So the translation you depend on is at the very best inaccurate and want to create a condition of animosity.

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Iran needs to be engaged to get this situation to peaceful resolution, no matter what the war theorists and agitators say.

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MAY 2006 (IPS) – Given the fragmentation of Iran’s conservative ruling elite, the response of the major powers to Iran’s nuclear ambitions will greatly affect the outcome of the current power struggle inside the country — and by implication, the fate of Iran’s nuclear programme, write Dariush Zahedi, who teaches International Political Economy and Peace & Conflict Studies at University of California, Berkeley, and Ali Assareh, a student instructor and analyst specialising in the political economy of the Middle East at UC Berkeley.

In this analysis, the authors write that pursuing the military option would create a security environment conducive to the ascendancy of Ahmadinejad and the hard-liners, who would seize the opportunity to extinguish the remnants of Iran’s civil society and roll back reforms. Sanctions would damage Iran’s struggling private sector and minuscule middle class and weaken the position of the pragmatists relative to the hard-liners and traditionalists, who control Iran’s vast network of black markets.

Engaging Iran, on the other hand, would enhance the position of the pragmatists relative to other sub-factions. A normalisation of relations between the two countries would also lead to improvements in the condition of the economy. U.S. foreign investment could boost the development of the private sector in Iran and increase the size of its middle class. This process, in the long run, will further consolidate the position of the less ideological and more pragmatic elements within the conservatives, and could lay the foundations for a peaceful and sustained transition to democracy. (END/2006)

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“President Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush, widely interpreted as a peaceful overture, is in fact a declaration of war. The key sentence in the letter is the closing salutation. In an eight-page text of the letter being circulated by the Council on Foreign Relations, it is left untranslated and rendered as “Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda.” What this means is “Peace only unto those who follow the true path.”

It is a phrase with historical significance in Islam, for, according to Islamic tradition, in year six of the Hejira – the late 620s – the prophet Mohammad sent letters to the Byzantine emperor and the Sassanid emperor telling them to convert to the true faith of Islam or be conquered. The letters included the same phrase that President Ahmadinejad used to conclude his letter to Mr. Bush. For Mohammad, the letters were a prelude to a Muslim offensive, a war launched for the purpose of imposing Islamic rule over infidels.”

http://www.nysun.com/article/32594

The awful evidence accumulates that Ahmadinejad and his masters are bent on taking Iran to war.

Steve

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Back to the topic. I’ve read through a few of articles on the current state of Iran’s foreign policy and the potential for violent conflict between them and the US. Here are two I found informative. They’re not too long, and both end with a guardedly hopeful view:

http://www.brookings.org/views/op-ed/daalder/20060421.htm

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10672/pause_over_iran_nuclear_intelligence.html

I’m getting very busy at work with some fun but challenging projects, so I’ll be absent for a while.

Jared

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I’m not too impressed by your Factcheck.org. I leafed through a few of their posts. Based on that small sample, it looks like they brag more about being impartial than do actual research. From what I see, they snip off the extreme opinions and present a plausible slightly left of center position as the truth. By contrast, Snopes does the hard research to come up with the real answer, free of bias.

Steve

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Jared

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“The next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets.”

MacArthur never said it. According to Snopes, MacArthur made no speech at the Point in 1955. Apparently, it is based on a comment MacArthur made during a private visit from the Mayor of Naples, Italy about the possibility of life on other planets and that sometime in the future Earth might need to unite confront it.

That was distorted by the media into a bogus story about MacArthur warning about an imminent space war. Those bogus stories, in turn, were rehashed by UFO nuts into assertions that MacArthur was warning that aliens were attacking Earth.

So you have gone from using lefty nuts as the authority for your positions to UFO nuts. In other words, you have abandoned chicks gabbing at the next table at uptown Starbucks in Manhattan as your highest source of information and are now using guys wearing tinfoil hats in trailers down by the river.

Jared, you’re slowly floating away from Earth. Time to release some helium from your balloon and come back to terra firma.

Steve

PS. You liberal goofball. (I wanted you to get your shot of grappa. Bottom’s up!)

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One day…

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Jared enjoy the grappa for now until we meet in NY! Sorry for keeping your comment in moderation as it contained more than the spambuster limit of 3 per post. I hope I have released it in a timely manner, and thanks too for the very interesting information it contains.

Mahmood my friend, if I know you’re coming to NY, I will absolutely save an entire bottle for you and take time off to show you around!

Jared

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