I got my back against a brick wall, trapped in a circle

I feel like I'm doing battle with lemmings.

So Iran. I'm not sure what it is that people think we can do here to begin with. Sanctions aren't going to do much because, well, sanctions never do. Most of the people pushing for them have the "hidden" agenda that they know that they won't work but will justify something "stronger", like bombing nuclear facilities. Which will result in a war. That's not something that will be a step-back foreign policy object. Now I don't automatically object to wars, even wars of aggression, if they serve some vital national interest. But Iran is a flea for America, not a vital interest. And it's only a flea for us because
1) we have a bit of a history. And this kind too
2) They're actually a pretty big mean looking dog to a couple places out there (Israel and Saudi Arabia) that we seem to think we need to back up.
3) We've got a ton of troops deployed in two ill-advised wars right next to Iran.

Now, since we're supposedly leaving Iraq that leaves just Afghanistan as a local target. Israel already has nukes. Iran knows that (and probably knows that we'll bomb them too if somebody nukes Israel). I guess Iran could try to attack Saudi Arabia, but I'm not sure what good that would do them since it would probably antagonize most of their regional allies or neutral parties (like the Turks with whom they just signed a nuclear fuel processing deal). And well, that history isn't going anywhere, but Iran isn't getting much more powerful and assertive in that region or being pushed back from doing things that we don't want it to do (state-sponsored terrorism for instance, which it has been at the forefront for over two-three decades). In light of these factors, a nuclear Iran is not actually a "problem", if we can extract ourselves from these wars. Israel can handle itself, if we're worried about it, we can throw some foreign military aid at that problem like we already do in copious amounts for some reason. Iran however is not our problem or our fight.

That doesn't mean that I'm not constantly having to fend off this fearful idea that somehow Iran's going to get a nuke and blow us all up, or maybe just Tel Aviv. It gets tiresome to explain why state-actors get nuclear weapons. It's not to hand them over to terrorists, to one-way them off to take out another nation's cities, to start wars, etc. They're for preventing other people/nations from fucking with your agenda. In that respect, a nuclear Iran is a bigger annoyance than it is right now, with the idea that we might want to prevent them from doing something or other. Except it's not like we've had much influence and pressure to bring to the scene already against this perceived national interest of another country.

Still, to explain the problem so I don't have to over and over and over again. The main parties in Iran that appear to be backing the nukes are the Ayotollah and the Revolutionary Guards. The first, well he probably wants to stay in power over a country that isn't a glowing pile of goo, otherwise the supposed greatness of the Islamic Republic doesn't do much good for anybody. And the second is more or less a gangster operation, extracting massive economic rents. Gangsters like business to go without outside interferences. So a deterrent weapon is awesome for gangsters. Aside from those two power brokers, the general public in Iran seems divided, but I suspect pushing them around on this whole nuclear power/weapons question is not pushing people back toward what we might perceive as the rational response to a superpower pushing people around (cower in fear of our shock and awe!). Pushing people around is kind of likely to get them to rally around and do the things we don't want them to do.

In essence, I don't see what influence or power we can use, because most things would be too much for us to bite off (an open shooting war without forces to take the war to its conclusion or international support for doing so) or counterproductive (sanctions that piss people off and don't really prevent anything from happening). And also I don't see that it's really worth trying to use influence and power to begin with because we're not in any greater danger anyway.

So instead, I'll just go with this.


It's possible our options would look better in an alternative universe where we didn't commit hundreds of thousands of troops and their equipment to Iraq and Afghanistan. But that would be an alternative universe where the people advocating we attack Iran over this question didn't exist, or at least didn't hold nearly as much sway and control over mainstream political arguments and opinion-making forums, either. Because that was the same justification used to invade Iraq (and now quietly forgotten by "polite" journalistic commentary).

I'm left only with the response that we should honor those who died and suffered, on all sides, especially the innocent, for, basically nothing.