Originally posted by SaburoS
Bush has had this hard on for Iran even before we knew of its nuke program. Remember Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech? An argument can be made that the Iranian leadership seeing what happened to Iraq (with our made up WMD charges) and subsequent invasion. If anything, we are forcing Iran's hand to develop nukes.
In the late 1980s, a consortium of companies from Argentina, Germany and Spain submitted a proposal to Iran to complete the Bushehr-1 reactor, but huge pressure by the US stopped the deal. The US pressure also stopped in 1990 Spain's National Institute of Industry and Nuclear Equipment to complete the Bushehr project. Iran also tried, unsuccessfully, to procure components for the Bushehr reactors, but her attempts were blunted by the US. For example, in 1993, Iran tried to acquire eight steam condensers, built by the Italian firm Ansaldo under the Kraftwerk Union contract, but they were seized by the Italian government. The Czech firm Skoda Plzen also discussed supplying reactor components to Iran, but, under the US pressure, negotiations were cancelled in 1994. Iran was also not successful in her attempt to buy nuclear power reactor components from an unfinished reactor of Polland. We have known about Iran's nuclear ambitions for a few decades.
BTW, Iraq will end up falling out of our set-up "democracy" and move into a theocratic "democracy" similar to Iran's.
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According to polls, 39% prefer western style parlimentary democracy, 29% prefer a 'shura' Islamic system, 10% prefer an Iranian style theocracy. the remaining is divided among SA style kingdom, a contitutional monarcy, a pakistani sytle islamic democracy, and a few others.
Oh yeah, most of the Iraqis hate us.
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Forty percent of Arabs say it was right for the United States to invade; that soars to 87 percent of Kurds. 75% say that they would feel a lack of security were the American forces to decide to leave the country.
