Let's Talk About...

Rice: US Will Join Iraq Talks Involving Iran And Syria... US-North Korea Talks Set for March... Iran hopes to resume nuclear talks ...

Talk, talk, talk. Everybody seems to think that talking is the way to prevent international crises involving nuclear weapons in the hands of bad guys. Or, at least, everybody hopes it will. Because if it doesn't, somebody's gonna have to start fighting, and the U.N. won't start it and the Americans are getting tired of fighting, period.

This is nothing new. In April 2006, my last post before my unexplained hiatus was about this same issue... I re-read it and everything I said was still true: Everybody wants Iran to stop; Iran doesn't want to stop; Nobody's willing to make Iran stop. It doesn't take a master of Aristotleian logic to figure out what's bound to happen in a few years.

The Economist thinks that "economic sanctions" (whatever that really means) will begin to take its toll on Iran's, er, economy. It also notes rising dissent and criticism for their leader's positions and statements, something unheard of a couple decades ago. There still seems to be optimism that we can convince Iran to stop researching nukes without military action.

Maybe so. Or maybe by the time they get nukes they'll be smart enough not to use them on anybody. But the only thing that's changed amidst the haze of diplomacy and rhetoric these last ten months is that Iran is 10 months closer to a nuke than it was before. And as long as Iran holds the trump card of the price of oil, that's the only thing that will continue to change.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic. Or maybe I'm just not in denial about diplomacy as a panacea. Sooner or a later things are bound to get messy...

Edmond the Hun