However much you may enjoy your moral high ground, I think you are reading something different than I am writing.

American Global Empire, for godsakes, is hardly what I am proposing nor is Iran's current issue 'owning their own oil'.

I said quite clearly that whether or not it is pleasant for people to hear there is a very real chance of an Israeli strike on Iran and that if the current regime in Iran continues as it is doing now that chance becomes greater and greater.

I am not in favor of resolving these issues with bombs, but some issues do need to be resolved. If the regime in Tehran were to change or change course a lot of lives may be saved. These are not American lives at risk and we are going to be ok in any case. this is a question of potential war that will ruin a lot of lives.

That said, a coup or subversion that achieved the same outcome (giving 1954 as an example of regime change with little bloodshed, not as a model for the reason) would be preferable to a war that involved that 90% that don't want to play. I felt that way in SE Asia 40 years ago and I haven't seen anything to change my mind. Giving peasants AK-47s or dropping napalm on villages is neither moral nor precise.

Nations will always try to do what they perceive to in their own interests (however muddled that understanding may be) but I would generally prefer they do it without trashing the lives of those who don't give much of a damn one way or the other.

Sorry if that offends your tender sensibilities or somehow smacks of a yearning for global hegemony. I am not a polemicist but a historian and I don't see this kind of analysis as a platform to spout platitudes or an opportunity to take politically correct positions that are intended to have others think well of me for holding proper opinions.

>>I don't think first strike strategic nukes are on the table even for the Israelis. Now there is a variety of bunker buster that is a limited tactical nuke. They would probably go that far.
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>>Of course, a serious attack with the conventional stuff would bring in lots of folks who are standing on the sidelines now to try to mediate some solution. I am not sure there can be a good outcome, other than an internally generated regime-change in Tehran. Makes the 1954 model look pretty good, by comparison. I am always in favor of subversion over airpower.
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>And never in favor of letting those people decide for themselves, for better or worse. Always in favor of the divine right of the West to intervene and generally do whatever it pleases with those toy countries. Imagine, they wanted to own their oil - we'll give them a puppet emperor, we'll install a CIA kid to be a president, we'll fund any movement that'll overthrow the current government, these guys just aren't capable of governing themselves. Every attempt in that direction has led to the worst possible outcome - they wanted to own their oil, which is a direct attack on our soil.
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>If you're sensing another hiatus of mine, you may as well be right. If you publicly denounce your dream of American Global Empire, we may talk further - in a world where all countries are equal, no less. Or I'm gone from here. There are other bars.