Hardliners Rule in Iran

"Iran's new president nominated a Cabinet on Sunday that has hard-liners in all key ministries and is likely to lead to more confrontation in the country's dispute with the Washington and Europe over its nuclear program."  Yahoo News

In the decades long search for "moderates" and pro-Western Iranians that has been a perpetual obsession with many Americans, this would seem to be a new low point. 

There are many people in the US who are so opposed to the Bush afministration and so offended by the chicanery  and internal propaganda that led us into war and occupation in Iraq that they do not want to hear or read anything that points to the possibility that Iran is taking a path so foolish and transparently hostile that it is increasingly probable that further combat in the region is likely.

Let's not kid ourselves, Iran has been the major state sponsor of Islamic terrorism and subversion ever since the Iranian Revolution.  Its sponsorship of both Sunni and Shia Jihadi groups over the decades was a foreshadowing of the subterranean role it is now playing behind the scene in Iraq.  Iran is now hard at work on its nuclear program and maneuvering skillfully behind a screen of negotiations  to fend off foreign inference in that program.

Does anyone think that Iran, a major oil producer, needs this program to produce electricity?

Let's not let irritation with the mendacity and manipulation of the Jacobin neocons blind us to the real risks posed by Iran.  pl

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050814/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_cabinet

Comments

[Some Guy]

Point well taken.

[Some Guy]

It does seem, though, that Bush will not be able to overcome the irritation he has engendered. He has effectively made himself into the boy who cried wolf. The insecurity created by Iraq is most surely compounded by the U.S.'s damaged credibility. That effect will haunt the next adminstration, even if it is Democratic and certainly if it is Republican.

I find it hard to imagine how any of the current players could come to the public and say, "No really, this is dangerous and we have to do something." And I would be curious to see if the next administration could overcome the doubts.

I guess what I am saying is that the irritation and anger rest on widespread lack of trust, and although irritation and anger may possibly be addressed when a threat arises, a thoroughgoing distrust is much harder to get past, always reigniting the irriration and hostility. This administration has lied and distorted so much about so many things they lost the confidence of a majority of the public if recent polls are to be believed.

Public discourse has suffered a great blow these last years and that puts the nation at risk in itself. It is another reason why the kind of "political success by any means" approach is so corrosive: we may no longer be capable of rising to the occasion to forge a response to international dangers.

[RJJ]

Does one usually hire the quack who botches a bypass to peform the corrective procedure and/or a second bypass?

[BostonGemini]

I have to admit that I am one such individual that so angry at this administration and its intervention in and destruction of Iraq that I immediately become defensive of Iran. I may need to take a modified view, but it seems to me that invading Iraq sent a clear message: get nuclear arms or you're vulnerable. Also, I believe that the nuclear issue would be a only a pretext for invasion of Iran, the real reason being further control of the planet's strategic resources as oil peaks (and control of others' access to those resources). Venezuala isn't chasing nukes, and the Bush admin has constantly screwed with that government -- everything short of invasion. Finally (and all these points are meant to stimulate discussion), what gives the US the right to keep Iran from using nuclear power OR developing nuclear weapons. We have them, and are improving them all the time. Israel has them. I think it's clearly a double standard -- one we accept because we're so used to it.