[Preechr]

To be sure, Iran will be a major issue for either newly elected President. I honestly don't see Kerry allowing Iran to go nucular any more then Bush. I'm running with the idea that Kerry would be more aggressive than Bush, actually. Any credibility the Democrats would ever hope to claim in terms of foreign policy will be riding on Kerry's treatment of the WOT. Pandora's Box has already been opened. We can't go back to the world we had before the invasion of Iraq. Even if the bad guys never come to the conclusion that terrorism isn't the effective tool they once believed it to be, Western leaders are in the process of realizing that appeasement just doesn't work, and Western leaders have to answer to those that elect them.

I mean, what good did appeasement do for France or Russia? Did their resistance to US aggression buy them any preferential treatment from Al Quaeda? Germany held out to the last minute hoping to avoid sending it's NATO troops to train Iraqis in Iraq simply because Berlin doesn't want to deal with Germans making electoral decisions based on dead German soldiers that were just trying to do the right thing.

Europe is doing it's level best to grow now that it's not under threat of Soviet invasion. It's need for American protection no longer exists... unless Iran starts a nuclear build up that forces Israel, Pakistan, India and at least one other Arab nation to stockpile, which would make China and thus Japan and back-sliding Russia very nervous and more likely to join in the arms race... What about North Korea? Ever wonder why nobody has really bitched all that much about Americas withdrawal from the Nuclear Proliferation Agreement? The world is not all that far from being in a much more precarious position than it enjoyed back in the Cold War days...

If anything even close to the above scenario begins to play out, the still struggling to be born EU will lose any credibility it had by once again being forced to ask America for protection. We benefit from the technological advantage and geographical distance that would set our primacy in world power in stone were the world to arm up in a domino effect begun by Iran building just one nuke.

Iran won't change it's plans for Kerry any more than it might for Bush. That it's current plans are put aside and forgotten entirely is a necessity for any stable future for the entire world, and I'm not just being melodramatic. Isn't it nice to know that we now have troops based just a matter of miles from Iran's eastern and western borders now? Is it any wonder Iran sees that as a direct threat? It's a tense situation to be sure, but I'm not buying the scenario where our not invading Iraq caused Iran to give up it's nuclear ambitions.