July 16, 2009, Crazy talk
Our friend Rob Farley tells us in this in this Foreign Policy piece, "How I stopped worrying and learned to love put up with Iran having the bomb." Rob's message: calm the f*** down. While Iran is led by people who say the darndest bat sh*t things (and who dress funny)... so was China in the late 50's, and indeed, China was, in many ways, far more worrisome than Iran... and yet... has been deterrable.
I have said similar things: Ahmadinedjad, though a crazy, Holocaust-denying firebrand a**hole... ain't running Iran. He is part of a front-operation for a group of clerics who really run Iran largely as their own cash register. The thing with kleptocracies masquerading as theocracies is that their leadership is... wait for it... rational, and as afraid of nuclear annihilation by missiles launched from Dimona as they are of allowing their people to elect a potential moderate at a time when the Great Satan (TM) is f***ing everything up by inviting Iranians to 4th of July barbecues.
The Taliban gaining control ofPakistan, and its nuclear arsenal, is enough to scare the pants off of anyone who wears pants... the Taliban, though brigands in their own right (and not to mention currently dependent on the drug trade) have this crazy-ass sense of "purity" that renders them... an unimaginable threat to the continued existence of humanity on this planet should they get their hands on nukes... Iran? Not so much.
Who knows? Given that Israel seems to be voting with its feet (I hear it sent a nuclear submarine through the Suez)... maybe Iran will get the message... and... calm the f*** down in its own right. Who knows? Maybe somehow the world will manage to survive yet another crazy regime whose leaders egregiously repress their own citizens... and dress funny...