Ahmadinejad awaits a response

[occuserpens]

2006-04-16 Does reasonable mean impotent?

Haatetz. Zvi Bar'el. Ahmadinejad awaits a response
Ahmadinejad provocatively demands that the world's nuclear community welcome Iran to the club - or go to war against it. Thus, the Iranian president pulled himself out of the entanglement of dilemmas and placed it in the hands of the "world" - namely, the United States.
The military option may be very exciting; and in some places, there are already people stroking the buttons that launch the ICBMs - but Ahmadinejad can relax. A military assault on Iran, they worry in Washington, could instigate an Iranian double-pronged attack on Iraq - one, a missile attack against military targets, and the other, an attack by activists - terrorists or political agents - aimed at turning Iraq into adjunct Iranian territory. An attack on Iran would unite the Iranian people, including those opposed to the ayatollahs, and thus even further strengthen their regime; and the vision of regime change there would evaporate.
An attack would also portray Iran as the victim, trampled by the United States - and it's a very short hop from there to Arab solidarity with Iran, a Russian embrace, as is conventional, and the intensification of anti-U.S. sentiments not only in the Middle East. And all this even before it becomes clear which targets should be attacked and if Western intelligence is familiar with all the targets.
...if Iran is an insane state, what's the point of sanctions? However it is not semantic logic that will decide, but rather the understanding that there is nobody right now who can attack Iran, and provide reasonable solutions to the dilemmas that such an attack would awaken.

[bemildred]

1. Call, raise, or fold?

Who is bluffing here?

Ahm-an-idjit is a stooge, by the way, like Bush, he says what he's told to say.

[occuserpens]

3. I don't think so

Neocons present Ahmadinejad as a nutter, but actually he knows exactly what he is doing. There is no Cheney behind him.

[bemildred]

5. I don't think he's a nutter, I think he's a puppet.

But as sane as most politicians.

The Ayat's are behind him, and the Revolutionary Guards that he came from.
He is ambitious to be sure, but he does not speak only for himself, and he
holds no dictatorial power.

[King Mongo]

7. The US has been planning on attacking Iran since 2002...

..., according to US agent William Arkin , thus one could argue that the claim of possesing nuclear arms is purely for self-defense purposes.

[bemildred]

8. The US has been wanting to punish Iran since they threw the Shah out.

The Iranians have been rather vituperative in return, since then.

[Phx_Dem]

9. so what is he trying to accomplish? nt

[eleny]

2. "stroking the buttons that launch the ICBMs"

What a strong image.

[bemildred]

6. You can just imagine the "launch", can't you?

[MadMaddie]

4. * started this when he included Iran in the Axis of evil....

and instead of lowering the rhetoric and having face to face talks with Iran...* insists on using the UN....well you see this is a smokescreen because he will do exactly what he did during the run up to the Iraq debacle....the UN will be involved in talks with Iran and the talks will be a slow and tedious process...the * cabal will get impatient and then dismiss the UN saying they are ineffective and there is not progress being made....and then he will tell the inspectors to get out of Iran because the US is getting ready to bomb Iran.....

Sound familiar? This is what happens when you have inmature people in charge....