On Iran...

I don't think that the UK and the US would want to, at this point, open another theater of warfare. I could be wrong. Certainly, there is reason for it and there may yet be a battle for control of Iran. The West needs to control Iran to complete the trinity of states (the others are Afghanistan and Iraq) to pipe oil from the land-locked Caspian Sea, into the Black Sea, to be transported west. All this is to be done without stepping on the toes of the Russians, who, you'll remember, were the "other" superpower during the Cold War and were dismissed from Afghanistan; the result of a combination of US-backed Muhajadeen (later, Taleban) guerillas and crumbling Communism (in part the product of lack of resources, such as oil).

There are also trust Issues between Iran, Iraq, and America.

Iran already has reason to anticipate Western invasion. It happened once before. In 1953, the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran was overthrown. In his place, a (very) West-friendly monarch -- the Shah -- was installed and the oil began to flow again to the West from Iran. That is, until 1979. That's when the Iranian Revolution took place, deposing the Shah, instituting the Islamic State, and establishing the Iran we know today. America was involved in, read: paid for, the Iraqi response to the revolution. America's, then, good buddy Saddam Hussein was running the show. That war lasted eight, almost nine, years and ended in a stalemate. The rest is the history we've all heard a little more recently. Brutal suppression of Iraq's Shi'a (majority) population. Chemical warfare against Iraq's Kurdish population. But, it wasn't until the invasion of Kuwait that Hussein became a "bad guy." There was Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm and the Gulf War. And hen, there was another Gulf War. And then, there was 9|11. And then, there was an Iraq War (on false pretenses).

Iran has no reason to believe that America will stay out of their space. America has to entertain their paranoid fantasies about Iran building nuclear weapons because, if the Administration was Iran, they would be idiots not to build nuclear weapons with their nuclear enrichment facilities.

But, and this is pretty key here, look at the history.

After the British military personnel were captured, they were put on TV, and they were made to admit that they had transgressed Iranian territory. Whether they actually did is a matter, now, of politics not of fact. In the end, they were released, unharmed, as a sign of good faith and in the spirit of the Easter holiday; this despite sabre rattling of the past three years about the Iranian nuclear program. Isn't that nice?

In 1981, after being held for 444 days, the fledgling Islamic state of Iran released the 52 captive American embassy personnel unharmed; this, despite the charges of espionage laid against them. Isn't that nice?

Perhaps these lessons are the teachings of Islam. After all, Saladin spared many lives in his retaking of Jerusalem from the Frankish Crusaders in 1187 (I learned this from Kingdom of Heaven, and Wikipedia can't be trusted, so, maybe it's not true); this despite the massacre of Muslims in the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. Isn't that nice?

And, Muhammed, prophet of Islam, spared the lives of many in his conquest of Mecca in 630. Isn't that nice?

Here and Now, Boys

So, maybe, all of the "Durka, Durka, Mohammed-Jihad" repetitions from sources such as FOX News and other members of Team America belie only the suspicions of paranoid Westerners, unable to understand why Islam forgives when Western culture forgets only when convenient. An eye for an eye is what the West anticipates. We've shit on them for years, why WOULD they let us get away with it? Expect the worst: "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" ("they're gonna build nukes and bomb the shit out of us"); and hope for the best: "Freedom is on the march... fight terrorism abroad" ("we'll hit 'em before they hit us").

If effort is undertaken to understand the perspectives and concerns and cultural sensibilities of the people we, in the West, subjugate, perhaps all of this posturing and political rhetoric will come to an end. If America was to find another way to feed it's big, fat economy with something other than 25% of the world's resources -- including 25% of all the oil -- maybe they wouldn't have to fight everyone for it.

Wouldn't that be nice?