An interesting article from the U.K. Telegraph about the economic situation in Iran. I don’t get the impression that the Iranians are all hot to trot about pushing the nation into a war with “The Great Satan?” It certainly doesn’t sound like the Iranian president is standing up against the US from a position of real political power.
First, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alienated the rest of the world with his religious extremism, nuclear ambitions and global grandstanding. Now, due to domestic failures and economic incompetence, he is doing the same to ordinary Iranians
Sound like somebody else we know? Looks like we have the populace of two nations being led to the brink of war by their clueless, unpopular, theological zealot leaders.
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Steve Hammons elaborates on this and expanded points in his essay “Will Bush, Cheney Attack Iran? When and Why?.” This is a good historical and political analysis concerning the Iranian regime and the growing potential for catastrophic showdown between it and the U.S.
In recent US elections, the American people sent a strong message to the Bush administration and their supporters in Congress: the Iraq War and the direction the Bush administration has led the country is of great concern.
Americans saw that the killing and destruction in Iraq are beginning to seem pointless. The damage to our military and the financial costs to our nation do not seem worthwhile. The reasons for and intelligence prior to the Iraq invasion may have been fraudulent - consciously and purposely fraudulent.
Americans voted for moderate and progressive candidates to try to put a stop to this and lead the US in a better direction.
In recent elections in Iran, candidates for office who were allied with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were soundly defeated.
The Iranian people seemed to be saying that they did not approve of the bellicose and threatening statements and style of Ahmadinejad. The direction he is taking their country apparently has created great concern among Iranians.
The Iranian people voted for relatively progressive and moderate candidates to try to put a stop to this and lead Iran in a better direction.
Still, the political leaders of both the US and Iran seem to continue this escalating confrontation, placing the safety and welfare of their people and their nations, as well as the international community, at grave risk.
In a related vein, here is Robert Dreyfuss’ essay “Bush’s Trash Talk About Iran”
Since President Bush’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, the White House has manufactured a crisis that pits the United States against Iran. In what looks like the military and diplomatic equivalent of a full court press, Washington has unleashed a barrage of threats, maneuvers and limited military actions that seem calculated to set the United States on a collision course with Iran in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.
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Were this not so deadly serious, it would be farcical. One goal, apparently, of U.S. threats and bluster against Iran in Iraq is an attempt to break ties between Iran and, say, SCIRI - even though SCIRI is organically tied to Tehran and even though it was created in 1982 by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Though SCIRI is happy to receive U.S. support as well (its turbaned leader recently visited the Oval Office), there is no question that the Shiite leaders in Iraq know that one day the United States will leave, while Iran, Iraq’s giant neighbor to the east, will always be there. Those realities seem not to have registered with Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, who told The Washington Post that even though SCIRI and Iran had close ties in the 1980s, “Now it’s a different situation, so there is a need for adaptation of what’s appropriate in terms of a relationship.” Perhaps, by invading the compound of SCIRI’s leader and seizing several officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard there last month, Khalilzad thought he was sending the “appropriate” message that SCIRI needs to break its ties to Iran. Not likely.
Read the complete article Here