Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Iran: Just a Simple Wish-List
After attending meeting after meeting on Iran in Washington, this is what it all boils down to:
The United States would like Iran to give up all the infrastructure, technology and programs that might be used to fabricate a nuclear weapon and a workable delivery system, stop all support for terrorism, recognize Israel, give up its Islamic revolution and move in the direction of becoming a secular liberal democracy, and recognize the paramount role of the United States in maintaining the security architecture of the Persian Gulf; and it wants to accomplish all these things without war or a significant military operation, using a broad multilateral framework where the Europeans, Russians and Chinese all play a major role and assume significant portions of the burden, with no significant losses in U.S. blood or treasure, and while keeping stable or even lowering the price of oil, and ensuring that in the process there will be no disruption of stabilization efforts in Iraq or Afghanistan.
No problem.
The United States would like Iran to give up all the infrastructure, technology and programs that might be used to fabricate a nuclear weapon and a workable delivery system, stop all support for terrorism, recognize Israel, give up its Islamic revolution and move in the direction of becoming a secular liberal democracy, and recognize the paramount role of the United States in maintaining the security architecture of the Persian Gulf; and it wants to accomplish all these things without war or a significant military operation, using a broad multilateral framework where the Europeans, Russians and Chinese all play a major role and assume significant portions of the burden, with no significant losses in U.S. blood or treasure, and while keeping stable or even lowering the price of oil, and ensuring that in the process there will be no disruption of stabilization efforts in Iraq or Afghanistan.
No problem.
