Brilliant Interview

Michael Totten with Martin Kramer on If Iran Gets the Bomb. Good point here re: The Gulf:

Iran wants to create uncertainty there because oil is the only thing it has. Iran has nothing else — some carpets and pistachio nuts, and that’s it. Their population continues to grow, their needs continue to grow, and their grand ambitions continue to grow. So this, I think, is the first thing they would do with it. All it takes is to create a crisis or a succession of crises.

Iran knows it can’t wrest sole hegemony in the Gulf from the United States, but it wants to create a kind of dual hegemony shared with the United States. Nobody knows where the lines would run, but they wouldn’t run just five to ten miles off the coast of Iran into the waters of the Persian Gulf. Iran would like to see its share extend to both sides of the Gulf, to effectively create a kind of push and shove between the United States and Iran.

Terrorism is a tool used by weak states against stronger states to wrestle away resources. Similar to the aggressiveness of a poker player with a small stack and a half decent hand.

The article talks about how Gulf stability relies on the US for security. Iran gaining the bomb would obviously undermine this stability. Likewise, Israel bombing Iran would also undermine the stability. He lays down the gauntlet on Obama:

It would be an astonishing lapse if a man who promised to roll back nuclear proliferation watched proliferation develop in one of the least stable parts of the world, a place where the United States has only been able to maintain even a modicum of stability by a massive projection of its own forces. The region is of prime interest to the entire world for its energy resources. If it becomes nuclearized, it will be the one thing for which Barack Obama would always be remembered by history, and he would be remembered by history as a failure.

Yup.

Would would want to be President - dealing with this kind of shit?