Born stupid and determined to stay that way...

Sometimes, I wonder about Republicans - I really do. They seem prone to shoot first and ask questions later. As if you can get answers from the dead.

But I digress. Old habits die hard. Here's what's bothering me about that whole Iran nuclear problem: Given that we don't want to see Iran become another nuclear club member, meaning 'having the bomb', and yet facing the fact that they do have a need of and use for nuclear electrical power, for example, how do we provide for the one without allowing the other?

If we deny them nuclear weapons, and the technology to build them, but agree
to providing them with ready-made fuel rods for their power station reactors,
we're shooting ourselves in the foot, because they can reverse-engineer those fuel rods into weapons-grade materials with a little more work probably. So it still comes down to an impasse. 

So what's the answer? Do we build, operate and maintain nuclear power facilities inside or close to Iran, to provide them with the energy they need?
Or do we let them increase the world's pollution problems with fossil-fueled plants? And how successful would any of that be in effecting a change of the administration of the country from its present religio-political oligarchy to one of more moderate and normal form? Do the people of Iran really want to be led by a bunch of wild-eyed religious crackpots, or are they simply unable to dislodge
those tenacious tub-thumpers from the Shah's old throne? More to the point, perhaps, is the question of whether the Iranian people will ever forgive the USA for its part in the political intrigue of the early 1950s which in large part created the fertile soil now so vigorously cultivated by the Ayatollah...