Why Iran? Why, why, why are we hammering on Iran again? Which countries have they attacked? Which countries have they threatened? And don't say Israel, because that little tidbit is a mistranslation bordering on a lie. The NIE has, for the second time in a decade, come out and conclusively said that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons. This despite the fact that doing this is pretty much career suicide for all involved in the report. Iran just sealed a deal to deposit about half of its already enriched uranium (all the way up to 20%! Ooooh! When weapons-grade is 90%) in Turkey---a NATO ally of the U.S.---for safekeeping. What more does a country have to do? Capitulate, probably. The U.S. and Israel are interested only in regime change in Iran (again! Remember Mossadegh?) just as they were in Iraq. It's pathological for them. It's pathetic that the U.S. is skipping happily down the same road they so recently trod toward Baghdad---and to Saigon before that. Though in this case, it's the peoples of other countries who are doomed to repeat histories that Americans can't be bothered to learn or remember. And the U.S. is still in Iraq. And in Afghanistan as well. Those wars are going so swimmingly and are so moral and good, why not do some more? Drone attacks in Pakistan sound useful and noble. It's time to clean up the mess in Iran. After all, Europe's too chickenshit to do it. After all, Iran is evil. Everyone knows it. Just read the papers. Just watch the news. Let the context-free and largely fact-free propaganda wash over you. Bask in it. Glory in it. Then the cartoon below will make as much sense to you as it does to its author, John Sherffius. <img src="{att_link}crjsh100609.gif" href="{att_link}crjsh100609.gif" align="center" class="frame" title="Iran's already got the bomb" scale="75%"> Just days after Iran agreed to ship half of its enriched uranium---which enrichment level makes it completely unusable for weapons, but wholly appropriate for medical use---the U.S. managed to hammer through more sanctions against Iran, with Brazil and Turkey voting "no" and Lebanon abstaining. The sanctions are to stem the imminent nuclear threat in Iran. Sanctions are largely seen in the West as a humane way of forcing regimes to clean up their acts or at least force the populace to overthrow a regime that is subjecting it to sanctions. This is complete and utter bullshit. Sanctions only harm the innocent. They strengthen the regime in charge. The populace tends to support their regime---brutal though it may be---against the foreigners imposing the sanctions. This is logical. The inability of the western intelligentsia to accept this is an indication of a nearly perfectly myopic stupidity or a criminal lack of ethics. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State of the U.S. is, naturally, a huge fan of sanctions. What will Iran do? To date, they have been remarkably---one could say naïvely---patient with the West. They are the most compliant---the most inspected anyway---signatories to the NPT on the planet. The U.S. is a signatory, but completely non-compliant as they, in signing the treaty, promised to reduce their nuclear stockpiles to zero.<fn> Israel is not an NPT signatory; neither are North Korea, Pakistan and India. All of those nations came by their nuclear weapons illicitly (against other international agreements that those countries had made). Now that they have them, they are counted as members of the nuclear family and are granted favored status as allies of the U.S. Iraq had no nuclear weapons; it was invaded and has been largely destroyed. It is unlikely that it will ever rise back to the level it enjoyed under even Saddam Hussein. It will likely fester in twilight as Afghanistan has for decades. What's the object lesson here? Develop nukes as quickly as you can or you will be invaded and have all of your resources taken away and parceled out to large, multinational---but largely U.S.---concerns. The U.S. has nukes; Israel has nukes; Iran does not have nukes. But Iran gets sanctions for the weapons it does not have. The Western nations that voted for this are completely unhinged from reality; they are building their own narrative as they always do, pursuing their own short-sighted goals as they always do and damning millions of shadowy foreigners to lives of abject misery as they always do. An attack will likely follow, with Israel leading the way, opening a minor skirmish into an all-out war, with the U.S. <i>forced</i> to come in to help out its "ally".<fn> Though Turkey is in NATO and an official ally of the U.S., it's opinion will count for naught, as usual. <hr> <ft>Whether you agree that this is a worthwhile goal doesn't matter. The fact remains that the U.S. <i>did</i> sign the NPT and <i>is</i> not in compliance. That the U.S. media regularly accuses Iran of being non-compliant would be hilariously ironic were it not so f&@king dangerously moronic.</ft> <ft>Ally is in quotes because Israel and the U.S. do not actually have a treaty with one another because a mutual defense treaty includes a declaration of borders as a prerequisite---something Israel is obviously unwilling to do.</ft>