Iran: More sanctions now or wait?

Great Debates
41

America has done more to Iran that Iran has done to America. Der Trihs is right about the history of the two countries, there is no way to say our hands are clean in this situation. The only way is trust.

How I would approach it is this: allow Iran to have their weapons and make no attempt to stop them. In fact, help them out as a gesture of burying the mistakes of the past. Once Iran is armed with the capability to attack the US, and they don’t, only then can their trust be earned. Making the US vulnerable to Iran is the only way for us to show them that we are sorry for what we’ve done in the past and would like to move forward.

42

I’m one who has long said Iran having a nuke actually isn’t a big deal. The Soviets had tons of nukes for most of the Cold War, just because a country with nukes has them and hates you doesn’t mean they will use them against you. If that was the case we would’ve nuked Iran by now.

That being said, the position you espouse here may in fact be the single worst policy proposal I’ve seen in the history of American international relations. It’s based on weak, unrealistic, emotional thinking that is totally divorced from how nations behave, would hurt the United States and its standing in the world and achieve none of the things you assert it would achieve. I’m struggling to think of a dumber policy proposal in American diplomacy.

43

There is one huge difference between the Soviets having nuclear weapons and Iran. Iran is subject to the whims of a religious leader who is all kinds of crazy. On the even of negotiations this is what he’s saying:

No eavesdropping was necessary on Wednesday, however, when Khamenei was at it again—delivering a typically bellicose public speech in Tehran just as negotiators arrived in Geneva for a new round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. He called Israel a “rabid dog” government, “doomed to failure and annihilation,” and run sub-human leaders “They are like animals, some of them.”

He also assailed the “arrogance” of the U.S. and added that, in the nuclear talks, Iran “will not step back one iota from our rights.”

The televised diatribe to an audience of 50,000 Basij militia men, who thrust their fists in their air and chanted “Death to America,” cast a pall over the Geneva talks—and left U.S. officials awkwardly signaling their disapproval without picking a rhetorical fight that could upset the delicate negotiations.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki’s response to this: “Obviously, comments like these are not helpful,”

That is the mother of all understatements. A country that backs terrorists and routinely whips it’s citizenry into chants of “death to America” is not a group of political people with the sanity to possess nuclear weapons.

44

Seriously, next thing you know he’ll be hitting a podium with his shoe saying he’ll bury us.

45

You mean like America typically is? Reagan for example scared a lot of people with his apocalypse-talk, comparing the USSR and China with Gog and Magog. And hanging out with guys like Jerry Falwell, who supported a nuclear war. Reagan terrified the Soviets when he was elected because they thought there was a significant chance he’d launch a first strike at them out of sheer religious fervor.

America isn’t really a nation that can accuse other nations of being too religious without it looking hypocritical & silly.

46

(A)When one supports terrorists as they do, I assume they support the theology as well. I don’t think that’s such a leap.

(B) I won’t dignify that with an answer

47

Er… we had a “Persian Spring”.

It was called the “Green Revolution”. Sadly it was crushed.

48

You’re referring to Khrushchev’s speech which was not a threat but a prediction our society would collapse. I am worried about them detonating a nuclear device in a clandestine manner that makes it hard for us to retaliate.

49

This is quite possibly the stupidest post I have read on SDMD in awhile and one of the most ignorant about Iran I’ve seen in my entire life which is saying quite a lot.

I’m also more than a little confused as to how someone who claims to be an atheist could make such a moronic claim.

Here in America, atheists like yourselves have absolutely nothing to fear whatsoever.

Do you want me to go into rather detailed description of how you would be treated in Iran if, like my father, you were foolish enough to say Muhammad was a fraud?

Or that you didn’t believe in God?

I ask because if you want me to I can be extremely specific.

Beyond that, you’ll notice how every recent President has had plenty of non-Christian advisors and how many prominent Congressmen for the last several decades in the US have been non-Christians(mostly Jews).

You do realize that such a thing would be quite literally impossible in Iran.

Please read up on my country before making such embarrassingly stupid comments about it and in doing so insulting Iranians like my family who can no longer live there.

BTW, next time you decide to try and compare Iran to the West talk about Mutah, ethnicity or transgendered people instead of religion. You’ll be on firmer ground and also you’ll be vastly more original.

50

Is this a reference to Khruschev or the way shoes and their use can be symbolic in both Arab and to a lesser extent Iranian culture.

51

Huh? Because neither my father or I are fully Persian we’re rather dark-skinned, at least by American standards, but we’re hardly typical. You think Iranians are dark-skinned?

https://www.ivpn.net/blog/wp-content/img/iranian_protesters.jpg

http://media.nowpublic.net/images//78/4/784244633a7c1d97a7e245b8304780d0.jpg

http://media.nowpublic.net/images//2f/f/2ffa81cc7d352f3c4c8418611beb42ef.jpg

http://media.nowpublic.net/images//2f/f/2ffa81cc7d352f3c4c8418611beb42ef.jpg

And of course.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r111/Sunshineenfred/bloneIran.jpg

Seriously?

Please explain why you think Christine Amanpour

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/files/2011/08/christiane_amanpour.jpg

Sarah Shahi

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f1MKjaQLan4/TgD0tIudHYI/AAAAAAAAAcU/DszdRmQmN_M/s400/Sarah%2BShahi%2B-%2B12-11098.jpg

And Adrian Pasdar

http://tvblog.girlpower.it/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/adrian-pasdar-heroes-nathan-petrelli-castle-fbi-agente.jpg

are “brown-skinned”?

I’m a bit confused by the question you’re posing?

What is the point of it?

Both the Ayatollah Khomeini with his idea of a dictatorship of the intellectuals or dictatorship of the judges(however you want to think of it) and Osama Bin Laden’s interpretation of Salafism were quite revolutionary breaks from tradition although dramatically different due to the Sunni-Shia differences as well as Khomeini’s respect for and influence by Plato but they’re both rather extreme versions of radical Islam influence far more by modern events than by the actual Islamic past.

52

:dubious: They’d have to be incredibly foolish to think that we’d care about proof in a case like that. I find the idea of them doing that as about as believable as the US and USSR clandestinely nuking each other’s cities. Which neither did, despite both of them being ruthlessly fanatical, and both hating each other at least as much as the US and Iran hate each other.

53

Huh?

No, the Soviets were never remotely as fanatical as the Mullahs, nor did they ever hate the US as much as the Iranians hate either the Jews or the US.

Please tell me you’re familiar with the Basij, the symbolism of plastic keys and how Iran was able to defeat the vastly militarily superior invading Iraqi army?

Of course none of what I’ve said is meant to justify the holding up of the negotiations.

54

I see no reason to think that they or we hated each other less than the Iranians hate anyone. As for them not being fanatical, they sure piled up quite the heap of bodies for supposed non-fanatics.

By a willingness to die in large numbers, and being pretty good at fighting. Nothing they did strikes me as being any more fanatical than what the USSR did when it was invaded in WWII. Charging unarmed so you can pick up the weapon of the guy in front of you when he dies is pretty fanatic.

And really, is it so surprising when the people of a nation fight fanatically to defend their homeland?

55

I just heard on the radio that Iran won’t give up its right to “nuclear fuel.”

Whaddaya need that for, Iran?! Allah knows you’ve got plenty of oil!

56

No, that’s not what I was talking about nor was that what the Basij were or are about.

There’s a huge difference between a willingness to die and a fanatical desire to die.

14 year old Russian boys were not told by their mothers that if they returned alive they’d have disgraced their family nor were they given keys to allow them to enter paradise before they deliberately blew themselves up. 14 year old Iranian boys were told that by their mothers and were given such keys and were told that after they entered paradise they’d spend eternity being serviced by virgins by the clerics who sent them out to commit suicide.

57

You mean like the millions of Christian Americans who think the end of the world is a great idea and do what they can to bring it about? I find Apocalyptic Christianity a lot scarier and a lot more likely to launch a nuclear war than a bunch of people who died defending their homeland from attack.

58

Sigh.

Thank you for admitting that you lost the argument.

You insisted the Soviets were at least as fanatical as the Iranians. I pointed out they weren’t and demonstrated why you were wrong.

You then decided to shift the goal posts and pretend instead of talking about the Soviets you were talking about American Christians.

Beyond that, I have to say, if someone had hacked your account and chosen to come up with a line of attack that would actually give me a perfect counterattack, talking about all the “Christian Americans” who are deliberately trying to bring about “the end of the world.”

Because you sound like all the neocons terrified of the Hojjatieh whackjobs who were considered so extreme that the bleeding heart liberal the Ayatollah Khomeini banned them when, amongst other things they started arguing for taking steps to bring about the return of the 12th Imam(meaning the end of the World) who’s supposed leader, the Ayatollah Yazdi, currently sits on the Assembly of Experts, has come very close to defying the current Supreme Leader, particularly when it comes to the production of nuclear weapons which Khamenei has repeatedly condemned, and who may very well be the next Supreme Leader. One of his proteges was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The difference was, while the neocon fears of Hojjatieh idiots starting WWIII and their parsing of Ahmadinejad’s statements regarding the 12th Imam were overblown, their arguments are on firmer grounds then your rant about Christian Americans deliberately trying to bring about the End of the World.

That being said, if you want to now shift your argument to a comparison of the religious fanaticism of the Iranian government vs. that of the American government, ok, let’s play that game.

You’re an atheist and clearly it’s an important part of your identity.

Please give us some detailed explanations of how you’ve been persecuted or discriminated against due to being one either in school, college, at work, or in society at large.

I’ll be happy to go into a detailed description of what happens to atheists in Iran to compare your stories to.

For the record, I don’t believe in God, and don’t believe I’ve ever been discriminated against due to that.

59

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have continued the argument because it’s a hijack.

I’ll apologize to everyone for continuing it when I shouldn’t have.

I hope this isn’t considered junior modding, but if Der feels the need to respond, I’ll happily respond in another thread comparing the religiosity of the American and Iranian governments.

60

Anyway, back to the OP.

More sanctions will actually strengthen the hardliners in Iran and make them more likely to take rash actions.

Beyond that, while they certainly hate both the West and the Jews, they’re far more likely to use such weapons as leverage when dealing with other Islamic nations.

Finally, under the current Supreme Ruler, I doubt they’ll ever get beyond the stage of having them ready to be built rather than active.