The Iran crisis

Mostly, the whole Iran "crisis" (as it may become) is all completely overblown. Since the beginning I have been disappointed that someone didn’t come in and hold their hand so they could develop nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes only. The whole reason why they want them in the first place I first and foremost a power issue. Iran wants to play with the big dogs and become a world power. You can hardly blame them, what else would you do if you tried to be a forward thinking country?

Of course, there may be other benefits as well, if Iran did get nuclear weapons; they would not constantly being threatened by the prospect of a US “regime change” on them. Currently, Iran has several hundred centrifuges, which is enough to make fuel grade uranium. In order to make weapons grade uranium, they would need five times as many as they currently have.

The whole “air strike threat” is a bunch of bull. I could see this administration making the decision to destroy nuclear facilities with conventional weapons, but the nuclear option is far-flung. The defense department was criticized for “planning to nuke” Iran, but I defend them in this case. In their current job description, what else is the pentagon supposed to do but plan for every possible scenario? They are still stuck in the cold war and because of that are always planning for every possible contingency. I believe that it was a leak to the press just to make Iran feel really nervous, using the same scare tactics that this administration always uses while “negotiating”. Either that, or It was made by someone who wants to point out how stupid this whole things is, but judging by this administrations reaction, I would say that it was the first, because there have not been any white house plumbers running around trying to find out who leaked about the secret spying program. Speaking of which, this story gets that one off of the front page, an added bonus.

To conclude, I think Bush would confirm himself as being a bully and an asshole if he did go ahead with the air strikes on Iran (the conventional ones). I don’t put my name on my blog for a reason, this is one of them: if Iran was attacked for this I would agree with them being fully justified on making a counterattack against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as perhaps aiding the Insurgency there. I say this not because I think it should be done, but because they should not let us push them around like that. Iran is asserting itself as it is just by building the nuclear reactors; let’s just hope they aren’t forced to assert themselves anymore than that.