| Iran fired off some missiles early this morning. The President of Iran should start a club with the President of North Korea. They could call themselves the "Short Crazy Little M________r's Club" They could meet every year in the wilds of Africa and recruit some of the Pygmies to their membership. They could make a pilgrimage to the island in the South Pacific where those ancient skeletons of little people were found. They could rename the place something like Micro-Mecca and walk around a little cardboard shoebox or create a bunch of Easter Island style micro-liths out of coconuts.
But honestly, I wonder where this nuclear problem is going in the Middle East. My crystal ball is a little cloudy and my knowledge of history there doesn't have enough meat on the bone to interest a starving canine; so I am at a loss.
Let's look at the possibilities. First of all Iran's Crazy Little M_______r will develop a nuclear weapon scaring the wits out of Israel and every other country in the region because while they all commonly hate Israel, and they all distrust each other as well. Just look at the mess in Iraq. If all those warring Muslim denominations ever stopped and said, "Hey dudes, we're all just Muslims" the US wouldn't need to be there and they'd just kick our butts out. But no, they are no different than the Catholics and the Baptists - well, to be fair to the Catholics and Baptists they are very different in the sense that there's only verbal violence between them. But you get my point; the various Muslim groups don't like each other because they have microscopically different beliefs, a sort of religious caste system. Iran doesn't like the Saudi's and the Saudi's don't like the Palestinians who don't really like the Syrians and so it goes and so it goes.
Iran having a nuclear weapon would enact the human tendency to want a "me too" clause in any contract. All of a sudden there would be a rush to the global arms market; can you spell North Korean Crazy Little M_____________r? And voila, a wider nuclear arms race in the Middle East. What a sound idea for a better tomorrow!
Second possibility is that the UN, Europe and the Bush people can leverage enough economic power to force Iran to stop making a nuclear weapon. Well with oil at +140 a barrel and Iran being a supplier of oil, and the dollar being so weak, I think the sanctions are diminishing in impact. I'd say that the launching of missiles is a clear signal that Iran just gave the UN and the US and most of the world, the big-flaming-long-range middle finger; a smoking "Up yours" at altitude.
Third possibility is that Israel, supported by the US and nodded at privately by most of the world - those that care if Iran's crazy little M________________r of a President gets a nuclear weapon – will bomb the nuclear facilities and take away their nuclear capability. I heard on the Today Show this morning that some official thought this scenario was unlikely because the US has to help Israel and we are not interested in starting WWIII. OK, fair enough.
But I wonder if the President of Iran continues to wave the big metal middle fingers at the world if he isn't overplaying his hand. I wonder if there might not be some point at which Russia says to the US, go for it, he's too dangerous. We're going to tongue lash you but we won't get involved militarily. That kind of diplomacy is always secreted away behind some locked door and all we get are the resultant headlines.
Now there is a fourth possibility, that being that the President of Iran will do what the Korean leader has done – supposedly – which is to remove his own nuclear capacity. But the N. Koreans only did that after they had the nuclear soup they needed to build a weapon; it was after they tested a weapon or two. The stuff doesn't go bad, how much do they need? They already have the plutonium so why not destroy the reactor towers?
I think it's unlikely Iran will dismantle unless mother Russia wants it to happen. If Russia is playing some adventurist hand in this and trying to level the playing field in the Middle East I don't think that Iran is going to back down. Eventually there will be a nuclear test and a nuclear weapon in Iran.
On television this morning, I saw President Bush over at the G8 Summit having his picture taken with other world leaders, heh-heh-heh. I noticed that the stage they were all standing on was outdoors and it had little pieces of white tape on it to tell the leaders where to stand in a line. I guessed that 8 kindergarteners could get into a line on that stage without any tape at all. I also noticed that since the stage was outdoors, there was no locked door for George W. to get stuck in front of with camera's flashing as he attempted to leave. That was probably a key point of negotiation for Washington.
I wonder what was being discussed behind closed doors at the summit with respect to Iran this morning. I wonder if the world leaders have pieces of tape telling them where they should stand on this issue. I wonder if there is consensus that the world is safer if no other country gets into the nuclear arms club. I wonder if they are willing to use force to keep that from happening, especially where a Crazy Little M_____________r is concerned. I wonder if they were at all alarmed that the President of Iran gave the world the bird this morning.
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