On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being major threat and one no threat, Iran is a 4. George Bush and John McCain are a 9.

Yes, I think Iran is a threat to the US. We, none of us in the western world, and that includes the non-Arabic think tankers interviewed on The World have a true understanding of the Arabic mind. I believe half of what Ahmadinejad demonstrates and none of what he says. The intelligence assessment is nothing more than a tool for the media in the US.

Paragraph 1) Sorry to rain on your stereotype, but Iranians are not Arabs; look it up.

Paragraph 2) Huh?

Paragraph 3) The NIE is the consensus report of something like seventeen intelligence agencies that are part of the Bush Administration. The NIE is not a "liberal" media conspiracy, no matter how much you want it to be.

No. I think Iran is as much of a threat to us as Iraq was under Sadam Hussein. It seems to me that we are always being told that we are under some threat and the government continues to pursue their agenda with the help of fear tactics. I've learned a lot from what I lived in the past 7 years. I truly believe that our biggest threat is Bush and the individuals behind the curtain.

They could be a valuable ally if we would begin to intensify back-room discussions with Tehran. The prospect of influence of such a powerful country in step with American interest could pacify the violence in Gaza and Iraq and bring stability to the region.

I'm not sure I would go so far as to label Iran a possible "ally," but I do believe that Iran wants to be a regional power and would welcome overtures from the West that would give it that status. Their saber-rattling and Israel-bashing would diminish if they were given legitimate and responsible outlets for their influence.

No, Not at all.. in fact Iran (and by that I mean the Iranian people,not the government) could have been America's best ally in the region,if it wasn't because of the "Hawkish Policies" of our government, Iran could have played (or still could play)an important role in helping us to come up with a solution for our first (and somehow forgotten) objective: The War on Terror!!

Lets review here. 1952 the US and Britain overthrow a democratically elected president because he took back the their oil that was being swindled by BP. The US installs a monarch, The Shaw, who is a puppet of oil corporations. The Shaw begins a gestapo like campaign against it’s own people. In the late 70's the Iranian people rise up against this tyranny and end up with a no better theocracy. Meanwhile the dictator of Iraq sees an opportunity and invades Iran. The US then starts supplying Iraq with weapons and like 10 years of bloody war ensues. Then the US invades it’s former allie proving the blatant hypocrisy of the US. Now Iran’s oppressor is sitting on their doorstep.
So Who is the threat to who? If I were Iran I’d be building nukes too.


GWW

Mahmoud Ajmadinijad has publicly stated that the United States represents “enemies of all humanity,” as reported by the Pakistani Daily Times, March 15. He has verbally attacked Israel and has threatened and upheld its destruction by way of Hezbollah. Iran has also been accused of aiding Iraqi insurgents that shares a population of Shia and it is not unreasonable to think that Iran has thoughts of aiding fellow Shiites with a larger vision of its former imperial history.

Iran is also much larger and more stable than many of its neighbors – with some exception in oil bearing Gulf States – this makes Iran somewhat intimidating. Many Gulf States have been somewhat anti-Iranian, because Iran represents a threat to the hegemony and stability of these autocratic societies. For these reasons, we are concerned about Iran and what it plans to do in relation to other nations in the region. Having stability in the region has become an increasingly important goal in the midst of the US addiction to oil, especially with the increased competition for resources with China, India, Russia and other growing economies.

As an oil exporter (important to the US) and having large natural gas fields (important to the EU), the decision to release Iran from sanction may taken away be sheer need for resources. Whether or not Iran is reintroduced into the world market, the US and EU fear the consequences of supporting an Iranian regime that harbors a lot of corruption, keeping the wealth earned from oil among the elites. Even if sanctions are removed, I expect that there will not be great change from its own autocratic rule, much in the way communism protected itself during its hey-day.

You could argue that international competition may put pressure on social structures like that seen in China, which daily faces international criticism. On the other hand, if the UN decides to keep economic pressure on Iran, there might end up being a second Cuba that fights for survival in the face of opposition, creating a lifetime of segregation. Let’s not forget that Iran has helped us, militarily, in Afghanistan.

As to what role the US should play, it is important to know that most of what the global population dislikes about American international relations stems from colonial style meddling. The international community recognizes that Americans are good people who mean well. They simply wish that the government better reflected that nature. I do no feel like I have to apologize for my government, because people in the world know that I and my fellow Americans hope for better.

While Bush has represented everything that is unpopular in local and international relations, it is a fallacy to blame on man for all the troubles the world. In fact, Bush has done a lot in certain areas; as reported by the Washington Post, December 2006, “Bush has increased direct development and humanitarian aid to Africa to more than $4 billion a year from $1.4 billion in 2001, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And four African nations -- Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt and Uganda -- rank among the world's top 10 recipients in aid from the United States.”

So while people exercise their right to complain, let’s take a moment to think about resolving problems. Today, a video was reported to have been posted on YouTube, by cheerleaders who were beating a girl badly enough to put her in the hospital. The victim lost partial hearing and sight on the left side of her face. This tragedy makes me think that all the energy spent on hating Bush and the government could be put to better use…

- Robert, Apple Valley, CA

Geo W. is a threat to himself. Can anyone feel confortable with him in charge?

Mutually assured destruction is now passé? " Are we writing a novel? A spy novel perhaps?".
Someone surreptitiously sneaks in a nuclear bomb... Wait, that was a movie.

Iran under sanctions will simply befriend China or Russia. Wait, Russia has oil too. Ok, a powerful country without oil. Japan? So many ex-villains and and present villains. Theater of the absurd perhaps. Someone must wear the villain cap!
Any volunteers?

Iran will never attack US but for the past 20 some years it has indirectly been attacking US and US interests world wide. When the marines were killed in Lebanon during the Regan era, Iran was behind Hizbollah's massacre. Today Iran is supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated weapons to kill American soldiers, supplies guns and money to Hammas and Hizbollah to kill Palestinians, Lebanese and Israelis and openly supports any government that opposes US. I don't think that they will ever use a nuclear weapon against any country first but having such weapons will make them bolder as they no longer be afraid of being attacked by US or another country. Also the fact that they have stopped their nuclear work does not mean that they can't restart it again.

Let's say for sake of argument that Iranian leaders would like to hurt the US in any way they could. By that fact Iran is a threat. But compared to what? How much should we spend to prepare for and then wage war with a far more powerful country than Iraq was five years ago? What is the scenario for success versus another never ending quagmire? How many American lives, Iranian lives, would it be worth? How serious is the threat of Iran compared to the global food crisis, melting of icecaps and glaciers and Americans' own stubborn embrace of a lifestyle that saps the planet's resources and alienates whole populations in the pusuit of a short-sighted "self interest"?

I think that Iran is a threat to Israel, not the US. I also think that Israel is quite capable of negotiating/fighting its own battles with the US in the background as a facilitator. We should get out of the business of leading Israel's interests in the area.

I consider Iran a POTENTIAL threat to the United States only in as much as the United States threatens Iran. I do consider the United States as a HUGE threat to Iran, so long as the Dick Cheney's, George Bushes, and Rupert Merdocks of the world are free to manipulate the law, the media and the minds of those who are ill equipped to grapple with complex international issues.

But the ACTUAL threat to the United States is very small. I would argue that George Bush, Condoleezza Rice et. al. are like gargantuan infants, bathing in the Persian Gulf, throwing their toys about in a fit of tantrum. It is clear the acts of international aggression on the part of the current US administration constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and grievous disregard to International Law, and I personally believe many individuals at the highest levels should be held accountable by the International Court. Throw in the circumvention of the US constitution and I believe you can bake a case for treason, and heads should roll.

OK so I digress. The point is that there are tremendously negative forces being applied to the region by the United States and the faster the US stops meddling in the middle east the faster any ill will toward this country will subside. Iran included.

I wish the US would have spent the 4 Trillion dollars already spent on this blood bath in Iraq on agressive upgrading of our national energy infrastructure and associated move to renewable and sustainable sources of energy and then we could BE DONE WITH IMPERIALISTIC EXPLOITS IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOREVER.

Then maybe we can each enjoy each other's cultures and humanity.

The primary threat that Iran poses to the US, UK and Israel is a financial one.

Iran is trading oil and natural gas with whoever she wants, despite imposed sanctions and US mandates that the rest of the world hault all trade with Iran. It is also building a new natural gas version of OPEC with Russia, Qatar and Venezuela, which certainly further irks Washington's economic wishes. The global stakes for energy have never been higher for all actors on the planet, yet Iran is acting completely autonomously in trying to reorient the economic mores of global energy exchange. Nations seeing things similarly include Russia, India, Pakistan and many/most other non-aligned nations. Energy is the trump card.

The nuclear weapon issue is thus a convenient ruse.

Subsequently, any US/Israeli attack on Iran will surely escalate into presumably pulling in said Asian, and potentially South American, actors, thus harming the global economy and environment further, if not resulting in a full out world war. It would be a war for preserving the current dollar-superior arrangement in global energy pricing/trading, with petrodollars coming back to New York to continue propping up US deficits. The rest of the world (aside from recently sycophantic leaders in Europe) are moving on from this 35 year old arrangement.

Too bad NPR/PRI doesn't report on the energy, economic and geopolitical details behind the rising tensions between the US and Iran, preferring to rather parrot what the mainstream corporate press already issues. It figures, as private foundation money is just as effective in muzzling viable perspectives on global affairs as are corporate influences (Exxon/Chevron/BP/GE), and all are beholden to the government's wishes at this critical moment.

For these latter, viable perspectives, one must turn to foreign press (it's in English!) online, as well as to purposefully hard-to-find history books.

Since the first "regime change" in the Middle East (the CIA's 1953 coup that removed Iran's democratic government and replaced it with a dictator-puppet), the US (and now Israel) have NO credibility. Iran's PEACEFUL nuclear program (including enricjment) was approved by the U.S. under the Shah, so it is a POLITICAL issue. At least since 1953, The US/Israel do not want ANY government in that region that is not a puppet. The fact that you pose this question (Iran as threat) shows that we live in 1984, per George Orwell, i.e. every word means its opposite. Do you call what you do "journalism" or propaganda?

The primary threat that Iran poses to the US, UK and Israel is a financial one.

Iran is trading oil and natural gas with whoever she wants, despite imposed sanctions and US mandates that the rest of the world hault all trade with Iran. It is also building a new natural gas version of OPEC with Russia, Qatar and Venezuela, which certainly further irks Washington's economic wishes. The global stakes for energy have never been higher for all actors on the planet, yet Iran is acting completely autonomously in trying to re-orient the economic mores of global energy exchange. Nations seeing things similarly include Russia, India, Pakistan and many/most other non-aligned nations. Energy is the trump card.

The nuclear weapon issue is thus a convenient ruse.

Subsequently, any US/Israeli attack on Iran will surely escalate into presumably pulling in said Asian, and potentially South American, actors, thus harming the global economy and environment further, if not resulting in a full out world war. It would be a war for preserving the current dollar-superior arrangement in global energy pricing/trading, with petrodollars coming back to New York to continue propping up US deficits. The rest of the world (aside from recently sycophantic leaders in Europe) are moving on from this 35 year old arrangement.

For said details, which are all out there, you'd have to turn to foreign press or books on the energy sector, as there's a black-out on said details being given out to the US public.

The President has no credibility left with the American public. Iran might be a threat to the region, but not the U.S. They have their own problems within, and are busy keeping their regime in power. The problem is the U.S has been exposed as a paper tiger, and people aren't awed by our "awsome power".

It is clear that the United States wants to continue its subjugation of the Middle East to include Iran and its vast oil reserves. We have already meddled in their affairs back in the early 1950's when our CIA became directly involved in the overthrow of their elected leader Mossadegh, and led a coup that installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran, to do our bidding. And even after our own recent, exhaustive National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the Iranians were many years away from any real nuclear bomb making abilities, our "friends" the Israelis, are stirring the pot to get the US to do their bidding by attacking and crippling Iran just like they coerced us to spend the lives of our military personel, our National treasure and our world prestige to invade and occupy Iraq for its oil and strategic location.
Iran is not a threat to the U.S., unfortunately, the U.S. is a threat to them. Incidentally, I am no fan of Ahmadinajad, but he did not say "Israel must be wiped off of the map", as President Bush likes to bring up time and again as some sort of justification to preeminently attack Iran. The full quote of what Iran's President actually said was, "the Imam, (Khomeini), said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." He was comparing that to how the old regime of the Soviet Union has vanashed. (Source: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16218.htm).

By the way, plenty of controversial Israeli speech has been made, such as:

"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at
targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for
our air force. ... Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog,
too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to
prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are
not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the
capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen,
before Israel goes under."
(Martin van Creveld, 2003)

"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001

Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I
want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel.
We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime
Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael
radio.

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter
of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate
force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of
Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New
York Times 14 April 1983.
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon,
Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is
artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and
then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We
then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." David Ben-
Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael
Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

With this kind of a historical Israeli mind-set, combined with the Bush administration's willingness to go along with them, Iran is the country that should be fearful of an unprovoked attack by Israel and/or the U.S.
The U.S. needs to sit down with the Iranians and work out our differences. Hopefully, Obama can become our President and we can do just that.

There is a lot of good information on these topics to be found at Counterpunch.org.