Meanwhile, In Other News ...

by hilzoy

McClatchy:

"The deepest freeze in U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War has brought diplomatic efforts to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions to a halt just as Western governments and U.N. inspectors are warning that Tehran could be gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

Russia this week pulled out of a six-nation meeting scheduled for Thursday to discuss further sanctions against Iran, freezing for the time being a 3 1/2-year old diplomatic campaign to persuade Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment.

Neither the United States nor Israel has ruled out attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, although there are no overt signs that planning for a military strike has intensified.

The Bush administration's other major effort to curb the spread of nuclear weapons suffered a significant setback Wednesday, when North Korea, which has tested a crude nuclear device, told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to restart a reprocessing plant that produces plutonium for nuclear weapons."

Great. Just what we need right now.

Obviously, both North Korea and Iran are responsible for their own decisions about whether or not to pursue nuclear programs. Equally obviously, though, their success to date is largely due to this administration's ineptitude. In the case of North Korea, we called off a deal that had frozen the most rapid form of nuclear development because of we thought they might have had a program that would have taken much, much longer to produce any actual nuclear weapons. In the case of Iran, we rebuffed Iran's feelers about a comprehensive deal that would have involved 'full cooperation on nuclear weapons', rejected the very idea of negotiating with them, and needlessly alienated a lot of the countries whose help we needed to actually make progress on this issue, most recently Russia.

As far as I can tell, besides invading two countries on their borders and making noises about how they might be next, our Iran strategy has involved trying to keep them developing nuclear weapons by scrunching up our faces and sending really bad thoughts in their general direction. Possibly we also have people from Other Government Agencies sticking pins into Ahmedinejad dolls in some Top Secret bunker somewhere.

What we don't have is a policy that makes sense. That's a pity. The stakes are very high.

Comments

[cleek]

sounds like a job for Saracuda Palin. maybe McCain will double-suspend his campaign while she handles this crisis.

[liberal japonicus]

And then McCain could put Obama on double secret probation.

Maybe Obama could arrive a float that looks like a cake and says "Eat me", just before it breaks open to reveal...

[cleek]

to reveal... ... all the marbles that McCain has lost!

[Laura Vivanco]

Re "Neither the United States nor Israel has ruled out attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, although there are no overt signs that planning for a military strike has intensified."

The Guardian has just published an article in which they reveal that

Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian. [...]

Bush's decision to refuse to offer any support for a strike on Iran appeared to be based on two factors, the sources said. One was US concern over Iran's likely retaliation, which would probably include a wave of attacks on US military and other personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on shipping in the Persian Gulf.

The other was US anxiety that Israel would not succeed in disabling Iran's nuclear facilities in a single assault even with the use of dozens of aircraft. It could not mount a series of attacks over several days without risking full-scale war. So the benefits would not outweigh the costs.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Nuclear weapons are mostly of defensive value anyway, or so it seems to me judging from the Cold War and the behavior of the other counties which have acquired them.

Since preventing the Iranians from getting nukes is in the long run probably fruitless anyway, let's make the best of a bad situation and turn it to our advantage instead. Make lemonade out of lemons so to speak:

I suggest that in return for getting inspection/oversight rights, we sell nukes to the Iranians, for oh, say about $700 billion. We could use the cash, and once they join the "nukular" club they will probably settle down and stop being such a nuisance. That my friends, is a mavericky solution to a thorny problem.

[Gary Farber]

"I suggest that in return for getting inspection/oversight rights, we sell nukes to the Iranians, for oh, say about $700 billion."

I think they'd have trouble coming up with the money. They only have about $70 billion in cash reserves. And:

[...]
GDP (purchasing power parity):
$753 billion (2007 est.)

GDP (official exchange rate):
$294.1 billion (2007 est.)

Maybe China could loan it to them.

[Carleton Wu]

Maybe we could swap the nukes for some Iranian oil field. The new oil field can be our 51st state, which would create several advantages:
-we will literally have a congressperson and two senators from "big oil"; maybe Ted Stevens et al will stop vying for the title
-the governor will be able to see Iraq and Afghanistan from her state, so we will instantly have a new expert on Middle East politics at our disposal. Heck, the entire population (excluding blind people) will be able to see these countries, so we'll have a whole state full of experts, thus raising the level of American political discourse
-the US itself can serve as the regional 'example of democracy in action' that was supposed to reform the middle eastern political scene (since our attempt in Iraq is not looking so good). otoh, Bush v Gore wasn't exactly how democracy was supposed to work either...
-the new field will increase US oil output (in molecules) by considerably more than offshore drilling would have, yet US gas prices won't budge- a great lesson in economics for right-wingers everywhere
-desert site well-situated for solar energy production when oil does run out
-we can finally say that the sun never sets on the US empire

[Gary Farber]

After all, at the moment, China might not be loaning to us.