The President of Iran is a dangerous idiot, but he may well hold on to power for a while. He seems to be trying to stay on top by uniting his population -- previously riven by factional disputes, many of those factions opposing his rule -- against the foreign Satans who deign to tell Iran what kind of weapons it may have (a la Fidel Castro).
He is dangerous in at least two very serious ways. One, he plainly wants the weapons, to use or to threaten to use. Iran is capable of developing them, and he may well be capable of using them. Two, he saw what happened after 9-11, and he knows that he can do a lot more damage to the West in general, and America in particular, by leading them to bleed and bankrupt themselves in even more neocon folly of stupid, proud, imperial overreach.
Indeed, many of those who led us over the cliff into Afghanistan and Iraq have not learned a blessed thing. Today President Obama released with much fanfare further evidence of Iran's perfidy with regard to its nuclear plant and already Senators Kyl, Lieberman and McCain can hardly contain themselves in their rapt anticipation of American or Israeli bombers swooping over Iran, presumably eliminating any and all "threats" to the US, Israel, ethnic minorities, liberal democracy, Western business interests, country music and good posture.
But even without a direct American or Israeli attack on any labs or factories, Iran is in position already to exponentially escalate the costs of everything going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. With some kind of attack, the region could well and truly explode. And its President knows that it is an open question whether America's War Party has the leverage left to force an expansion of warfare to Iran, ahead of American public opinion which is rapidly solidifying in favor of deescalation in both Iran and Afghanistan.
Can there be any doubt that he is right about that last point? The neocons all over the world see their window of opportunity closing, and the pressure is on President Obama, in particular, to act now or to allow Israel to act, the consequences be damned. They sense, correctly, that they have just about worn out their welcome in American public opinion, and they day is coming when they will have to relinquish most of their influence in Washington as well.
Nuclear proliferation is a serious issue and Iran is a rouge state. It may be that some kind of military action is indeed called for. But the neocons are not to be trusted on this or any other matter. This is a great opportunity for President Obama to repeat his message to the UN on Monday that the US can not be expected to do the heavy lifting by itself. A real coalition of the states in the neighborhood -- in particular Russia and China -- plus the US, equitably sharing the costs, the risks, and the diplomatic heat, would go a long way towards spreading a good message about why nuclear weapons are not worth it. Failing that, the risks and the costs outweigh the benefits of any kind of attack by the US or Israel.
And even more fundamentally, how hard is everyone trying to resove this peacefully?
If the neocons have their way the US will borrow more money from China to wage war on Iran in order to teach them how to be good. That would likely do more damage to the United States in the long run than anything a nuclear armed Iran could do. That must not be allowed to happen.
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