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Few tears will be shed over Bush’s departure – Americas – Independent.ie

Few tears will be shed over Bush’s departure

Independent.ie By Ivor Roberts

Sunday December 28 2008

It is hard to imagine that many people will be looking back on the Bush Junior years with nostalgia. -“………………………………….

One of the main beneficiaries of the war in Iraq has been Iran, which now emerges as the regional superpower thanks to the installation in Baghdad of a pro-Iranian Shia-dominated government and all this at the hands of the “great Satan” as the Iranians call the United States. It must seem too good to be true to the mullahs. A government as divided and incompetent as the current one in Iran, which has alienated so much of its population, could be expected by now to have been significantly weakened. Yet the militaristic rhetoric coming out of Washington has united the country in a predictable way under the banner of Iranian nationalism and its right to develop nuclear power.

Nobody I know thinks that the Iranian government will stop at peaceful uses of nuclear power; on the other hand, can they be entirely blamed for wanting to develop nuclear weapons when so many of their neighbours or near-neighbours have done so? Iraq was certainly on this track in the Nineties. Israel, India and Pakistan are all nuclear states. Syria has ambitions in that direction. Why should Iran be the one out of step? That is of course the view in Tehran. For the rest of us, non-proliferation and the dramatic reduction of all nuclear arsenals remains the preferred option. It seems at this stage unlikely that the Bush administration will feel up to launching or condoning a military strike on Iran. The days of the neo-cons’ quip “everyone wants to go to Baghdad, real men want to go to Tehran” quoted in Newsweek before the invasion seem long gone. But Obama/Clinton will have to give Iran a very high priority in their foreign policy programme. Talking to the Iranians rather than threatening to bomb them might be a good place to start.

Few tears will be shed over Bush’s departure – Americas – Independent.ie

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December 29, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized