[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: Tough on Iran?

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Posted by Donald:
Tough on Iran?
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1157604866.shtml


   [1]John Podhoretz thinks that Bush may be ready to use force against
   Iran:

     George W. Bush just delivered what may be the most important speech
     of his presidency since he went before the United Nations on Sept.
     12, 2002, and declared his intention to seek regime change in Iraq.
     The time has come, the president all but said yesterday, to take
     the gloves off with Iran.
     "The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear
     weapon," he said flatly. He prefaced those words by saying that
     efforts were being made to find a diplomatic solution to the
     problem. Nonetheless, Bush has now said in the strongest sentence
     he has yet spoken on the matter that Iran will not go nuclear. He
     is unconditional about it.

   [2]Captain Ed takes a different view of the whole situation:

     The White House and senior Republican leadership in Congress have
     little enthusiasm for a war resolution at this time targeting Iran,
     the New York Sun reports this morning. After a suggestion by
     William Kristol that such a piece of legislation would put more
     pressure on Teheran to comply with the nuclear non-proliferation
     treaty, the Bush administration and Congress distanced themselves
     from any such talk...
     At best, such a resolution would be a big bluff, providing
     authority for little more than air strikes that might damage Iran's
     nuclear program but would also likely turn their population against
     us. And the last thing we need in that region is to issue more
     empty threats.
     The political situation in Iran is far different than it was in
     Iraq, and there is much greater hope that an internal movement
     could collapse the mullahcracy. Ahmadinejad and the Guardian
     Council do not exercise the same kind of oppression that Saddam
     Hussein did on Iraqis. The Iranians would not stand for it, and the
     mullahs have to tread carefully to maintain their power, which is
     why they stage elections for the Assembly and the presidency, even
     though they retain veto power over all that either do. (They may
     have forgotten this, as my post below notes.)
     If the US could help Iranian democracy activists gain momentum,
     especially starting with the trade unions and university
     professors, the Iranians themselves could overthrow the mullahcracy
     and replace it with a much more rational government. Iran's history
     is not one of radicalism, with the exception of the last thirty
     years, but of educated, Western-looking sophisticates. They may not
     replace the mullahs with a carbon-copy Western democracy, but any
     rational form of representative government will make a huge
     difference.

   How do I feel about this? While, like Captain Ed, I long for an
   internal revolution that overthrows the mullahs, I just don't know
   whether that will happen quickly enough. I'm worried that a nuclear
   weapon will be in Hezbollah's or Hamas's or even al Qaeda's hands
   before that can happen, and airstrikes to set back Iran's nuclear
   program by a couple of years is starting to sound like a good idea. If
   Iran's population is truly looking for a liberal democracy, they won't
   change their minds because we knock out such a dire threat.

References

   1. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/gloves_off_on_iran_opedcolumnists_john_podhoretz.htm
   2. http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/007996.php