Spin and bullshit aside, how dangerous *is* Iran?

Just because the Neocons are hellbent to go to war with Iran doesn't mean there is no danger from that country. Being opposed to the neocons does not mean we should see Iran as being led by good guys. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy .... is *your* enemy, too.

I have no doubt that virtually everyone who will read this post is opposed to a war with Iran now. But really, how much of a danger do *you* think Iran poses, both right now and in future?

And, in broad terms, how do you think we should deal with them? ('Ignore them' is as legitimate an answer to this question as is 'nuke them'. The truthy is likely somewhere between those two extremes.)

what reason would they have to screw with us if shrub/cheney/rummy kept their mouths shut?

..... for one thing, this guy who is the current president cut his political teeth during the hostage crisis in the late 70s. They're 'true believer' extremists arguably hellbent to engage us.

I personally think the calculus ought to be around means rather than intent. I have damn little doubt of their intent.

(on edit: The word 'they're' in the last sentence of the first paragraph refers to Iran's leadership muc more than to its people.)

The extremists there benefit from the us vs. them, black and white thinking of the Bush administration. So long as we can play the role of great Satan, they can use it for all it's worth.

We need to deal with them. We need to talk to them. We need to stop looking for enemies and start dealing with problems in a pragmatic way.

Things are very dangerous right now -- the combination of our ill-chosen war in Iraq and our atrocious foreign policy toward Iran has brought things to a critically dangerous point. We won't get out of that by fighting. We need a change of administrations and a change of attitude.

And that in itself scares the hell out of me. Of course, our leaders are religiously insane as well. Go figure.

Isolate them, occupy their Shia neighbors, threaten their existence and the mullahs will force the moderates aside and they will seek nuclear arms to prevent their invasion.

their leader, just like Bush doesn't represent the majority of us here in America.

Iranians are much more educated and sophisticated than some of their neighbors.

Unfortunately they have a crazy nutjob for a president, just like us.

and apart from a few shells tossed at the Kurds in payback for Kurdish skirmishes at the border, they have exercised restraint. That tells me a whole lot.

Don't forget that Iran fought a ruinous war with Iraq that lasted eight long years, 1980-1988. They don't want another one if they can help it.

I think Iran would likely have moderated its regime by now had we not had a swaggering bullyboy in the White House who kept waving his dick around and threatening them with nuclear holocaust. That has caused the population to rally around bad leadership much the way the US rallied around Stupid post 9/11. They have been moving backwards.

I don't think they're that much of a threat. I think they'd be far less of a threat if we could manage to get the Stupid/Corrupt gang to shut their stupid mouths for a while.

Remember that vial of uranium hexafluoride they were so proud of a few months ago? That was a minute amount, no threat to anyone or anything, and the BBC published a story to the effect that they'd purchased it from the UK several years earlier.

They lack the infrastructure to be much of a threat to the US. The only country they're in much of a position to threaten is Israel. Is Israel so important that we have to sacrifice our own country to try to save them?

That's the real question here, not whether or not the Iranians will ever develop into a threat.

.... but I'm not sure we agree on the magnitude/weight of the longer term threat the do/may pose.

I DO agree that the guys in charge now are pretty much the mirror image of our own nutcase leadership. I don't know how entrenched they are or if that whole notion that moderates are just to get back into power is true.

If, however, this current leadership stays in power, we have a threat, in my view. Not immediate, and not impossible to defuse through honest diplomacy, but a real threat nonetheless.

neo con Israeli govt will do worry me more.

to go on to make assessments. So I just don't know. There are a few threatening narratives about Iran and other places in the Islamic world that most things we read that nearly every story in the MSM are going to fit into. Even the Prospect has an article on Iran and Syria that is critical of the Bush policy toward those countries, but the photos on the cover of the magazine shows Muslims burning flags and bombs exploding. I just don't see alot of desire to understand the people of these countries among leaders and elites/pundits associated with either party. It's simply who can best manage the "threat."

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=Current+Issue