World's craziest country award goes to...
Topic: Bush Administraiton

In the ongoing challenge to find the craziest country on Earth, Iran has jumped ahead of us again. We just get done digesting the news that W. & Co. are thinking about using nukes on Iran, and now here comes religious fanatic # 2, Mamoud Amandinejad, to announce that Iran has "joined the club of nuclear nations." Iran has supposedly managed to enrich a small amount of low grade uranium. Better get the B-2 bombers gases up! Or not; it doesn't appear that Iran is on the verge of making nukes quite yet.

Despite the panicked warnings of Israel and the administration, no one really thinks Iran is anywhere near getting a bomb. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says, "They've shown that they can run a small number of centrifuges for a few days. What they need to do is run thousands for months. This is a significant engineering challenge. Very small mistakes can lead to catastrophe." The WaPo qotes a Western official closely involved in monitoring Iran's progress saying, "This means they can operate a larger cascade, but can they do it for a long time? We don't know."

The CIA thinks they're 5 to 10 years away, so there's no need to overreact. Not that we won't overreact, knowing that our "war president" is rumored to be bent on taking care of the Iranian problem before another less resolute president takes office. There's always the chance the next president might not talk to God on a regular basis, after all.

This news comes as the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei is scheduled to arrive in Iran. He'll be visiting the nuclear facility at Nanatz and then he'll be reporting back to the U.N. Security Council later this month on Iran's compliance with the UN's ultimatum to stop all enrichment activity issued last month. It doesn’t look like the Iranians are in any mood to cooperate with e international community on what it sees as its right to produce uranium for its "civilian" energy program.

Things look pretty bleak, but there might be a Iranian pull back coming. Hannah Allam and Jonathan S. Landay in the Inquirer today report that Saeed Laylaz, a political analyst in Tehran, is expecting Iran to make another announcement soon that they're suspending all enrichment activities. "They wanted this big ceremony to show that nuclear technology is not a goal --- it's an achievement. That is enough, and now we can go back to negotiations."

In other words, this was all about showing the world that they actually have the capability of enriching uranium if they want to. Some experts on this issue even think the inevitability of an Iranian nuke isn't set in stone. This is all about nationalism and Iran flexing its muscles in the region. Making bombs is really, really, expensive and average Iranians aren't exactly rolling in cash. Jobs are scarce and 70% of the population is under the age of 25, so Iran has a long way to go to becoming the regional powerhouse it wants to be.

Ultimately, the only solution to this "crisis" is to talk to the Iranians. The natural inclination of this administration is to throw bombs at every problem, but that option might not be available in this situation. Sure we have the capability of inflicting "shock and awe" on the Iranians, but the chaos that would create in the region and the economic blowback is too prohibitive to even imagine. If we're really the most powerful nation on the Earth, we ought to be able to talk to the Iranians without any loss of face. We hold most of the cards and a less bellicose approach might bring the Chinese and the Russians around to seeing things our way.

Of course, all of this is based on an expectation both us and the Iranians being rational, there's no guarantee either side will be. The onus is on us, though, to do something positive. We're the ones with the money, the political clout and the military strength to make the difference here. Whether W. and his "war cabinet" have the imagination and the will to do anything other than keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again is the ultimate question that will determine if we avoid Armageddon or not.