Forget The Nukes - Kill The Regime

"Between the future and the past tense - Lies the present in the distance

So you think we're never coming back. Scoring points for passionate resistence

Between the lines and the highway Lies the danger and the safety

You never thought this was gonna last - I always knew you'd never take it back"

The above refrain is prob the best sound track out there that goes further than happy non profit jawflapping kicking off betwixt the P 5+ 1 posse and Iran.

First, that neoconservatism is making a comeback should be no surprise - thanks to creepy state and non state actors and regional destabilizers like Axis of Evil (NoKo, Iran and Syria) and frenemies (China and Russia) and dangerous doofuses like Khadaffy, Chavez and the outright insane like Sudan's Field Marshal President For Life.

"Neoconservatives generally take the view that the internal character of a regime usually predicts the nature of its foreign policy. Governments that are answerable to their own people and accountable to a rule of law tend to respect the rights of their neighbors, honor their treaty commitments, and abide by the international rules of the road. "

"By contrast, regimes that prey on their own citizens are likely to prey on their neighbors as well.

Their word is the opposite of their ond."

Since 44 tried an honest attempt at returning to the happy happy days when Great Satan's enemies acted out far, far away in the last millennium and the result in record time has totally sucked.

Containment, engagement and sanctions are all meaningless with corrupt regional hegemons like Commonwealth and China. Cutting deals with known oath breakers is a bust like Chavez and China promising Iran sanction proof goodies to maintain their weak internal control and continue their regional ambitions to create a global hegemony from Persia all the way to the Red and Med seas -- and beyond.

Realism is truly dead.

One of the hottest brainiacs in Daemoneoconic designs is Dr Robert Kagan.

Pointing out that Free World and others in the P5 + 1 are getting it entirely bass ackwards:

"What the world has not focused on is the one thing Iran's rulers care about: their own survival."

"In such situations, an autocratic regime's biggest fear, well-grounded in history, is that domestic opponents may gain the support of powerful foreign patrons. The toppling of dictators -- Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, the Polish Communists -- has frequently been aided, sometimes decisively, by foreign involvement, through support to opposition forces or sanctions against the government.

"One of the main fears of Chinese leaders in 1989 was that students carrying replicas of the Statue of Liberty might gather support from abroad. It is obvious from the show trials in Iran, where the accused have "admitted" being part of various American plots to overthrow the regime in a "velvet revolution," that this is the clerics' principal fixation.

"The regime's overriding goal since the election, therefore, has been to buy time and try to reestablish and consolidate control without any foreign interference in its internal affairs. In this Tehran has succeeded admirably. "

Of course, 44's Bystander In Chief mode was like divine intervention for the Ayatollahs while they slaughtered their own people on the streets, cut off the internet and stole an election in broad daylight.

Indeed, 44 seems -

"to regard the ongoing turmoil as a distraction from the main business of stopping Iran's nuclear program. And this is exactly what the rulers in Tehran want him to do: focus on the nukes and ignore the regime's instability."

And attacking the regime may be easier done than said.

As one hot! psychic said a while back:

"Launch a massive blitz on the top 20% of Iran's ruling clerics using cruise and conventional missiles, attack aircraft and old school special ops.

While Iran's rulers have some redundancy in their command and control posts, these are actually quite few in number as are the few calling the shots.

"Militarily, Iran is still a basket case. Iran banged on the gates of Basra for six years and never made it in during the horrible Iran Iraq war."

Other targets that would be fun to kill or cripple would be the internal control freaks like the Beseej. Al Qods and Revo Guards shouldn't be spared either.

Regime change in Iran would

solve way more problems than it would create:

"Americans have a fundamental strategic interest in seeing a change of leadership in Iran.

"There is good reason to believe that a democratic Iran might forgo a nuclear weapon -- just as a democratizing Russia abandoned long-standing Soviet foreign and defense strategies -- or at least be more amenable to serious negotiations.

"Even if it is not, we have much less to fear from a nuclear weapon in the hands of

a democratic Iran integrated into the liberal democratic world than from a weapon in the hands of Ahmadinejad."

Pic - "Checkmate bitches!"