Can Iran produce a credible amount of weapons grade material? Probably not, but so long as the U.S. insists they can that chip can be bargained at nearly full value.

Actually, once they get all of the fuel processors that they want to build on line they will be able to at a fairly good clip. In fact the best evidence that Iran wants to build a bomb is that they are going way beyond the product level they need for nuclear power.

Iran's claim is that their processing plants are not nearly as efficient as ours and they want to product fuel for other countries. Both possible but hard to accept on the kind of scale they are claiming.

Would the U.S. invade? Not likely given it's already heavily overextended.

I'm pretty sure Bush proposed the idea to the Joint Chiefs and they told him flat out there are not enough troops. There are not enough troops to maintain the current involvement in Iraq without sending injured ones into combat. There simply are no other troops that can be shifted to free up the kind of force that would be needed for Iran. And unlike Iraq, there won't even be a token alliance to help the US.

A third front in the Mideast war wouldn't go over real well with the American public - and this close to the next election they'd probably have to cancel the election to pull it off and that really, really wouldn't go over well. Even Red States might be a tad pissed (there still are Red States other than Montana, aren't there?).

If Bush had been able to keep control of both houses of Congress, I think we would be seriously talking about him doing it. I'm sure Cheney would think it a good idea, and Bush could be easily convinced that God wants him to lead the US until victory. But now he doesn't have the support to do it, neither the public, the military, Congress or the courts are on his side. And with everything working against it even the executive branch would abandon him.

Would the U.S. bomb? Quite likely, but conventional bombing was proved in WWII and in Vietnam to be of very limited value - doing less damage than it costs - and you know which way World Opinion would flop here, don't you?

Highly likely, yes. In this regards it has been admitted that the Joint Chiefs told Bush that bombing probably not work. Iran has known for years there was a good chance that the US or Israel would bomb at some point, have planned ahead with deep, reinforced and scattered facilities mixed in among dummy buildings. And a good enough air defense system that half hearted measures wouldn't work.

Would the U.S. use nukes? Even with the current moron in the White House it seems unlikely. Impeachment would probably be instantaneous with a conviction in about 20 minutes.

They have certainly thought about it. Look at their push for smaller 'bunker buster' nukes a few years back. But I think your right, now they couldn't possibly get away from doing it.

First, I'd get things calmed down with Iran, they'd make a great ally (as they once were). I'd trade them a semi-autonomous Iranian state in southeastern Iraq for a semi-autonomous Kurdish state in northeastern Iran.

Interesting idea, and one that could actually work. At least at the Iran end, as Iran would be gaining more population and land then it would lose.

Next I'd deal with Turkey. They really need to own up to the Armenian Genocide, quit this "insulting to Turkishness" nonsense, and resolve their Kurd problem so they can be re-integrated with Europe. We trade full support for returning to the European fold for a confession and a semi-autonomous Kurdish state.

We'll need to lean on Germany and France a bit, but we can threaten to cut off imports or Porsche and Mercedes which would bankrupt both companies even before the Asian and Yuppie communities in Los Angeles (where most of their production goes) could organize a protest. With France we just threaten to subsidize California wine exports.

The problem is not leaning on Germany and France. The population of those countries are a bit worried about expanding the EU further till the last wave of integration settles a bit. But they are not opposed to the idea in principle.

Getting Turkey to agree would be a bigger problem. Turkey is a balancing act between secular right wing nationalists and religious leaning Muslims. Neither group likes each other but they like the idea of a Kurdish state even less. And because of the memories of the Ottoman empire, the idea of outside powers spliting up the country is hated.

They might be willing to go to war over that if they think the EU is liable to stay out of it. And convincing the EU to back the US on that kind of scale is very unlikely.

Jay