Sure, this prescription will solve the problem neatly and forever. Hey, what could possibly go wrong?

mikey

Iran should stop nuclear development and enrichment until a nuclear development deal can be worked out. Nuclear missile (solid-fuel) development should be opened for inspection and destroyed. Israel should be officially recognized and violent slogans (”Death to America!”) should be eliminated. Iran should stop waging proxy war via Hamas and Hezbollah.

If Iran doesn’t stop these offensive acts, it should be economically blockaded. If Iran still persists, the nuclear facilities should be destroyed by the US.

There is more than one right way to do this, I don’t insist on exact details, as long as the result is pulling back from nuclear war and nuclear threats.

Iran gets hundreds of billions of dollars from the industrialized west for it’s oil, this is a huge amount of money for doing nothing. The West could have walked in and simply taken this oil. There is no basis for the claim that the West has been exploiting or has been hostile to Iran. It is more than insulting that Iran takes this money and turns around to buy other Western inventions to wage war against the West. This must not be permitted.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road.

Tell me how America and Israel should deal with Iran.

I am willing to offer a set of policies and responses that would contain a nuclear Iran. That seems to be unacceptable to you. Please enlighten us as to what how we should deal with Iran, unilaterally, bilaterally and within the United Nations.

mikey

You said there was no shred of evidence of a weapons program. I showed you more than shreds. Your statements have been demolished. Now you say these are not proofs. The only proof I can think of would be a nuclear test.

What I meant by paranoid is that Iran has no real enemies except those it created by building it’s nuclear program. If Iran thinks it needs deterrence, then that is paranoia, not reality.

When you get down to word for word translation, Juan Cole’s translation is pretty similar to all the others. Translators and analysts have some differences. But the general thrust is a wish to eliminate Israel. The interpretation is completed by Iran’s holocaust denial and its weapons programs.

The Iranian slogans “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” leave little to doubt. These are not peaceful intentions.

A “Conventional regional strike capability” makes no sense. It is gibberish. Delivering high explosives by long range guided missiles is not effective. Nobody even tries that anymore. You would need unreasonable accuracy or stupendous numbers or both. No country has this because it is neither a threat nor a deterrent. The only practical military use for ICBMs is to carry WMDs.

Iran isn’t building reactors for electrical power, and is losing money on it’s missiles. Iran is generating hatred and suspicion by supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Neither their foreign policy nor their nuclear program is motivated by a drive for ordinary trade and commerce or “Wealth generation”.

Japan could build nuclear warheads if they chose to. The big difference between Iran and Japan in this area is ideology and goals. Iran is on a war footing, Japan has a posture of peace.

However. You make the statement:

You’re essentially arguing they need nukes because they are paranoid — and they really don’t want nukes, anyway.

If the best you can do is to disingenuously interpret my statements, if all you have is a dishonest presentation of MY opinion, then sadly, the community observing this exchange is likely to judge you harshly.

You want to make the case that “Yellowcake” is proof of a weapons program? Really? How uninformed of the fuel cycle do you assume this audience is? Where do you think reactor fuel comes from? Japan buys yellowcake, should we fear their nuclear weapons program? Come on. If you’re not going to do this in something approximating good faith, why do you bother?

Do you speak Farsi? Do you make the statement about the phrase in question out of firsthand knowledge? Is Juan Cole an idiot?

Do you honestly think that the development of a conventional regional strike capability is proof of a nuclear weapons program that the IAEA inspectors just can’t find? Or do you believe the inspectors are complicit in some way?

And if you can’t do the math around a country’s wealth generation from it’s national resources and it’s internal electrical generation needs, once again you may be unable to see beyond your own ideology…

mikey

You’re essentially arguing they need nukes because they are paranoid — and they really don’t want nukes, anyway.

And the deterrent theory also fails when you look at their wacky holocaust denial, and their multiple statements about eliminating Israel. (These are the statements that are famous for the idiomatic translation as wiping Israel off “The Map”).

For some people it is a big deal that the Farsi version refers to eliminating Israel from the “Pages of Time” instead of a “Map”. Together with the nukes and missiles we know what it means; nuclear war.

The combination of nukes, missiles and anti-zionism (and anti-semitism) is not a formula for economic development, or for peace. It is only a formula for war.

There is much more than “a shred” of evidence of a weapons program. In addition to the ICBMs there is all that yellowcake. And the old warhead program that may have stopped, according to the NIE, in 2003. Do a web search for ‘Project 111′ and you will find more “shreds”.

The Iranian nuke program is not about generating electricity, it is only about starting a new war. If you don’t believe me about their warhead plans, believe that European negotiator I linked earlier. And read that LA Times story on their missile launch. The missile is much more than a shred of a weapon.

Iran has gobs of energy, they don’t need a nuclear headache just to generate electricity.

Without any informed party presenting a single shred of evidence that they have a weapons program, the logical assumption is that they don’t. And it is again logical to assume that if they put themselves in a position where they can weaponize in less than a year, they’re in every bit as good a position militarily without ceding the “high road”. It seems increasingly obvious that’s what they’re doing, and if you had to game it as the Iranians I suspect it’s what YOU’D do.

As to why they were hiding their program years ago? I can’t actually say, but I can list Libya, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Japan, Israel, South Korea and Brazil and if I bothered to go to the great gazoogle I bet I could find a lot more who had a covert R&D program. Many nations have flirted with nukes, some have even gotten engaged, before deciding that they weren’t going to the altar…

mikey

(whistleblowers multiply)