Nuclear Iran, Reloaded

In the Reloaded version of my blog, I'll write about Iran, its nuclear program, its culture, and most importantly, myself.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

who is winning?

Richard Clarke has written a new document for The New York Times, in which he discusses Iran's strategy towards Iraq and United States:

Is a State Sponsor of Terrorism Winning?

There are a couple of points that need to be discussed:

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In R. Clarke's point of view, the purpose of the Iran-Iraq war (from Iran's prospective) was
1. to place Iraq's majority Shiite religious faction in charge
2. to unseat Saddam Hussein
3. to protect the Shiite holy places
4. (perhaps) to get its hands on Iraq's vast oil deposits

Actually, that was Iraq that imposed the war on Iran. Iran was protecting its land. In addition:
purpose 1 can't be achieved by continuing an imposed war.
purpose 4 is not a reasonable idea if Iran still can't log its oil fields at their full capacity.
Purpose 2 does not correlate with Iran's behavior in the past couple of hundred years (and if there was any government to be toppled, that would have been Israel, not Iraq).
Purpose 3 is the only one that does make sense, given that Iraq's ruling power was Sunni.

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Another point:
Iran does have a huge influence on Iraq's officials (no doubt about it). This is not because those officials lived in Iran, but because they are Shitte and they've been receiving financial aids from Iran. (It is interesting to know that many of the high-ranked Israeli officials were born and raised in Iran too. Former Defence Minister maybe!)
Shittes won the poll because they were more popular, not because they have been helped by Iran.

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R. Clarke says: "Iran's nuclear strategists are also succeeding. President Bush has agreed to give Iran trade concessions to get it to abide by nuclear-nonproliferation agreements."
I guess he is not catching up with the story. NPT does not require nations to abandon their Uranium enrichment programs. (That is something that Bush administration has requested). Excluding some delays in reporting the programs, IAEA has no evidence of Iran violating its NPT obligations up to now.

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