Easy. Free trade.

Well, maybe not so much.

You are perhaps unaware that Iranian trade under president Bush, going from only $8.1 million worth of products were sold to Iran under Clinton to $146 million worth of American products were sold in Iran last year. All this in spite of the sanctions.

Mind, now, that doesn't count the secondary trade running through places like Dubai, for example, which would likely quadruple those figures.

Has this increased trade made what passes for the Iranian government any more pliable?

Problem is that the dollar is one of the key elements in trying to keep nukes out of the hands of the Mullahs. To that end, we have two tools.

On the one hand is the sanctions... rather weak in total because they run through the UN and are driven by what our supposed Friends, Russian China, and France would accept.

On the other is pressure on businesses around the world, particularly multi-nationals, to avoid doing business with Iran. The object of that of course is to force the Mullahs into the admission that the price of nukes against the will of the rest of the world is just too high. And, their bravado aside, it's been working to slow their development down. In fact I'd suggest absent those sanctions, they'd have had nukes by now, which I still consider to be an unacceptable situation.

Given the current situation, the first thing that happens, on lifting sanctions against Iran is that oil investments go sky high, as do the monetary take from those oil fields, which went ill kept following the 79 revolution. That kind of money flowing into Iranian government coffers would certainly be a much needed bosst to their nuke program. Their currently stated priorities suggest that would be the first place that huge pile of money would go.

So, we'll all have cheaper gasoline to drive away from the stike sites with, I suppose. Unacceptable.

Alex, can you provide an example in which free trade, solely from our side, has brought down an authoritarian regime?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Free and open trade has moved many nations in less authoritarian directions over the past 50 years.

Easy. Free trade. Allow and encourage more access to American goods and products.

Sanctions have yet to bring down a single authoritarian government, period.

Patrons do get fed up occasionally as we're seeing with China and North Korea.

Stopping Iran's supply of refined gasoline would probably end the present regime in short order. Would the Russians and Chinese agree to it? I think it's doubtful.

However, as suggested above when other options are limited and of dubious effectiveness sometimes a poor and relatively ineffective strategy is all you've got.

They also happen to be much cheaper than invading and deposing leadership.

But much less satisfying to the Armchair Airborne.

They also happen to be much cheaper than invading and deposing leadership.