Reply #55: Good points... [View All]

[VirginiaDem]

That's a plausible enough explanation for what Iran is doing. My worry is that we are not allowing ourselves to see the thoughts of the Iranian leadership for what they are. Regardless of what the Iranians are saying publicly, there remains no convincing evidence that these beliefs have lessened. There could be cognitive dissonance--because we've been trained to think that leaders of nation states are rational actors and because, except for a streetcorner nutcase here or there, we don't believe things like Jews drain the blood of children for religious reasons, we have a difficulty acknowledging such beliefs in others. Once a leader does believe this (and his citizenry has been encouraged to believe the same thing), how do we know the leader wouldn't go nuclear? I would not expect Iran to unleash a nuke at Israel but passing it off to someone else outside of the borders seems perfectly internally logical, given what I am arguing about the beliefs of the leadership.

Does this make any sense or am I rambling?