Monday, February 12, 2007

Ahmadinejad: Not Evil, Just Misunderstood

And if you believe that, I have ocean front property in Arizona for you. According to the president of Iran...

"Our position regarding Iraq is very clear. We are asking for peace. We’re asking for security. And we will be sad to see people get killed, no matter who they are,”

This coming from a man who denies the holocaust occurred, openly calls for the destruction of Israel, and desires to spread the Shia faith by annihilating the Sunni. It's absurd. Unfortunately we have no choice but to endure the charade. Even if the evidence coming from the administration about Iran's invlovement is real, the administration lost so much credibility with the world and its own people during the Iraq WMD debacle that we'd have a hard time justifying the use of force against Iran.

Iran has a hand in the current violence in Iraq, and the greatest threat they pose, nuclear arms, is still a couple of years off according to experts. The best we can do is pursue economic sanctions and multilateral negotiations with the country and allow factors out of our control to take effect. Ahmedinejad has benefited greatly from high oil prices. As those continue to decline (hopefully), the populist agenda will be greatly weakened when the government no longer has petty cash to throw at problems. What cash they have used seems to have been badly allocated, as infrastructure is deteriorating and unemployment is extremely high. Furthermore, there is growing resistance within Iran to the president and his nuclear ambitions, as well as his fiscal policies. Interjection by America would only flip that resistance to support.

There's one thing I found amusing about the press conference regarding the recent evidence of Iran's involvement. White House spokesman Tony Snow had this to say...

"This is providing — presenting evidence to the effect that there’s been the shipment of weaponry, lethal weaponry into Iraq, some of it of Iranian providence,”..."And this is something that we think if the president of Iran wants to put a stop to it, we wish him luck and hope he’ll do it real soon.”

"Lethal weaponry"? Would they ship another kind?

"We wish him luck and hope he'll do it real soon"? Is the guy changing jobs? "Good luck in accounting Bob, stop by and say hello anytime."

1 comment:

Otto said...

You're right. Any intervention is just going to give more credibility to the hardliners in Iran and force us to deal with these clowns for years. Any pressure we apply to the country has to be very subtle.