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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (11894)	2/14/2006 12:09:12 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 540724

Once you put aside the pejorative adjectives like "mollycoddle" and all the "soft on" BS we hear constantly, you have to look at brass tacks options for dealing with a regime like Iran. You can invade, bomb, sanction, persuade or ignore, basically. Invasion is out of the question. We don't have the troops, money, international support or probably domestic support (certainly not to support a draft, which would be essential). Plus Iran is a huge country with a fairly sophisticated military and endless potential for insurgencies against occupiers. Bombing - might slow them down but the backlash from the Shiites in Iraq makes the net value of the policy a wash, most likely. Sanctions - the likely course with doubtful impact for a country making billions in oil exports. The world can't (and won't) do without Iranian oil. Bush won't tip crude to $100/barrel for the sake of going after Iran. Persuade - might work with a carrot and stick approach, much like the European talks with Libya over several years convinced the nutbar there to play nice. Ignoring - not an option. If you see other options between those, please post them. I have very little optimism that Iran will be stopped from becoming a nuclear power, not because the world is too soft but simply because it is almost impossible to stop a country with the knowledge and money from making the transition if they are willing to pay the political price. Other views welcome.