PeterUK,

I think deterence would work with the Mullahs because of their huge finacial interests…

This makes no sense. If you’re speaking about the personal interests of the mullah kleptocrats, they’ve have already socked away enough millions each to guarantee a leisurely retirement; what difference does a few more million make either way?

If you’re talking about Iran’s national economic interests, again, you’ve got it backwards. Iran ahs the EU by the balls, not v-v. Iran is swimming in natural resource wealth and can sell its fungible commodity, whose price is soaring due to soaring non-western demand, anywhere it wishes– Japan, China, India, wherever.

It’s the EU’s slow-growth manufacturers that need the booming Iranian market. This is why it’s been the EU three who have been making all manner of concessions, without receiving anything whatsoever from the Iranians.

As to this part of yoru argument: “…. although [the mullahs] are big on chanting,threatening and hanging, they never put their own lives on the line.”

What does this mean? What does it matter whether we’re attacked by Iranian troops or by Iran’s Hezbollah proxy or Al Qaeda? Iran has in fact been attacking us across the region for more than a decade, and soon they’ll have nukes with which to arm their proxies.

In sum I think you suffer from the same delusion that so many postmodern academics and EU decision-makers do, namely the belief that global economic ties make war unthinkable. This belief seems to flourish just before global war– Norman Davies propounded it in the decade before WWI, and the western democracies wished it to be true throughout the decade prior to 1939.

In fact, we are and have been fighting a cold war vs Iran and we desperately need determined allies who will help us contain Iran from north, south, east and west. The EU Three’s pathetic concessions undermine this effort.