Let's Squeeze Iran Some More

By DemocracyRules

 There is merit to the idea of attacking a nuclear-bound despotism before it gets weapons.  However, containment is also a good idea.  It can slow Iran down and buy some time. 

At any point anything could happen next.  While the allied democracies were putting the squeeze on the Soviet Union,  they collapsed almost without warning. The Soviets talked tough right up until the end.

Another helpful thing is a statistical phenomenon called “regression towards the mean.”  Extraordinarily nasty regimes tend to drift back toward the average over time.  They do this because of random events.  All else being equal, random events conspire to create “average nastiness”. Tyrants lose power, or they run out of the money they need to do bad things, they get assassinated, their people rise up, etc. Honestly, this really happens. Examples: most of South America (compared to 1965), Mauritania, Libya, and of course the Soviet Union.

Ergo, if the democracies successfully contain Iran, it will likely improve over time on its own. Condi has pointed out that Iran’s economy is fragile (still much weaker than 1979), people are getting very tired of poverty, the isolation, and their obviously crazy leaders. Hate is also very disabling for Iran, it's an enormous waste of time and energy.

We have bit of time left on the nuclear issue.   Iran has no idea what they're doing. Contrary to web chit-chat, building reliable, weapons-usable and deliverable nuclear weapons is very hard, and Iran would probably only get one shot at an attack. Russia has never perfected stable, reliable weapons where you could just push a button and get a reliable bomb blast of a certain size in a certain exact place on the other side of the world. (Remember Russians are still driving Lada’s.) Given these facts, are these Iranian fanatics (who could not even build a Lada without help), a clear and present danger to the US?  Israeli intelligence says we can wait a bit longer. 

Right now, the allied democracies have to keep up the pressure and focus on containment, while we prepere for war if it becomes necessary.