Posted on 05/29/2008 4:54:09 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
What can the West offer the Islamic Republic of Iran in return for giving up its nuclear ambitions and kenneling its puppies of war? The problem calls to mind the question regarding what to give a man who has everything: cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney failure, and so forth. Iran's economy is so damaged that it is impossible to tell how bad things are. Except perhaps for the oilfields of southern Iraq, and perhaps also northern Saudi Arabia, there is nothing the West can give Iran to forestall an internal breakdown.
Iranian dissidents put overall unemployment at 30% and youth unemployment at 50%. Government subsidies sustain a very large portion of the population; 42% of the non-agricultural population is employed by the Iranian state, compared with 17% in Pakistan.
Within fewer than 10 years, Iran will become a net importer, at which point the government no longer will be able to provide subsidies. Iran's economic implosion is a source of imminent strategic risk.
What most analysts, including this writer, foresaw as a medium-term problem seems to have confronted Iran much sooner than expected. The present inflation rate of about 20%, driven by a 40% rate of monetary expansion, suggests that government resources are already exhausted. Governments resort to the printing press when they no longer can raise sufficient funds through taxation, sales of state-owned commodities such as oil, or borrowing. That is surprising, considering that Iran reported a current-account surplus of US$13 billion last year. The fact that Iran cannot stabilize its currency suggests a breakdown of political consensus within the regime, and a scramble by different elements in the regime to lay hands on whatever resources it can.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
It's what they do.
Is there any outside evidence of this?
"Dissidents" might (MIGHT) be prone to exaggeration.
They’ll compromise because they are proceeding in good will.
At least, that’s what Nancy Pelosi says.
If Iran does fight, I hope the reaction is decisive enough to cure them quickly and utterly.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking article.
It’s a scary proposition to consider Iran starting a war with with a Pelosi-Reid led ‘Rat Congress in office, even if Barrack Hussein is NOT President, which he indeed may be. It would be worse than Hitler going in to Poland with Chamberlain in office. In fact, it would be more like Hitler going into France with Daladier as President of France. And we know how that came out.
May God grant McCain a landslide victory and long, long coattails! President McCain and a Pub Congress is in no other way a consummation to be wished for, but the alternative looks very much like complete and horrifying disaster
If we have to do another one of these, Do it from the Air. Our guys are pooped. Warn them once twice three times if it feels good, then just wack them
Spengler, as always a very good read./Just Asking - seoul62.......
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