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Bush continues his relentless march to war, at any cost. Now that he's checked off his to-do list "Talk to Iran," he'll continue pressuring the rest of the world for sanctions. This will continue to get us precisely nowhere, as China will continue to buy Iranian oil, and Russia will continue "doing business" with Iran, whatever THAT means. Then, after election day, when all this chest-thumping all but ensures an Obama victory, Bush will act the spoilsport and either give the green light to Israel to bomb, or make some sort of cross-border incursion into Iran in the name of defending Iraq that will virtually guarantee an Iranian military counter-response, and then it's off to a full middle east war and $200+ oil.Sanctions won't work - unless the world is willing to stop buying Iranian oil, and stop shipping them refined gasoline. Nothing else matters much at this point.
The problem with talk diplomacy such as Obama proposes is that it *appears* to have been tried and failed. Of course, it is not really talking if all we ever say to Iran is: "Give up your nuclear program" to which they say "No," and to which we come back a few weeks later and say, "Well, how about now?" We need to have something new to say to them. Here are a few ideas that no one is talking about, yet:
1. Acknowledge, as even Dick Cheney did in his unguarded moments, that Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under the NNPT they signed. Of course, we need MUCH better inspection capability and that really is a basis for negotiations.
2. Make a formal declaration that we will respond with full military force if Iran attacks Israel - i.e. we will "wipe Iran off the map." If it comes to that, I think even the Arabs will not blame us for destroying such a dangerous neighbor.
3. Continue to assist Israel in every security measure they need, and make it publically known we are doing so.
4a. Investigate and encourage Iran to develop alternative nuclear power producing methods that do not produce plutonium, such as pebble bed reactors. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor These reactors are being built for production capacity in China (of course) and in much-maligned France, which gets 80% of its power from nuclear sources.
OR
4b. Involve Iran in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). This is the global program to develop safe efficient forms of nuclear energy that can't be subverted into weapon making (i.e. no plutonium is produced, and radioactive components cannot be separated from the reactor). The U.S. and Japan are quite far along in this. It is the reactor-in-a-box approach. See New Scientist magazine for more information, or
America has to keep up with the latest technology, especially when it can lead to a more peaceful world. We have to stop treating every country we have a disagreement with as a mortal enemy. Pebble bed reactors are proven, more efficient, and less dangerous to operate and don't produce plutonium which can be used in nuclear weapons. GNEP offers solutions in the near future as well. We could actually help Iran build reactors based on these if they are agreeable. As Condi Rice put it, “America has no permanent enemies.”
To say the current administration has been ignorant of science is to insult ignorant people - after all, even an ignorant man can learn, if he wants to. There's no sign Bush wants to learn anything, ever.
I've given up expecting innovative solutions from this administration. I hope we can avoid WWIII until Obama settles in.
