Reply #3: Yeah, well then I guess we'd better start talking and making nice, huh?

[krispos42]

It is far, far cheaper for us and the rest of the world if we talk and swallow some pride rather than trying a military solution to this problem.

Besides, Iran is a soveign nation. The only way to stop a soveign nation from doing what it wants is through diplomacy, assassination and/or blackmail, supporting rebel, opposition, or insurgent factions, economic sanctions, or overt or covert military action on a large or small scale.

I doubt out ability to sucessfully to anything on the list that would be effective except for diplomacy. But the people doing the diplomacy have to believe in it from the top to the bottom. We could send over diplomats that meet the criteria, but nobody believes that the upper echelons of the Bush Administration would want it or support it. We could pull out overt or covert military action easily, but that would be like dumping gasoline on a road flare.