Iran, The Bomb and The Candidates

George W. Bush brought the matter of Iranian nuclear ambitions back out of the closet during his speech last week to the Israeli parliament. Apparently he continues to think that the Iranians are up to something icky-poo in that area and believes something should be done about it.

That's nice.

The question of what might or should be done was not addressed by the Decider Guy.

Neither has it been addressed meaningfully by any of the senatorial trio seeking electoral preferment.

We the People know the following. One candidate, Senator Obama, would go the route of negotiations backed by incentives--including a summit meeting without preconditions. The second, Senator Clinton, would go with negotiations and incentives albeit at the sub-cabinet level until fundamental agreement had been achieved. Finally, Senator McCain eschews negotiations beyond those necessary to lower Iranian involvement in the Iraqi War and would employ sanctions to achieve an end to unacceptable Iranian nuclear programs.

Those platitudinous adumbrations fail to impress the Geek. They should fail to impress anyone well oriented as to time and place as well.

The Iranians and their nuclear ambitions are not going to just evaporate no matter how hard any of us might wish they would. The mullahocracy is not going to have a sudden change of heart and mind.

They are going to need an effective kick in their collective rear end to mend their troublemaking ways. Perhaps a hard kick.

Now, don't go thinking that the Geek has joined up with the neocon ninnies and their hallucination of improving the world through force imposed regime change. He hasn't.

The Iranians have already preempted the next offer of inducements by the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, PRC and Germany) by their letter to EU negotiator Solana and UN SecGen Ban Ki-moon. In it the Tehran regime allows that it might join an international consortium provided that its domestic enrichment program goes on as scheduled. With an arrogance that is breathtaking, the letter goes on to demand that any discussions also consider a remarkable range of irrelevant matters including the Balkans, the Mideast, Africa and Latin America!

The Geek is of the opinion that had the California Supreme Court issued its ruling on gay marriages a few days earlier, the Iranian letter would have placed that on the agenda as well.

The EU in its attempts to show Washington how real diplomats do the job has offered Tehran train loads of carrots with the results best illustrated by Iranian progress in deploying more improved centrifuges in their enrichment cascade. With this reality establishing the context, it is easy to see why the Tehran regime exhibited such intransigence and arrogance in their letter.

Senators Obama and Clinton, particularly the former, should think long and hard over the experience of the European Union before embracing inducement based negotiations.

In addition that Nice Young Man From Chicago, B.H. Obama, might take a cold hard look at the personality of the current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Leaving aside Ahmadinejad's jeremiads against Israel, attention might be given to the Iranian Chief Executive's statements regarding the direct involvement of the Twelfth Imam in the daily actions of the government (a position rejected by many clerics in the mullahocracy) or his comment that his country's economic problems might be solved if more Iranians followed a "culture of martyrdom." Whatever that might mean.

Check out one Western account of the call for martyrdom from the French press agency, a good source, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jelVVHDZfukEAiK80qF88B6Q1Tpg.

On balance, Ahmadinejad gives the impression of being off balance.

To date the various rounds of sanctions imposed by the UN and followed with varying degrees of enthusiasm by countries and companies around the world have hurt Iran.

But hurt isn't enough. The hurt hasn't worked. The centrifuges keep on spinning.

This doesn't mean that sanctions will not work if more are applied with greater precision in targeting and greater compliance by corporate and government agencies.

Get a grip on these unpleasant (for the Iranians) realities. PRESS TV admits the inflation rate in Iran ran twenty-four percent for the year ending last April. The outlet quotes the Central Bank in its coverage. (http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=54275&sectionid=351020102) Ahmadinejad responded by firing some financial wallahs and claiming that the inflation rate was lower, only about nineteen percent and claiming Iran's "enemies" were responsible anyway.

Then there is the unemployment problem. About one out of every four young Iranians doesn't have a job. http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast&item=080512115831.nd5ex4ol.php. In urban areas the figure is over twenty-eight percent. That's a right large passel of unemployed, frustrated teens and twenty somethings. Worrisome for any government.

But wait! There's more.

As if massive unemployment, exo-atmospheric inflation, chronic shortages and periodic "wage holidays" weren't enough, the Iranian government is proceeding with its "privatization" program. Over the past three years privatization has been an ad hoc affair, but as of 15 May, it went official, organised with the release of five or so percent of Republic Shipbuilding to the public.

The well-off, well-connected (or the sons thereof) will do even better than they did under the previous fit-and-start approach.

The idea apparently is to sop up some of the excess liquidity which has driven so much of the inflation to date. But, like previous attempts sponsored by Ahmadinejad, including housing construction and an order that banks lower interest rates to say nothing of directed increases in government salaries and pensions, this stab at privatization will prove counterproductive.

The economic difficulties confronting Iran suggest that strengthened sanctions calculated to hit the Iranian commercial class and sagging infrastructure may yet prove effective. This will take a greater effort on the part of the P5+1--particularly the PRC.

To accomplish the goal of more effective sanctions more effectively implemented will require more patience on the part of the current, lame duck US administration. Even that won't be enough.

For the sanction approach to work it is necessary that Tehran be allowed no comfort in the thought that barely more than six months from now a new administration, presumably with new policies and approaches, will take office.

Only John McCain to date has refused to give Tehran that comfort.

"What about oil prices?" You ask.

"What about the new Iran-Venezuela axis?" You object.

The Geek buys gas and LPG. He knows the pain in the skinny wallet all too well.

But, he also knows history. The US has been through periods of (at the time) astronomical oil and gasoline prices. During the previous oil shocks in 1973 and 1979-80 and the late '90s, the US was hurt badly by rising prices. But, we muddled our way through. The market forces eventually worked.

They will again. Provided the wallahs in Congress can hold their emotions (and driving need to be re-elected) under control. While not an unreconstructed free marketeer by any stretch of the imagination, the Geek cannot help by notice that the market has worked better than government actions in limiting and eventually reversing the damage of shocks to the economy.

Taking a quick look at Iran's attempt to horizontally escalate its confrontation with the US by linking with Venezuela (a subject for a later post), the Geek gives it a thumbs up.

What!

Yes, the Geek thinks it couldn't happen to a better bunch of guys. Hugo Chavez is clearly as deep an economic thinker as Ahmadinejad and the mullahs as his latest nationalization scheme shows. Venezuela is expected to have an inflation rate of twenty-six percent. http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=70644, http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/05/07/en_eco_art_inflation-at-1.7-per_07A1561241.shtml. Food prices have jumped over forty percent--and it isn't because of the oil price boom. http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/05/14/en_eco_art_venezuela-records-th_14A1576685.shtml.

With a meeting of such potent economic minds as those running Iran and Venezuela, the outcome can only be beneficial to those who live in other countries.

The next administration will have a full foreign policy plate whether they want to eat it or not. The incompetent neocon ninnie cooks in the current regime have made sure of that. We the People had best demand full, candid explanations of goals and means of acquiring those goals from the candidates.

We must not let any of the wannabe residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue glide on by with a handful of poorly thought out but nice sounding campaign platitudes.

Unless we want to see us and the rest of the world slide further down the slope so well greased by the Bush-Cheney regime.