Iran was IBM's Asian marketing HQ for its multinational during the hostage crisis.

Nary a flag was burned at it or stone thrown at it.
Right around the corner from the US embassy.

The highest rated show in the region was 'Baywatch' going into 2002.

Bikinis before bombs.

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis’. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger-but recognize the opportunity”
-JFK

Someone else deserves as much credit for working entry to China.

A certain elements of our Secret Service ended that tenure though. "We took care of him in Texas." -RMN

Iran's leader is using bluster to mollify his critics. We are the mythical bad guy who plays to that. Thanks a lot for your backwoods excuse for Cowboy diplomacy and statesmanship, or lack thereof, Dubya.

The way our own media parrots the "Israel must be eliminated" rhetoric makes it evident that the MIC doesn't want agreement.

That was a deliberate misrepresentation of the fact that he was essentially calling for a two state solution.

We don't mind though, we stole Dubai from Iran for venture capital types in the same way Israel steals land from Palestine. Someone's making a profit off of it, it isn't the taxpayer.

Were we to work with Iran it could stabilize the region, giving us more secure flanks in both Iraq and even into the tribal regions nearing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The first countries to help us on 9-11 in going after Al Qaeda assets were Iran and Syria.

Israel was still trying its Mossad shadow cell that was caught filming the WTC collapse and celebrating out of the country.

The Saudis were trying to get bin Laden's relatives out of the country.

Who are our allies?

Meanwhile, the market plunges. Wonder how much McCain advisor James Baker III has at stake with this debt buyout? He could probably do a lot of creative accounting between that and the management of Iraqi debt that he was helping take over during our illegal invasion there.

Who could have imagined? We've transferred all the risk of regime change to the taxpayers!

Maybe if we get enough fiscal interaction with Iran going we can quit doing psyops raids into their country as well. This has the classic covert face to it, Brzez is quite gleeful at this time.

Preconditions are a way to try and force countries in the Muslim crescent to officially endorse policy points they do not want to, that we are doing as proxy to Israel.

It isn't that we have expectations, it's what those expectations actually are.
We've used that as a null card to employ so the market sectors that control our foreign policy are more narrow.

Got gas prices?

This liquefied natural gas solution to peak oil and gas prices is like fanning a fire to put it out. Let's take a more expensive, less safe, less expedient fossil fuel, and make it the new thing to peg our dollars with.

At risk of sounding like a broken record, I am once again amazed that Leverett and Mann exclude the disposition of Iran's vast hydrocarbon resources from the list of outstanding issues between Iran and the US. Does anyone seriously think that the "Iranian problem" will go away as long as the US doesn't get a substantial say in how Iranian oil and gas are produced and marketed?

C'mon Flynt, you should know better by now. Have you forgotten US behavior after Mossadegh was democratically elected? Why do you insist on ignoring the elephant in the room? Your credibility as a serious analyst suffers when you don't even bother to address what is obvious to many outside the think tank world.

"in the Middle East, my friend, as long as the world's oil resources come from that area of the world, we have to be vitally involved."
-John McCain from "Larry King Live," August 3, 1992

"At risk of sounding like a broken record..."

Sorry for this off topic meta comment. But to be honest, JohnH,
you actually do sound like a broken record sometimes - just like
the rest of us... However, the song on YOUR record ("It´s the oil,
baby") is not identical with our songs.

The trick for the TWN reader is to play all those broken records
simultaneously - the resulting music is rather complex,
polyphonic and interesting. (People like WigWag - perhaps Steve
as well - even seem to appreciate that annoying, mechanical,
techno-like vocoder voice coming from Tahoe`s broken record. A
perverse taste, if you ask me: the music sounds better when the
vocoder is absent).

OT, not exactly. Bush just gave a press conference froma warehouse.

How carefully did CSPAM craft this?

He stood before warehouse shelves full of products to give the notion of having business sense. Unfortunately, the products he stood in front of were outsourced imports.

To quell the attachment of background to the man they fuzz focused the background and never reset the cameras lens. This kept the actual trade Bush supports rather vague in its appearance.

Even when they zoomed out to show some questioners, they kept the focus background fuzzed. Bush's face became an analogous wrinkled smirk/scowl from time to time.

The Devil wears Pravda.

In a side note, the Alaska Independence Party's founder Joe Vogler got the opportunity to denounce the US' "tyranny" at the UN in 1993 under the sponsorship of ... yes ... Iran.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/07/palins_unamerican/

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