I am far more worried that Israel has nuclear arms and is prepared to use them on Iran....The Ayatollah has said that nuclear weapons are agsinst the beliefs of Islam. Believe him.

I don't believe anything that No Count Ahmadinejad and his Supreme Fuehrer say--not a single word. It is a fascist regime that I hope will be overthrown by its own people, and then maybe we can have improved relations afterwards.

On the other hand, I do not want war with Iran. We could not afford it anyway, and would not know how to deal with the mess afterwards even if we did "win". Nation building is not exactly our thing, especially in that part of the world.

Nor have I believed that Iran would actually use nuclear weapons even if they had any, simply out of fear of massive retaliation. Nuclear weapons are only useful in deterring an attack, not in actual war fighting.

Sanctions would just be one part of a containment strategy, although that won't work as long as Russia and the other countries to the north are part of it. I would hope for sanctions designed to do damage to the regime itself rather than the Iranian democratic movement.

I still believe that democratic reform is inevitable in Iran. It really just becomes a waiting game.

Please let's look a Iran from a modern historical perspective. Early on in the 20th century England and a few others created countries out of the deserts, mountains and valleys of the Middle East and after the 2nd World War England began changing its large navy from coal to oil. They contracted with various countries in the ME and began taking oil. However, England now Britain, didn't pay the agreed royalties.

Iran elected a president, Mossandeq, who had run on a platform of nationalization to gain control over Iranian oil to prevent continued theft by the British. In 1953, the British were astounded, and since neither MI5 nor MI6, had the means to get rid of Mossandeq they went to the USA for help. The USA sent in the CIA and took Mossandeq out of office and had him put in jail while the USA and the UK brought back the cruel Shah of Iran from exile and made him a puppet leader of Iran.
The CIA then created SAVAK, the Shah's police, who were basically a CIA controlled Death Squad. The CIA remained in control of SAVAK. They killed thousands even throwing students to their deaths from schools' rooftops. This continued for decades.

Jumping ahead to the 80s, the USA under Reagan went to war with Iraq with Iraq as its proxie. Reagan had the embargos on Iraq changed to allow the US and other countries to supply weapons some of which were poison gasses. Saddam not only gassed the Kurds but gassed and killed 3,000 Iranian defenders on Iranian soil. We heard a lot about the Kurds but little about Iranians. The USA was inherently complicit in both gassings. The Iraq invasion went on for 8 years as Iran eventually repelled the Iraqi forces. The Iraqis were also helped financially by the US, given US weapons and advisors were provided on the ground. Iraq also got US Spy satallite intell so they knew where to attack with gas.

The US continued to be antagonistic to Iran as the years passed. I left out the hostage taking because it was such a tiny event compared with the anquish of Iran being attacked so much by the US and it was not a state impelled hostage taking as is Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre.

Nevertheless the USA and the UK especially are continuing to accuse Iran of wrong doing even after their decades of cruelty to the Iranian people. Iran, unlike Brittain and the states has not invaded any country for over 200 years. Perhaps the US and the UK could try for this record and leave the world alone.
http://intolerablebehaviour.premium.ws
http://intolerablebehaviour.active.ws
http://ButterflyStorms.bravehost.com
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." MLK Jr.
Peace