Israel is going to make Iran wish for the Shah back.
bttt
The scenario is so similar to pre-Iraq that it fascinates me. You have a tyrannical regime covering up what is an obviously exposed nuclear weapons program...hello Sadam!
The thing I like about Iran is that it is not entirely full of Muslim extremists. No, not at all. The majority of the population in Iran is Persian and their culture is much more closely related to European culture than it is tied to Arabic. These people despise the Islamic regime in charge.
Does anyone else agree with me when I opine that these educated Tehranian scholars will seize the initiative if Israel, the United States, or both counties land their troops within Iranian boundaries?
And, it took this long for France to figure it out? Well, they are French, I guess.
Nuke the nukes and the nuke producers!!
It will be extremely interesting to see how much the upcoming election in Iraq will encourage or disappoint the mullahs with respect to the slice of government that their client Sadr can expropriate, and what they will do about it afterward. It will also be interesting to see how much control they can achieve in Lebanon now that the Syrian power appears to be waning there and their client Hezbollah's is on the rise.
As it happens, neither of those short-term strategic objectives is advanced much by the possession of nuclear weapons. What is advanced is, at least in theory, defense against an overt conventional U.S. invasion. However, they would also be quite useful should the Iranians decide to expand their territorial limits at the expense of a weakened Iraq. That perception of a weak new government was, actually, what tempted Saddam to invade Iran a quarter of a century ago.
An expansionist Iran would need a couple of things to carry it off - a leadership more radical than the Ayatollah Khomeini, which they quite literally already have, and secondly an army which they presently cannot achieve given the level of open loathing toward the theocrats on the part of cannon-fodder-age Iranians. Nuclear weapons might act as enough of a force multiplier to offset the latter, as I am sure has occurred to their current leadership.
At the one extreme of this scenario we have an Iran whose borders run from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, with the Arabian peninsula and its oil wealth strategically surrounded, except in the south where there are no ports. Add a navy to that equation and it will be game over for the Saudis and a serious threat (but not necessarily a fatal one) to Western economies in general.
At the other extreme you have yet another blowhard dictator likely to be strung up by his own people, or so we may hope. But the real events are likely to fall somewhere in between, and that is not good news for the region. A Europe that will not risk warfare now will certainly not risk nuclear warfare later. All IMHO and subject to debate, of course.
So, when one party in a negotiation decides that it does not like the terms offered, this is a "unilateral" decision!! i guess, strictly, this is correct - but the usage in this instance is absurd - typical French "diplomacy" - I honestly do not understand how the French ever obtained a reputation for democracy / diplomacy - I have seen no evidence that would support such a reputation.
Meanwhile the Russians see nothing wrong with selling missiles to Iran. Stupid lefties - there's trouble on the horizon and they're too self righteous to see it.
Uh oh! Watch out *now*, brother!
France has used the *U* word against Iran!
>Bo)