If I were Ahmadinejaad’s advisor (say, god forbid like Moshaaee) I would make sure his majesty reads the following article in NYTIMES before over bluffing, upping the ante and saying
“I am all in” in the game of the nuclear poker he has been playing with the west as of late!
I am not saying a war is coming (and who can?) but stakes are so high that Obama might be tempted (not to say anything about the Israeli encouragement and pressure by neocons)to hit many birds with one stone and attack Iran. He can avert a nuclear armed Iran, and a domestic economic depression same time by firing the first shot!!
In other words if you are driver of a car with many passengers you can not drive recklessly and endanger lives of 70 million people just because you are “convinced” you have a divine mandate and expecting that hidden Imam is going to return any days! (specially if your election and representation, lets say, is wrapped in some doubts)
Mahmoud’s rhetorics (threatening US and Israel demise, etc) kind of reminds me of what Wall street thieves did to this country. You wonder, what?! Ahmadinejad and Wall street? What possibly they have in common?! They both gamble with someone else’s fortune!! Ahmadinejaad is bluffing. If US falls for his bluff and let him get his way he would be a national champion and gets all the credit. But if they call his bluff and attack and bomb iran back to “stone age”?! OOPS! Who is to pay for it?
Many generations to come. Now, I would be the last one to advocate sale of Iranian national interests and independence. But what needs to be avoided is unnecessary macho talk and provocation and playing with, as we say in Farsi “Lion’s tail”! Yeah, your majesty, you may “finger” the lion, my apology for the analogy :-), and have fun while it lasts but then …
Here is the article by Paul Krugman (Nobel prize in economics) arguing that World war II rescued US from the economic depression of late 30s and draws parallel to
today’s’ economic situation (Krugman is not calling for war of course, but Mahmoud has to see this from Obama’s perspective):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&hp
“From an economic point of view World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Over the course of the war the federal government borrowed an amount equal to roughly twice the value of G.D.P. in 1940 — the equivalent of roughly $30 trillion today.
Had anyone proposed spending even a fraction that much before the war, people would have said the same things they’re saying today. They would have warned about crushing debt and runaway inflation. They would also have said, rightly, that the Depression was in large part caused by excess debt — and then have declared that it was impossible to fix this problem by issuing even more debt.
But guess what? Deficit spending created an economic boom — and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity. Overall debt in the economy — public plus private — actually fell as a percentage of G.D.P., thanks to economic growth and, yes, some inflation, which reduced the real value of outstanding debts. And after the war, thanks to the improved financial position of the private sector, the economy was able to thrive without continuing deficits.”
