"Somebody needs to tell Tehran something, and tell it to them straight. We'll pay more for oil if we have to - we can, in a pinch, afford it."

Somebody? Who's that? China? Russia? India? Heck, even Japan has a $3 billion deal with Iran. And, Austria (the head of the EU this year) mentioned they wouldnt mind some Iranian natural gas to lessen their dependency on Russia. Ukrain recently mentioned the same too.

Of course, I assume you are talking about the US as that somebody. But, the US doesnt have any leverage. US Sanctions? Even US-EU wide sanctions would have little effect.

I see this crisis as building up in slow-motion to something dramatic, but I dont think anybody can see what that is yet.

I see 3 paths this conflict may follow:

a) economic war followed by Western climb-down: US/EU impose economic sanctions and Iranians impose counter-sanctions. US/EU leave it at that. Iran builds up its civilian (dual-use) atomic energy program anyway and announces its first a-bomb in a few years time. Then see c)
b) military escalation followed by big mess: a US bomber campaign and a limited direct Iranian military response according to their capability + a stronger indirect response via flare-up of the civil war in Iraq, border war between Hizbollah/Israel + some distributed terrorist activities. Iranian atomic energy program is retarded, its ambition remains unbroken. Expect the need to bomb again in 10 years time.
c) Western loss of face: US/EU do nothing and grudgingly accept a new member of the Atomic club. It has happened before and will happen again. The last option hurts Western policy-makers (pride) most, but right now nobody else. Probability of choice: very low.

There's no good way out of the pit.

Let's try three months of the toughest sanctions possible, warning them that they only get three months---then, if they don't comply, forcible removal of the regime.

It's the only sane choice. Therefore, it's the one we're least likely to make, unfortunately.

StrategyUnit has posted my feelings. Add that the EU and others cannot appear to back a war which would be much more closely tied to oil than the Coalition's in Iraq (post-war Iraq oil goes pretty much to the same places as pre-war: France and other EU nations).

The US can keep getting oil from our good friends, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela .

Ahmadinejad may be crazy, but (IMO) he has been able to do two things quite well so far.

First, he has reinstituted the radical ferver of the 80's back into Iran with his cultural revolution style fundamentalism and thus strengthened the grip of the mullahs, who were slowly loosing their grip.

Second, he's managed to unite disparate political elements within his country, however reluctantly, by stoking Iranian nationalism with regard to the nuclear issue.

The scary part is, he really is crazy. Iran with nukes under this regieme is like North Korea with nukes, only in the middle of the world's storehouse of energy.

This is unacceptable, for US, the Europeans and many of Iran's neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, many of the Gulf States and Afghanistan to name just a few.

By playing the economic hole card already, Ahmadinejad has shown his whole hand. This does not seem to me to be the strategy of someone who is hedging for a negotiating advantage.

Perhaps this is not so dumb a move from where he is sitting. He can rightly assume that the EU is a paper tiger, the UN is too corrupt and divided to take any concerted action, the US is deeply involved in Iraq and has been too hamstrung by internal political opposition from its left to seriously take action against them. And EVERYBODY wants to buy their oil. China is quietly backing Iran and Russia, would be only too glad to help Iran and has sold them SA-15 ground to air missiles recently.

That leaves Israel to do the heavy lifting and they can't do it without tacit US approval and assistance. Not to mention the fact that the most visionary and dynamic leader of Israel has just been struck down.

Israel will be forced to act once Iran is on the verge of having a usable nuclear weapon, but then the Iranians learned a lesson from Israel's destruction of Iraq's nuclear facilities at Osirak(sp?) in '81 and they have widely distributed their facilities and many are deep underground.

Historically, this moment is reminiscent of 1936 when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland. France and England could have marched in and easily defeated the small German force deposed Hitler and averted a bigger war later. Instead, they chose not to be 'inconvenienced' by taking military action due to the strong anti-war sentiment that lingered after WWI. Starting to sound familiar?

I truely hope that the US and Israel will take the necessary action to avert a later and much more costly war once Iran has nuke(s). We will have to do it despite world wide faux outrage and condemnation, nothing new there and the ankle biting of our domestic left/MSM coalition, which is far more dangerous, because the only thing that can beat us, is us.

Given the politician's (ours and the rest of the world's) tendency to take the easiest and most shortsighted path, I am beginning to get depressed. Add to that this administration's seeming fatigue at having to fight on all fronts, foreign and domestic, I don't hold out much hope.

I hope I'm wrong. However it plays out, 2006 is shaping up to be a pivotal year in history. And it's only January.

Israel, depending on who ends up in a leadership role, could well end up deciding on nuclear pre-emption, rather than allowing Iran's President to follow through on his pledge to wipe Israel off the map. MAD only works when the rationality of the actors is assumed, and in the case of Iran, there is much reason to doubt validity of that assumption.

Nobody outside a very small circle of Israelis really knows how many warheads Israel possesses, and what warhead manufacturing capabilities they possess at this time. Someone charged with ensuring that the the population of Tel Aviv was not incinerated might be building warheads as quickly as possible, and furiously working on nuclear targeting within Iran. 20 minutes after a dozen or so mushroom clouds rose over Iran, such a person might announce to the world that there were more from where that came from, and that Israel had second strike capability, lest anybody else want to start popping off about wiping Israel off the map while building nuclear weapons.

I'm afraid this is just one of those times where the worst is true, and there's nothing we can do with it. There is no power in the world that can realistically stop Iran from getting nukes. The U.S. and Israel are the only two even theoretically possible candidates. It's clear that the U.S. is too politically paralyzed to do anything. Politically, it will be infinitely easier for any U.S. administration to deal with a nuclear Iran, than with the consequences of preventing same. Israel is highly unlikely to act effectively, either. It's not intuitively clear that Israel could prevent a nuclear Iran -- short of incinerating the entire country, which they won't do. Even if lesser strikes could be effective, Israel won't take the heat by doing smoething.

At this point, all we can do is start thinking of how we're going live in a world with a nuclear Iran. We might also start thinking of what we're going to do when a nuke goes off in Tel Aviv.

You can read a sobering editorial in today's le Figaro which argues that Ahmadinejad is neither nuts nor stupid. Rather, he's a determined and visionary statesman committed to doing what statesmen are paid to do. Namely, advance the power and importance of their countries. Please, don't mistake this for admiration, it's a cold assessment of who and what we're dealing with.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/debats/20060114.FIG0099.html?083116

Spoon, why on earth would Israel not incinerarte large swaths of Iran, if they were convinced that Iran was going to strike, and Israel had the capability to do so, while reserving a suffcient reserve of nuclear warheads with which to deter other actors? If Ahmadinejad has indeed has adopted a coldly calculated strategy of projecting himself as a madman, in order to increase the power and importance of his country, then he is too clever by half.

Such a strategy, in terms of nuclear weapons, is only appropriate when one is the most powerful actor, or no other actor has much larger power. If one is greatly weaker, however, and credibly conveys the notion that one is irrational in the use of nuclear weapons against a much more powerful actor, one merely encourages the more powerful actor to strike first, especially if such an actor, although more powerful, has a huge percentage of it's population at risk.

Israel fits this description neatly. If Israel has enough warheads, or enough warhead manufacturing capacity, and Ahmadinejad is credible in conveying his irrationality, through public statements proclaiming the need to wipe Israel off the map, then the only rational thing for Israel to do is to indeed incinerate large swaths of Iran. They literally have nothing to lose.

I don't think that the US is hamstrung. I think that Bush has been keeping quiet (probably at the request of Blair) so that when talks fail the moonbats can't point to a bellicose US as the cause. The US has made its position clear "Iran will not get nuclear weapons". And politically the only thing Bush has to lose is his party's control of Congress, which will only happen if most Americans disagree with attacking Iran to take it out on someone whose only affiliation with the decision is to share the same letter after his name.

Given the choice between a hostile Congress for two years and letting the world's first nuclear exchange happen I think Bush is going to go with the former.

I think the amount of approval that military action against Iran would receive is highly underestimated. There are a whole lot of people who still remember 1979, and believe that strong military action then would have saved a lot of American lives over the past 27 yrs. Iran has been at war with us ever since that time, and it is high time we recognized that fact. We can fight them now, before they acquire nukes, or we can fight them afterwards. Eventually, though, we're going to have to fight them. There is no other way for this to end.

Politically, it will be infinitely easier for any U.S. administration to deal with a nuclear Iran, than with the consequences of preventing same.

Bush plays poker, remember?

The essence of poker is to get the other side to bet big on a losing hand.

So far, Bush has done this to Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Mummar Gaddafy, and Bashar Assad.

I know that to a lot of people, those are just names, but those who have watched the middle east for more than a decade know what those names represent- problems for which there is no satisfactory solution.

Iran is America's biggest 'problem' in the middle east, and Ahmadinejad seems bent on confrontation.

...

A lot of people seem to have forgotten that the question has never been who would win in a military confrontation between the US (either with allies, or alone) and Iran.

Instead, the question was if Iran could be persuaded to not undertake actions that would result in a military confrontation with the US (with or without allies).

Ahmadinejad has answered that question.

Hmmm,

Somebody needs to tell Iran that we can pay more for their oil in a pinch, or we can just waltz in and take it for fucking free if the "price" gets just a little too high.

I don't know about you, but I have zero qualms about telling fascist countries what the score is.

Saudi Arabia got the message, and this was the message:

"Look, we'll happily purchase your oil, but you WILL sell it to us. Win-win situation boys. Your alternative is Wahabbism practiced in the desert under cover of darkness, with American's opening up Pizza Hut franchises inside your palaces."

Take a good hard look at Iraq. There is TWO TRILLION dollars worth of oil underneath that country. We haven't TAKEN it, but we certainly COULD if forced to.

What we offer is a FAIR DEAL. Everybody wins. If we can't get a fair deal, we'll certainly settle for an UNFAIR DEAL, where we get oil and they get embalmed.

Iran has to decide if destroying Israel is really worth everything they have. But they aren't going to do that if we don't lay it out for them.

We can't and aren't going to stop them from developing a bomb. We can't stop them from using it. Once they play that card, though, the game is over. That's why nuclear threats are really meaningless. You can never play that card, because once you play it, you just lost.

Didn't you see War Games?