“Bush Weighs Offers To Iran: U.S. Might Join Effort to Halt Nuclear Program,” by Robin Wright, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58417-2005Feb27.html, 28 February 2005 (from Democratic Underground)
Right after the news that Cuba is telling its people to avoid foreigners, the Bush Administration is thinking of granting WTO membership to Iran:
The Bush administration is close to a decision to join Europe in offering incentives to Iran — possibly including eventual membership in the World Trade Organization — in exchange for Tehran’s formal agreement to surrender any plans to develop a nuclear weapon, according to senior U.S. officials.
That’s my kind of Islamic Republic!
Useful bs about Iran’s nuclear program aside, this is great news. Much better than crazy plans to embargo Iran. Iran’s democracy is about where Britain’s was a century ago, they have a very secular population, and Persia is a natural security pillar in the Middle East. We need to continue to integrate Persians into the international system so a future without the mullahs in charge becomes more and more real.
Free the Iranian people. Free the Iranian bloggers. Do everything possibel to add Iran to the functioning core.
Bush has a grand bargain in thr works – either the Iranians bite or they give Bush and the Israelis a free hand with an Arafat syle refusal that enrages the Euros. Khameini is going to be put between a rock and a hard place this year.
Bush and Putin weren’t talking off-schedule for an hour about the weather, either.
Mark: The more I think about it, the better the Arafat-Iranian regime metaphor is. Arafat retarted the Palestinian cause by keeping a corrupt and backward-looking dictatorship on top of a society with a lot of potential. Tehran is doing the same thing to its people, now.
Whenever and however the Iranian government does fall, the new government will quickly become a true friend of the world.