12-16-2009, 10:54 PM
Quote: I'm just not completely sure that the man running Iran is smart enough to know what the rule is about using nukes.
When you say "the man running Iraq" do you mean Ahmadinejad or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? It isn't Ahmadinejad, and Iraq is not a monolith -- it's a very diverse and complicated place and it has some very sophisticated people, as well as some not so sophisticated people (not unlike a smaller version the US or China). The Bush administration's linking of such different countries as N. Korea, Iraq and Iran in the "axis of evil" was yet one more example of its boneheaded and ignorant policies.
Not to say that Iran's nuclear program isn't very worrying -- especially for Israel and especially given Ahmadinejad's statements -- though in their place I'd also want a deterrent; the US did after all just invade their neighbor and the only other non-nuclear-former-fellow-axis-of-evil member (though surely the results must've left Iran feeling a whole lot safer from the US, if not from Israel).
The worst thing at the moment seems to be the hard-core repression, supported by Khamenei, of protest and dissent after the rigged election of Ahmadinejad, which I think has taken away significant legitimacy away from Khamenai. Hopefully, the younger more moderate and westernized elements in Iran will win out eventually, but I guess the other course is a much more repressive Iran, which wouldn't be good.
Unfortunately, the US (and the British) have such dirty hands with respect to Iran --- overthrowing an elected democratic government in favor of the Shah (wonder what that was called "Operation Iranian Despot"?) because of, surprise surprise, Oil, and supporting Saddam Hussein while he used chemical weapons to kill 100,000 Iranians in a war that killed maybe 1,000,000 Iranians --- that even the people in Iran it would like to support are likely to treat the US like it has the plague.