iran – Law and Legal Research

Scary Sanctions 2

Fox News: Iran Sanctions, Bush Administration Rhetoric Worries Lawmakers. The Bush administration ratcheted up pressure on Tehran last week with new sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. Senate — but several lawmakers are wondering whether the latest step is a move closer to military action.

Who doesn’t love anniversaries? Next Sunday, November 4th, will mark the 28th anniversary of takeover of the American embassy in Tehran by those Iranians. To commemorate the event, Condoleezza Rice announced yet another sanction, this time targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Brilliant! After 28 years of extremely poor relations, I would think that (1) we are running out of people to sanction in Iran, and (2) any additional sanction will only prove to be yet another meaningless gesture by now. Count me among the unimpressed. If you believe some in our country, the real way to trigger the downfall of civilization in a country is by offering free, uncensored access to the Internet combined with unlimited access to gambling, pornography and MP3s websites. Since nothing else seems to work, maybe we should test this out on the Iranians. Oh, and don’t forget to shower them with RU-486 and condoms.

US and Iran Join Forces in Iraq

The Los Angeles Times reported that “U.S. defense and intelligence officials sought Sunday to bolster the charge that Iran was providing arms to Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq….”

Yes, that’s one way to report the news. The headline that they should have used was “US and Iran Join Forces in Iraq.” After all, we’re in Iraq backing the Shiites, and Iran is in Iraq backing the Shiites. Curious how things work out, no?

What must be absolutely infuriating to the White House is that even though they treat Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a persona non grata, we end up backing the same faction. What do you tell the guy, even if you’re not on speaking terms? Stop backing our Shiites?

The truth is that there is no easy way to get out of this one. If we tell the Iranians to stop arming the Shiites (which, by the way, we are doing), we look like hypocrites. And, at this stage, we clearly can’t switch our support to the “other” side and back the Sunnis, which we had spent countless millions to depose. So, out of pride, we’ll continue to back the Shiites until the mission is accomplished (again) and we can finally hand over Iraq to the Iranians. The End.