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Barbecue Sauce

An Iraq war vet who briefly thought otherwise

Huh? As per the US civil war? Actually very few on the list represent failed states

So I guess the initiative and the ball is in China’s and NK’s court. Not a good thing.

At least I admit that the situation is so bad that it’s beyond me to pretend to know how to solve; at least I know that there’s little point in blathering on about problems I don’t understand and imaginary solutions based on uneducated fantasies.

Look, the Iranian regime is awful and trust me, it would be wonderful, wonderful, if the Iranian people could finally rid themselves of it and have the democracy they deserve. And you’re right – publicizing a regime’s crimes can have an impact. Look what we did to apartheid in South Africa. I’m certainly not sure how liberals are covering up the Iranian regime’s crimes.

But! But, and this is the only but – in a discussion of international nonproliferation regimes, the nature of the government of a state matters much less than the nature of the regime and the coercive power of the members of the regime. That’s all.

When was the last time you lived there? How do you know it’s not so bad? Do you have nieces and nephews living there who are brutalized physically (my nephew was brutally beatn by the Basijis and almost lost his beautiful blue eyes) socially, economically, politically, on a daily basis because they are not part of the ruling elite? Well, I do.

Fourty percent of Iranians live below poverty line while Khamenie et al are investing their billions in Dubai and Canada. Iran has the highest rate of addicts in the world. One out of 16 are addicts, trafficking woman is an state-run venture by the IRGC, Iran has executed 10.10 people per day so far this year….
BTW, The liberals are not helping the Iranian people by minimizing,covering up and trivilizing the mullah’s atrocities and perhaps you’re contributing to an eventual nuking of Iran. Highlighting the truth about Iran will probably make military/sanctions even less necessary, if it is possible that the Iranian regime will collapse on its own.

I’m too upset to continue this now. Maybe later.

But beyond that – what’s the relevance? “Iran is a terrible dictatorship. This is why we should make loud noises to them about not having nuclear weapons that we can’t back up.” Is that what you’re trying to say? The nature of the Iranian regime is irrelevant to discussions about complellence or coercion in voluntary international nonproliferation regime. Unless we have some other means I am unaware of, we can’t just wave our hands and force Iran to comply. So we have these neat little things, these regimes, and Hans Blix said: the regime only works, countries will only choose to cooperate, if they think that it’s fair; that is, they’re not going to enter it to benefit the interests of some other country (especially the US) to no gain and some loss to them.

Does that make sense? A country will only cooperate if it thinks it’s worthwhile to cooperate, and if the nature of cooperation is “do everything the US wants, give up an asset, and gain nothing,” then why would Iran, or any country, want to cooperate?