I just read we will be holding peace talks with Iran. I think we need to worry more about us invading Syria.

Hmmm..."peace talks with Iran"...aye?

Do you honestly believe this would bear fruit?

Will these talks get Iran to fully cooperate with the UN regarding her nuclear program?

Will these talks get Iran to end her destabilizing activities in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afganistan?

Will these talks get Iran to end her proxy attacks on US forces/citizens?

(The deadliest terrorist attack on US citizens in modern times before 9/11 was the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing which was sponsered by Iran.)

While it might be a hopeful belief that such "talks" will bear fruit, I seriously have my doubts given the understanding that the US has tried about 28 years of on-again, off-again "talks" with Iran through various third-parties.

(It should be interesting to note that an ex-Mexican government official went to Tehran twice in the past two years for "talks" with Iran on the US's behalf only to be sent back home each time with the message, "We have nothing to discuss.")

Iran should be asked why they are helping the terrorists in Iraq. They should know better than to deny it.

Kind of like the peace "talks" in Israel - they're still blowing each other up over there.

We are on the same thought wave again, BD. Personally, I think that it is Iran who is the major problem country in the Middle East.

Oh, the Iranian regime is a master at "spin"...perhaps much more so than Bush.

And, I think the US government, at least for the most part, knows "why" Iran is interfering in Iraq: They intend to spread their form of theocracy throughout the Muslim world and, perhaps, the rest of the world.

And, if they cannot achieve that, they will at least be satisfied with weak neighbors who are heavily influenced by Iran.

Mark my words: If Iran is not confronted today, there will be, without any doubt in my mind, a major cold-and very likely hot-war that embroils the entire Middle East in the not-so-distant future.

We saw this happening at the end of WWII regarding Western Europe and the Soviet Union.

Thankfully, the Soviet regime wasn't, for the most part, willing to die for their cause and, in addition, due to Soviet Union's economic deterioration, the Cold War ended peacefully.

With Iran, things aren't likely going to end this way if Iran goes unchecked.

Iran's regime is filled with people, for the most part, who believe faithfully in martyrdoom for their cause and they are sitting on an enormous wealth of oil and natural gas in a world that is increasingly dependent on oil and natural gas.

In short, settle this situation now...or pay the consequences later.

Oh, in many respects, Iran is "Terrorism Central."

And Iran is, in many respects, the biggest roadblock to peace in the Middle East.

I, for one, think we invaded the wrong country...that being Iraq.

BD, you ought to work for the CIA.

This essay, which was contained in an earlier post of mine, deserves a "bump" right now:

The Iran Threat: Sinister Summer

BY JOHN BATCHELOR
May 17, 2006


"The United Nations Security Council approaches the sinister summer of 2006 confounded by the nuclear-tipped threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its hallucinatory leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France urge confrontation and sanctions under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter; the Russians and Chinese urge accommodation without an endgame. Meanwhile, Iran, radiating potency, announces advances in uranium processing, yellowcake mining, the construction of a breeder reactor to produce plutonium, the deploying of more sophisticated and mirved ballistic missiles. In response, gray beards in the United States and Europe sincerely counsel peacefulness, generosity, dialogue, mutual respect, timeless patience.

It is instructive to turn to an eerily parallel episode from three generations back, when most of today's gray beards were unborn, when civilization was confronted by another confident, apocalyptic wickedness. In the sinister summer of 1938, when Europe was still at peace though Asia was burning, a cocky if doomed Junker aristocrat named Ewald Kleist-Schmenzin rode in a German intelligence Mercedes to Berlin's Tempelhof Field and enplaned for London. Kleist, carrying a false passport, was met at the Park Lane Hotel by a British intelligence operative named Lloyd. In the silent privacy at Claridge's, Kleist and Lloyd discussed in French a deal so secret that it was dangerous to both Germany and England.

Kleist, speaking for the Prussian military elite and German monarchists, said that there was a plot ready to arrest the Hitler gang and occupy Berlin with the Third Panzer Division. What the plotters needed was a written cabinet pledge that England would stand fast against Hitler with words and deeds when Germany moved against Czechoslovakia. As sign of good faith, the plotters provided the date of the imminent invasion, Operation Green. Later, Kleist made a more detailed offer to Chamberlain's diplomatic adviser that complicated the deal with the unhappy desires of ambitious, bloody-minded men who were risking everything in order to betray their homeland.

The next day, Kleist repeated the offer to the then marginalized, Cassandra-like Winston Churchill. War is unavoidable, Kleist said. If England stands up to Hitler now, we will put him in an insane asylum. Kleist begged for an official letter from the British cabinet to use to rally the wavering German general staff.

Churchill listened bleakly, knowing that the cabinet would not take the risk of negotiating with traitors, knowing also that the British public would not suffer a confrontation with Germany. Churchill did send an unofficial secret letter to the chief of the plotters back at Berlin, the mysterious, doomed Admiral Canaris; it was gloomy, fatalistic, and prescient about the likelihood of war.

"It is difficult for the democracies in advance and in cold blood to make precise declarations but the spectacle of an armed attack by Germany upon a small neighbor and the bloody fighting that will follow will rouse the whole British Empire and compel the gravest decisions," Churchill wrote.

The end of the story is vicious. The plotters were ignored. Worse, there is a credible case that Chamberlain rushed to Munich in mid-September to forestall the risk of the coup, announcing, "We have found peace in our time." Churchill called the deal with Hitler, "sordid, squalid, sub-human, and suicidal." Later, the plotters were discovered and tortured and hanged; much later, Hitler took poison, but not until after the planet burned.

What is to be done with Iran's nuclear appetite and the genocidal Ahmadinejad? In plain English to the United Nations Security Council, stand up to Iran with words and deeds; do not accommodate, do not retreat, do not, as did Chamberlain, choose disgrace rather than war and get both. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is as non-negotiable now as Czechoslovakia's sovereignty was then. The IAEA findings that Iran is in blatant violation of its obligations are as stark a piece of evidence of Iran's war-making now as the details and date of Operation Green was then. The Chamberlains on the Security Council must be identified and challenged. In the meantime, it is critical also to identify the plotters inside Iran and in the Iranian diaspora, whether they are monarchists, socialists, anarchists, militarists, or even mercenary back-stabbers. Offer them whatever deal is credible. Tell the plotters, hang the regime now, or they will hang you later, and then the planet will burn again."

The Iran Threat: Sinister Summer - May 17, 2006 - The New York Sun

(The question is, will we-the US government-be Chamberlains? Or, will we be Churchills?)