down with whatever means are at our disposal.
Frodo, your point is valid and your mind is in the right place, but the reality of the situation doesn't allow for us to do the same thing this time. You have to remember we had the fact of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) to hold against the Soviets, they knew that America, if attacked, had the willpower and guts to wipe Communism off the map. This situation is completely different. Given the opportunity, the far right wing Islamic facists (that indeed exist) would take any uranium enriched or bought by the government and use it in such a way where it could do damage to this country.I don't buy it. As I see it, the basis of the Islamist regime in Iran is its ability to protect the Iranian people from all threats, especially an American-led invasion -that, after all, is what this whole nuclear stand-off is all about as far as they are concerned. If they set off a nuclear weapon in an American metropolis, they know full well that it will undermine Iran's national security (that they have so painstakingly tried to guarantee by creating a nuclear weapon in the first place) and the basis for their rule, and invite massive American nuclear retaliation that will leave Iran a nuclear wasteland.
Face it, we are just going to have to agree to disagree on whether the powers that be in Iran are as rational as we think they are.
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