Confused About Iran? Read This Short Post and All Will Be Clear

I agree with these articles on some points. But what i don't agree with is sitting back watching this nut case go nuculer and be asked to trust that he won't use them. I do think there are other ways to stop them then going to war though. Just my take on it.

Couple of issues here Chris. One, it will take at a minimum, 6+ years for the Iranians to refine enough uranium for a workable nuclear weapon, much less engineer the weapon itself. By that time Ahmedinejad may no longer be president of Iran. And, finally, the president of Iran is no where as near as powerful as the president of the US is. The final and ultimate arbiter of power and disputes in Iran is the Ayatollah Khamenei, not Ahmedinejad, although he does have a base of power. I will have more to report in October when I go to Iran.

IF we continue to allow Bush to do as he wants we will be at war with IRAN and probably a few other countries.
Maybe if the US didn't try to tell every one how they should live we wouldn't have the problems that we see today. But it is obvious Bush wants to fule the fire in other counrties too. The issue in IRAQ (to get involved) was built on Bush lying to every one in the first place. Yet we are still ther and sacrificing more andm ore innocent lives, and dropping good money after bad to play in Bush's war. The US is hardly an example of perfect diplomacy to be thwarting our ways on others.

Excellent post and I enjoyed reading the short articles. However isn't Iran the number one sponsor of terrorism? Or is this a lie? The short articles did not address this issue.

Iran has been a sponsor of terrorism in the Gulf region and in Lebanon during the civil war in the 70s and 80s. And one of their acts did kil several US service men when they bombed Khobar Towers in the early nineties.

Hasn't Iran actually acquired some weapons from the U.S. in the past? Whose side are we on again?

Yglesias suggests allowing history to teach its lessons, but some people just don't get it. Either that or they have their own unstoppable agenda. Why not send inspectors to those countries believed to be developing nuclear weapons instead of soldiers?

Iran has US weapons, but those weapons are almost 30 years old, at least the youngest of them and come from the time when the Shah was one of our largest weapons buyers in the region. We sold Iran a very, very small amount of anti-tank weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, but that is it.

We do have inspectors in Iraq, from the IAEA. They reported on it yesterday. Here is what one said:

"[Iran's] progress is far less than expected," said David Albright, a nuclear expert who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "Whether it's because of technical problems or self-restraint it's hard to gauge, but I don't think the U.S. can deliver on its promise to get hard sanctions when Iran is barely progressing."

It's really hard to gage how long it takes to make a weapon. After WWII, we thought we had at least ten years to get ready for the Soviet Union to have one. It took two.
Over two million servicemen had been discharged, and all of a sudden we didn't have enough. The call went out to beef forces up once again, and re-create an Air Force.
The Cold War was on......

True, John. But the Cold War was more of a pissing contest than anything. With all the tension throughout, very little actually happened. Imagine if we had preemptively struck the USSR....
If we keep attacking relatively weak states (as opposed to the gigantic and powerful USSR just before the Cold War) because we have heard rumors that they are developing weapons, we're going to leave ourselves weak and defenseless. Already, we have sent a good part of our National Guard, the men and women desigated to protect home soil, to Iraq. If we keep on the offensive, we risk leaving our back open. If you've ever seen a bunch of small birds picking on a hawk or an owl, you'll see the parallel.
I don't pretend that we don't have enemies out there, but I can't justify stooping to their level. We're much better off plotting a careful strategy with good intelligence and much alliance-building than running off half-cocked with guns blazing. "Walk softly and carry a big stick", not "Tell everybody you hate them and then hit them all with a big stick." It's a good way to get the snot beat out of you by a gang of people with sticks (see Battle of Little Big Horn).

Actually John, it took a little over 5 years for the Soviets to get the bomb, and this from a country that was utterly, massively mobilized for war unlike any other nation on the planet except for the US, with 200million + people, not too mention that Stalin was absolutely ruthless in making sure that he had nuclear weapons and they had all the nuclear scientists from the Germans we didn't manage to snag after the end of the war.

Compare that to Iran today who's estimated defense budget is only $6billion. What's ours? $450billion?

Iran still doesn't have enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb, much less fashio a weapon. They are not a threat. They are at a minimum, 10 years away from having a workable nuclear weapon.