I've Changed My Mind; Let Iran Have Nukes

Britain, France, and Germany are morons who are making a treaty with Iran simply so the presidents/prime ministers can wave it in front of the populace and proclaim "I have stopped a war!" much like Neville Chamberlain (the guy who allowed Hitler to expand Germany and build a powerful military shortly before WWII. He was replaced, after almost complete inaction at the start of WWII, with Winston Churchill). If Europe doesn't intend for Iran to have nukes, then they expect the US to clean up their mess.

I don't think the US should clean up the mess that Europe is making to improve poll numbers. Europe's quite close to Iran, and is quite an easy target, because Europe doesn't have the military to retaliate (it depends on the US for help. This was evident in Kosovo, and is even truer now). Let Europe reap the results of the problems it has sewn.

I guess I better give you some background. article 1, Iran proclaims victory over US, article 3.
From article 3:

Iran boasted on Tuesday it had defeated U.S. efforts to send its nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council while warning that its uranium enrichment freeze would only last for a few months.
"The Americans have been calling for Iran to be reported to the Security Council for a year and a half, now the whole world has turned down America's calls," Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani told a news conference.
"Despite the U.S. propaganda Iran has not relinquished its right to the (nuclear) fuel cycle and it never will do," said the cleric, who is secretary-general of Iran's top security body, the Supreme National Security Council.
His comments appeared to undermine European Union efforts to persuade Tehran to permanently mothball enrichment facilities -- which can be used to make atomic reactor fuel or nuclear bombs -- and were likely to fuel U.S. concerns that Iran secretly plans to produce nuclear weapons.
Iran, which insists its nuclear program is solely for electricity generation, on Monday escaped possible U.N. sanctions after agreeing to suspend all uranium processing and enrichment activities.
The EU hopes Iran will make the suspension permanent in return for trade deals and other incentives. But Tehran says the suspension is a voluntary and temporary measure designed to gain international trust.
"The length of the suspension will only be for the length of the negotiations with the Europeans and ... must be rational and not too long," Rohani said.
"We're talking about months, not years," he added.

And, from the second article:

Still, the commitment came with strings attached. A government official from a board member country told The AP that France, Germany and Britain had accepted an Iranian demand to further water down the language of a draft resolution they wrote for adoption by the board on ways of policing the suspension.
The text to be adopted today now includes a phrase emphasizing that the suspension is not a legal or binding obligation on Tehran's part, he said.

So, Europe is giving Iran everything it could possibly want, and Iran has agreed to sign an unenforceable treaty, which it will pretend to follow for a few months. Someone whom I can't remember once said, "Diplomacy is the art of letting the other person have your way". This is exactly what Iran did; it 'grudgingly' accepted everything Europe could offer it, in exchange for an obviously worthless promise.
Now, I doubt the European diplomats are responsible for this. I don't think any diplomat could be dumb enough to make this treaty. I believe that European presidents, prime ministers, and the like required the diplomats to get a treaty out of Iran, and the content of the treaty was irrelevant, as long as it said "no nukes" in some part. I expect that Iran knew the diplomats would be forced to sign any treaty that Iran presented, so they milked the situation for almost everything that it's worth. Elected European leaders will now wave the treaty in front of the populace, and act as though a great thing has been done, even though the treaty is closer to a death warrant for Europe than it is a peace accord.


In my opinion, the US ought to let Europe wallow in its own mess. France has been nasty to us, has played against us by trying to increase trade with China and Iran, and still insults our actions in Iraq while they are getting their asses kicked in the Ivory Coast, where they have shot civilians. Germany has been only slightly better, while Britain's Tony Blair has done well, but the other politicians haven't. The US shouldn't go out of its way to stop Iran's nuclear program, which Europe has actually helped in this treaty.

Iranian diplomats were smart enough to get a treaty this good, and the Iranian government seems smart enough to use it properly. I can not say similar, however, for Europe. Iran has, in my mind, earned an ability to build nukes, because only the currently-silent US would be willing to stop Iran. Now, if it is still in the US's strategic interest to keep Iran nuke-free, despite the costs, then we can go ahead and stop Iran, but we should start whipping Europe for what they are doing. France still has some fear of Germany, a remnant of the World Wars, so the removal of US troops from both countries could threaten to tear the most powerful members of the EU apart, as mutual distrust would grow between the nations when they are not under America's aegis.
Now, Poland has been very friendly to the US, and is working incredibly hard to build democracy and a free, prosperous economy out of Cold War repression. We ought to spend money to help Poland—not France or Germany.

And on a different but slightly related note; there is still an argument about whether non-coalition-members should be allowed to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq. They should not, unless the work is non-profit, or the country provides noteworthy aid (monetary is not the only type of aid, though it's probably the most common. Economic partnerships, such as allowing companies to more easily move to Iraq, or allowing Iraq to more easily trade in the foreign nation, can work wonders) to help Iraq recover. This is because much of the money that will be spent rebuilding Iraq is American money, it came from the US taxpayer in the bills that cover the cost of this war. The companies that are contributing manpower, money, or moral support to help rebuild Iraq should be the ones that get some of that money back, in the form of taxes on the companies that are paid to rebuild Iraq. Personally, I don't want French companies profiting off the Iraq war, especially when that profit actually comes from the American taxpayer.
Now, if there is a service that very few companies can provide, and those companies happen to not be in Coalition countries, then there is room for exception. Or, if a company from, for example, China is far more qualified and efficient than a company from, for example, America, then the Chinese company can get the contract. This is because of practicality; don't hire a terrible company to do the work when a better company can be found, because hiring a terrible company would result in the waste of reconstruction money, and thus increase costs for the US taxpayer (or give Iraqis the shaft).