Next We Take Tehran

[dogday]

President Bush may or may not order a massive aerial bombardment of Iran later this year. Or he may wait until 2007. Or he may simply escalate a risky confrontation with Iran through covert action and economic sanctions. But whatever the next act in the crisis, don’t be fooled by the assertion that the problem is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear arms.

Iran is a decade away from gaining access to the bomb, according to the administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate, and despite all the talk about the ugliness of the theocratic regime in Tehran, the likely showdown is, at bottom, driven by the geopolitics of oil. With one-tenth of the world’s petroleum reserves and one-sixth of its natural gas reserves, Iran sits in a strategic geographical position that makes it the cockpit for control of the entire Middle East. It straddles the Persian Gulf’s choke points, including the Strait of Hormuz; it has important influence among Shiites throughout Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states; and it borders highly contested real estate to the north, from the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea to Central Asia.

The logic of the Bush administration is inexorable. Its ironclad syllogism is this: The United States is and must remain the world’s preeminent power, if need be by using its superior military might. One of the two powers with the ability to emerge as a rival—China—depends vitally on the Persian Gulf and Central Asia for its future supply of oil; the other—Russia—is heavily engaged in Iran, Central Asia, and the Caucasus region. Therefore, if the United States can secure a dominant position in the Gulf, it will have an enormous advantage over its potential challengers. Call it zero-sum geopolitics: Their loss is our gain.

Of course, the idea of the Persian Gulf as an American lake is not exactly new. Neoconservatives, moderate conservatives, “realists” typified by Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker, and liberal internationalists in the mold of President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, mostly agree that the Gulf ought to be owned and operated by the United States, and the idea has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy under presidents both Republican and Democratic. Its adherents justified it in the past, however thinly, because of the exigencies of World War II and then the Cold War.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/07/next_we_take_tehran.html

[kpete]

1. dogday

I will delete mine and K&R yours

Peace!

[dogday]

2. Ah, kpete you shouldn't of done that....

Thank you as always for being so gracious... One could not ask for a nicer member than you :hug:

[sinkingfeeling]

3. I find it sickening. We haven't progressed as humans at all.

[leveymg]

4. When did BushCo become human?

Human would be calculating, crafty and take advantage of the weaknesses and blunders of others.

Whatever BushCo is, someone else is playing them for a chimp . . . er, I mean a chump.

The world is theirs, if we give it to them.

[marions ghost]

5. it seems so crazy

after the disaster of Iraq that's it's hard to take the efforts to whip something up in Iran seriously.
I don't think Americans would put up with another invasion.

[MisterP]

6. I was just reading about the 1000's Ghaznavid empire (Punjab to Caspian)

and felt this unsettling deja vu--like history of a thousand years ago was just repeating itself, empires rising and snapping shut over centuries or even decades. All things must come to pass, but there's nothing new under the sun.

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. K & R - must stop this

[PATRICK]

8. Interesting about the whole establishment

The crazies being in charge simply is something that frustrates the rational pragmatists who wonkishly and moderately perpetuated the wrong policy. In fact it glaringly discredits many of the pillars and all the hypocrisy of foreign policy abuse(of other nations AND our own principles). This blindness extends to beneficent globalization(minus liberal necessities like real democracy and labor movements) where the "reasonable" people are muddled and grumpy on the sidelines, not in the least capable of getting how the mainstays of generations of thought and practices are being torched fairly easily.

The frustration of real reasonable people is that when the "moderates" and competent ever reassert control they cannot react against or hold accountable the villains or change discredited policies. They constantly offer advice and criticism that is predictably slow, off the present beam, powerless and never lays a glove on the present custodians of a grimly inadequate cynical paternalism. To really go after Bush would be to take down their own discredited dreams. That is simply beyond the ability of their fixed beliefs and an impolite thing to do to members of the privileged club.

With the crazies it is stark madness, failure and disaster in short order. With the competents it is death by inches then feet then yards. The only constant between the two is delusion maintained by raw power(itself a socially accepted glue of delusion) as long as it lasts.

[raccoon]

9. Makes me wonder what Russia and China would do if the Junta

invades Iran, or bombs Iran.

I can't see them just sitting on their hands, after reading this in the article:

" Both Russian and Chinese oil companies had enormous development and supply contracts with Baghdad under Saddam Hussein, deals that are worthless in an Iraq controlled by the United States. They might be forgiven for thinking that Iran, too, would be off-limits to them if Bush succeeds.

For China’s economic future, Iran and the region are essential. As recently as 1992, China was an oil-exporting country, but since then it has become a voracious importer of oil and gas. (Indeed, China’s demand for oil is the leading factor in pushing prices from $10 to $20 a barrel to around $75 a barrel today.) In Iran, China has signed a series of gargantuan deals, including a 25-year contract reported to be worth $100 billion between Iran and the Chinese state-owned energy company Sinopec. China is also deeply engaged with Russia’s oil industry..."

[PerfectSage]

10. It makes me wonder...

if presidents who invade or threaten to invade OPEC countries are more likely to be petrosexuals.