That is exactly... 
what I'd have my State Department saying until I lowered the BOOM on Iran! I hope W is doing the same...
Posted on 09/13/2007 7:29:53 PM PDT by familyop
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department's Iraq coordinator said on Thursday that Washington is studying how to push back against Iran over its atomic program and its actions in Iraq, but dismissed talk of military action as nonsense.
Washington accuses Tehran of providing funds, arms and training to Iraqi Shi'ite militants, of trying to develop atomic weapons under the cover of a nuclear energy program and of supporting terrorism across the Middle East.
"We are examining how best to push back on these behaviors," said David Satterfield, the Iraq coordinator who recently became one of top U.S. diplomats on Iran policy.
The Bush administration is considering a range of unilateral actions against Iran, including imposing sanctions on the Quds force, a unit of its Revolutionary Guards Corps, senior U.S. officials have told Reuters.
Satterfield declined to provide details on future U.S. actions but said in an interview that U.S. President George W. Bush had "broad authorities in this regard."
Iran, for its part, blames the United States for the violence that rages in Iraq more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. It also says its nuclear program is for civilian power and not to build a bomb.
U.S.-Iranian relations have been poor since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. The United States cut ties with Iran in 1980 after Iranian students occupied its embassy in Tehran and ultimately held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Satterfield dismissed speculation the Bush administration was taking a more serious look at military action against Iran. With 169,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, U.S. military options are somewhat limited but published reports said plans involving Iran were being scrutinized.
"I think this is nonsense, this talk of saber-ratting, war drums beating," said Satterfield. "Those who argue we are deliberately escalating a confrontation with Iran are quite mistaken."
In what were widely seen as signals to Iran, the United States this year temporarily sent a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf and announced plans to provide multibillion dollar arms sales to Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations.
WAR DRUMS OR DIPLOMACY
While it has refused to take any option -- including armed intervention -- off the table, the United States has repeatedly said it is pursuing a diplomatic strategy to change Iranian behavior.
Washington is leading a drive for a third U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution to punish Iran for failing to suspend its uranium enrichment, a process that can provide fuel for atomic bombs.
Senior officials from the major powers are set to meet in Washington on Sept. 21 to discuss a new resolution. China, Russia, and possibly Germany, are reluctant to take further punitive action for now.
Diplomatic contacts between Iran and the United States over Iraq, however, have so far not showed any gains.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has met his Iranian counterpart several times this year to urge Iran to stop fueling violence in Iraq but Satterfield said these meetings had not yielded tangible results and there were no plans for more talks at the moment.
There has also been heightened tension over the detention of four Iranian-Americans in Iran.
Asked why Iran released scholar Haleh Esfandiari last week, Satterfield said: "Iran has long experience with hostage-taking and hostage-releasing when they deem it serves their purposes. It is another mark of the character of this regime."
Doesn’t sound too good.
That is exactly... what I'd have my State Department saying until I lowered the BOOM on Iran! I hope W is doing the same...
of course “ITS NONSENSE”. We have no business preemptively striking another sovereign country that has done nothing to us.. We need to tell Pakistan to cough up that human feces bin laden or we will blow up La Hor and watch how fast they regurgitate that sob.
...quiet and meek as our leadership was before we went into Iraq?
There was a huge buildup to the Iraq invasion, which is why I fear nothing much is planned for Iran. We’ll see.
Ever notice that many national defense and foreign affairs reporters seem to have Arabic (and I would assume Islamic) names these days, like one of the two authors of this report? Hmmmmmmm...
The folks at Stalinist Underground had this thread up hours ago. Their reactions are so cute.
Yes, I’ve noticed that. They’re pretty good at making Iran look like a benign pussy cat.
I am not going to rely on “Nash’s equilibrium” to keep in check someone who wants to start Armageddon to usher in the hidden Imam.
But, I wish W would match Harry, cross the Rubicon and... 
Iran, North Korea, Hugo Chavez and a few of his liberals buddies!
I have a funny feeling we’re going to see something very different occur one fine morning. Iran needs to be wary. Very wary indeed. We will get around to them I think...unless Obamarama or her lowness win the Oval Office.
You are right that we will know nothing until something happens, if it does. However, there was a huge buildup to Iraq because we were moving hundreds of thousands of forces to Kuwait. In the case of Iran the only buildup will be occurring inside of sealed airbases and on the deck of aircraft carriers. The first we'll know of it will be an announcement from the White House.
Scratch that..Iran. Thank you.
U R right: there will B no “massive troop build-up,” because we already have ground forces in neighboring Afgh. & Iraq. Plus, this will most likely not B a ground invasion; rather, Bush will mostly likely do to Iran what Der Schliekmeister (Bill Clinton, for those of U in Rio Linda) did to Slobodan Milosovich: overthrow him from the air, with the threat (real or imagined) of a ground invasion.
They have thousends posing on the border; ready to invade Iraq … we have several Marines ready to intercept … no contests. Ahmadinejad has a strong lesson to learn. The 12th Imam be dammed.
goes the weasel!
LOL!
Iran has been ‘doing things’ to us for decades now, and represents a significant threat to the entire free world. Neither Haiti or Kosovo did anything to us but most on the left were in absolute favor of using military force in those instances. There is absolutely no purity, or consistency in the arguments of the left. First, why does sovereignty apply when speaking about Iran, but not when speaking about illegal immigration into the US? Why is it OK for Syria to thumb its nose at the sovereignty of Lebanon, but wrong for Israel to fight back when rockets are fired into its own sovereign territory?
Second, our world is technologically advanced enough such that we can no longer ignore threats from other counties or groups and just wait until they do something tangible. We actually did this, for years, and endured attack after attack after attack, until an attack that was of sufficient magnitude (9/11) to mobilize a national response. It is arrogant for us to think we are too powerful a nation to be put at risk. If we do nothing to preemptively protect ourselves we just might lose what generations of people before us fought and died for. We not only have the right, we have the responsibility to protect our liberty and safety from those who have openly called for our destruction and who export violence that is killing our countrymen. I have absolutely no doubt that, with few exceptions, if Iraq was Clinton’s war the left would be absolutely in support. The left routinely put their own petty egos above the greater good. Routinely.
done nothing to us? Are you mad? They are supporting a proxy war, are behind hezbollah and are arming Syria, Venezuela, etc. ETC! Done nothing to us. For cripes sake.
It’s the State Department’s job to sound like a bunch of pussies.
done nothing to us? I think we used to have an embassy there some years ago, just for starters.
you are right its almost endless,in your list you should include
AND Iran is one of the parents of their delinquent demonseed child ^Alquaeda^ other being Pakistan.
when the heat is on they run home to Iran for safe haven and advice
others like OBL run to the father,
and as the expression goes,,, its not necessarily what they have done, but what they are going to do
we already know what they have done and we know their trendline
US ,Not ISREAL!!! US!!! “US” The United States, Im don’t want to spend any more lives or money on ISREAL!None ,ZIP, NADA. I’M FED UP WITH THIS. If there is no threat to Omaha, NB — then I’m not interested!!!
Your: BY Who ? He will just like Truman if he can't finish what he started in Iraq like Truman couldn't in Korea ( after he and his inept state department caused the war )
Well, not by you, that is a fact... 
since your sentence structure, capitalization and grammar does not make a whole lot of sense, but you do have that whole late 1940's/early 1950s 'Who lost China spin?' more or less correct.
Harry Truman was the last Democrat President with any gonads as he dropped the bomb on Japan twice and committed US Forces into Korea right at the start! However, he did shrink back in Korea when the Brits, French and UN all got ice cold feet, but his term in office is much better appreciated today by historians (Both left and right... a sign of consensus, you know.) than when he left office some 50 plus years ago.
I will probably not live to see it (I am presently 60)... but I do believe George W. Bush will go down as a great President in decades to come as what goes around comes around!
That is, assuming... 
the American People don't elect the damned Democrats in 2008! Then, I will die as the muzzies take over knowing I did my part, but my fellow countrymen didn't...
Horse hockey. The Attack on us in Lebanon was from the Baka Valley in Syria!!! PLEASE get your facts!!< And by the way— there is a period within which to react to transgressions of other countries. You don’t spend lives and money on a 1983 event the Ronald Reagan Passed on then. Iran is absolutely , without a doubt no threat to me. China is a threat to me. Illegal aliens are threats to me but get off Iran for God sakes.
Don’t believe anything until it’s been officially denied.
... not "sound like" ... they ARE. They are democrats by nature: talk talk talk, how can we appease you today? never accomplish anything except to regale other P's with their stories at cocktail parties, have no plan, ... and most of all: never ever believe that it will ever come to war. POTUS could tell them straight up 'We're going to bomb the beAllah out of them' and they would never allow themselve to believe it.
Hardly a reliable source to claim that plans to take action against Iran are 'nonsense' - though doubtless true in his own mind.
I have an idea for a new plan for Iran. Code name our deep bunker busting bombs “Virgin” - then we can deliver 72 to Iran in a very PC way - giving them exactly what they want so badly.
Put down the crack pipe.
No, it emphatically is not!!! The job of the State Department is to advance the interests of the United States. Nothing more, nothing less.
The problem here, is that the bureaucrats are anti-American socialists who work against our interests instead of for them.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
“..if Iraq was Clinton’s war the left would be absolutely in support.”
I don’t know, what about LBJ in Vietnam? Or is the current left different from the left of 40 years ago viv-a-vis guns vs. butter issues? What if Clinton had used infantry and not just airplanes in Kosovo?
First, ‘the left’ and ‘democrat’ didn’t mean the same thing as they do now, so maybe to some extent there’s some semantic issues involved. Nonetheless, I believe the left is definitely different than it was 40 years ago, and even then it had become openly anti-US. It’s worse, in my view, now. In part this is true because the left has a bigger footprint in mainstream society than it did then, including its control of the MSM.
I agree with you, especially about needing to let go of the past, and not revenge 1980s events now.
You’re so wrong I don’t know even where to begin with you. So instead why don’t you take your isolationist rants over to the Dummy underground, where I’m sure you’d be more comfortable.
That said...They will most likely implode from within as before. It's the Europeans that have more of an interest in making sure that Iran doesn't get nukes but they have time. We don't need to own Iran.
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