Iran is like any other nation. It is doing all to protect its interests. It is protecting itself from The USA and Israel.

The neo-cons published their strategy to invade the Middle East including Iran 20 years ago and now those who authored it are in power.

You won't find a reference in our media to it though.

Forget conspiracies just look at the facts and look at the document. If you were in Iran what would you do? Maybe cause as much difficulty as you can for your enemies. If the world is ready to accept the bogus story of two Israeli soldiers being the cause of the destruction of a nation then when Iran is threatened what should they do? Do all they can to slow their enemies progress. Realistically Iran is no threat to the USA. They would be a balance against Israel only if they get Nukes however. Their real strategy may very well be purely peaceful- develop Nuclear energy and sell it when energy alternatives lower oil prices. The world knows that we will attack Iran over some UN resolution unheeded just as we did Iraq. It begs a bit of common sense to buy or accept even the statement of attacking a country because of an unheeded UN resolution when Israel has disregarded more than fifty of them already. Our attack on Iraq was a subtrefuge an excuse not the reason was intimated. We were following the Project for a new american century. Of course there are other docments that corroborate all. Every time an israeli breathes on occupied territory he is illegal. The USA provides the money that allows them to build settlements and finance the Oppression of the Palestinians as well. We are at 9 Billion dollars a year now to Israel not the press reported 3 billion.
The money is hidden in Loans loan guarantees direct military aid etc.. But even at the oft reported sum isn't the scheduled 3Billion dollars a year a lot of money for only six million people? And of course they have Nuclear weapons. What we have created in Israel is the biggest welfare state in the world and made it a mini-superpower. Now if you were Muslim and you were in the Middle East wouldn't you look to do everything to defend yourself? Israel can and does whatever it wishes to Muslims and the USA applauds, look at just the recent Lebanon conflict. Again if you were Iranian and not cowardly like Jordan or as corrupt as Saudi and Egypt: What would you do?

The reason the question from Charlotte was not answered I believe was that the dialoge was regarding Lebanon, not the Palestinian issue, nor the making of the modern state of Israel.

But if I may be so bold as to answer it, perhaps the readership will do a little background research into Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire. Creater of the first human rights declaration, (a copy of which is on display at UN headquarters, NYC)and who some 2500 years ago freed the Jewish slaves of Babylon, helped rebuild their temples, and repatriated them to land that now includes modern day Israel.
As such, the UN decision of 1948 may be viewed as a decision involving "right of return" and not the error in premise of the question asked by the post.

Ironic indeed that Iran's present day leadership would seek to wipe Israel off the map.

As for adressing grievances, a road map was layed out, with all parties signatory to it...providing for a contiguous Palestinian state, living side by side with Israel, in peace and security.

Obviously there are those wishing to prevent that from occuring.

It speaks volumes that the only post that your columnists ignored or were afraid to answer was that of Charlottesville Va.

It seems your mighty savants cannot bear to contemplate that Hizbollah, Hamas, Fatah, and Arab dissent generally might have rational and explicable motivations, or that Arabs might be people much like ourselves in their reactions to 'western'-sponsored violence, land and water robbery, humiliation, and hypocracy.

Much better to treat tham all, not as people, but as a 'pathology' motivated by irrational and absurd objectives which are incapable of being addressed. By this measure of reasoning we can find an excuse for not addressing Arab or Moslem grievances.

Well my clever friends, I ask you consider the following: If US citizens were daily witnesses on TV to other US citizens having their land, water, and homes being incrementally expropriated by a foreign power, and to US citizens being subjected to the million daily humiliations that are the lot of Palestinians, do you thing that the US 'street' would stand idly-by on an exceptance that violent resistance would be 'terrorism' and wrong?

The fact is that the 'terrorists'are not in armed occupation of Israeli land but visa versa. The fact is that the Iraqis are not occupying the US but visa-versa. The fact is that the US and its Israeli client has in the last ten years violently killed 20 Moslems for every 9/11 victim. The fact is that most of the Moslem victims have been women and children.
The victims hardly need the convoluted geopolitical meanderings of your columnists to explain their burning anger and sense of injustice.

We should address these wrongs which have been perpetrated or paid for by us. Not only because they are underpinning the anger which provokes a tiny number of its victims to respond to violence in kind. We should primarily address tham because they are wrongs and because it is right and moral to do so.

Mr. Young presents his concerns from within the society, and I read those with great interest. Sadness at the pessism that derives from the challenges.

But the first comment, Brigette's lengthy diatribe, makes on wonder which drugs she is on and detracts from the informative discussion.

First, she states whe has 'the facts'. Comments like "There are no facts to show that it (Hezbollah) is motivated by terrorism" are absurd. Virtually every rocket fired by Hezbollah was not a military weapon, but a weapon that deliberately targeted civilians. That is not self defense. That is the essence of terrorism. She should know the difference. But the most amazing fact is her apparent direct knowledge of the killers of Hariri. After all, no one has been fully able to determine Hariri's killers yet, but she speaks of her definitive truth, that this military action is proves who the killers are.

One can accuse the Israelis of racism and make legitmate comments to defend such accusations. But is Hezbollah racist? I think you can make a stronger case for racism within Hezbollah and certainly within Iranian leadership that is so supportive of Hezbollah. I wonder why this 'fact' was ignored.

It is frustrating when two people so close to the situation go through a dialogue that is informative, and to have such a nut case, who has somehow come to believe she is closer to the situation from her Massachusetts vantage point than the Singer and Young, litter this board with unworthy drivel.

With exception of the comment of Charlotteville VA, I have seldom read a debate characterized by such self-servient conceit and refusal to see and accept the facts of reality.

The only reason Israel objects to Hezbollah is because it prevents Israel's expansionist neo-colonialism. Without the constant threat of Zionist attack, Hezbollah would long have turned into a socio-political entity. There are no facts to show that it is motivated by terrorism. Defense of one's own country, whatever the means, is self-defense, not terrorism. As of today's news, Hezbollah agreed to disarm south of the Litani river, but leaving its soldiers where they were born, live and work, in the villages south of the Litani. Hezbollah will withdraw north of the Litani, leaving the area south of it for the Lebanese army and the international peacekeeping force. This leaves the possibility that Lebanon will have an army and Hezbollah as a special, independent force, but acting in coordination with the army, similar to the arrangement in Iran, at least until the Lebanese army can be developed to modern demands. There is nothing wrong with that.

This latest war on Lebanon was Israel's tribute to Bush's incapacity to construe a cause of attack on Iran and Syria. It is the reason why Israel is left with a lost war, a reality of war crime and in Palestine, its own acts of oppression, racism and inhumanity. The stated goals of the war could have been better reached without a war. Israel's war stragegy was not designed to accomplish the stated goals, but to destroy Lebanon, instigate turmoil and replicate Iraq. Hezbollah prevented that by acting in support of the Palestinians. There is no doubt that the war was under planning for a good time. Hezbollah appears to have been knowledgable of what was to come and acted with great wisdom.

Judging by the conduct of the war, the intention was to use the destruction of Lebanon to draw Syria into the war and force Iran to act in support of Syria. At that time, the US would have entered in defense of its ally Israel, by attacking Iran with a preemptive, nuclear strike on Natanz and other related sites. The US army refused a preemptive nuclear strike and ground invasion of Iran, for good reasons. As a consequence, Israel had to change its tactics to conceal the corrupt goal of the war. Hence the war was left to go on despite excessive civilian casualties, albeit knowing that a cease fire was the only way out: Israel wasn't positioned to wipe out Hezbollah. Hezbollah had nothing to gain in the war other than to defend Lebanon. It did that very well. Everybody in Lebanon understood that. Hence the new legitimacy of Hezbollah. The ill-planned invasion confirms that Hariri wasn't assassinated by Syria, just as Mehlis' report stated in diplomatic ways, to the dismay of the US.

The fact that Hezbollah is supported by Syria and Iran is no more objectionable than the $2.5 b/year worth of weapons which the US pumps into Israel.

Instead, it would have made more sense for the world to come to terms with the reality that Bush did, in fact, consider a nuclear preemptive strike on Iran. If that isn't terrorism of Nazi proportions, then what is? Thank it to the US military that they refused, like the German scientists refused to give the nuclear bomb to the Nazis.

In this latest war on Lebanon, clearly, Israel was the aggressor and Hezbollah acted in self-defense.

Lasting peace in the Middle East is not difficult to design, but difficult to implement: Israel has to withdraw into the borders defined in 1948; return all appropriated territories; pay damages to those whose land, houses and livelihoods were robbed or destroyed since the beginning of the Israeli state; to a limited extent, people living in these territories can stay if they agree to become citizens of another state, provided Israel agrees to let Palestinians return to their houses from which they were expulsed. In return, and there won't be too many objections to that, the adjacent countries will accept that new, defined, smaller but legitimate state of Israel.

There can be no wars on Syria and Iran. They are independent states who have a right to choose their form of government. (Nor can North Korea be attacked).

The US has to assure its own engergy and economic security with fair, bilateral trade, not war and coercion. There can be no US hegemony, no US imperialism, no US superpower. The US has to join the nations of the world like an equal friend, not like a despotic parent.

The UN has to be strengthened into an independent institution enforcing international law, to which all nations are subject and who's criminal court has jurisdiction over all nations and their leaders. Its laws have to apply the same way to all nations. No exceptions for the US and Israel. The UN should be the repository of world democracy in which nations with diverse governments have room to coexist. The standard for compliance with its laws has to be the laws themselves, not some cry for democracy and human rights, thinly veiled to justify invasion. Human rights can be enforced with legal means.

All nuclear, chemical, biological weapons, including cluster bombs, have to be abolished. Outer space has to remain free of weapons of any kind.

The US has to move out of Iraq and stop instigating and financing civil and guerilla wars in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America in order to gain economic supremacy.

The new Middle East: Iran, Iraq (once reconstituted), Syria and Israel will be the four pillars which hold up the fabric of the smaller/weaker nations. Interdependence based on a network of transnational oil and water pipelines to supply all nations equitably with these necessary resources will keep the peace better than bombs; the resources will act to end starvation and overcome poverty, and make possible many ways of life. Trade will flourish soon. Instead of one quagmire replacing another quagmire, the world would be enriched with an unknown variety of products and ways of life. That is the true nature of freedom. Conflicts have to be resolved with negotiations; armies turned into peacekeepers and assistants in natural disasters.

Only when that happens can the human race claim that it is, in fact, intelligent. It requires that the world wakes up to see the intent to fascism behind the hollow ring of propaganda before it has a chance to destroy the peace. To date, that is where the pitfall lies.