Over the past few months, the face of the ceaseless threat to the American people has changed significantly. Front-page photos of soaring Iranian missiles have been replaced by illustrations of plunging stock indexes. The sound of the drum beating for war against Iran has been drowned out by the prolonged, sickening crash of the world economic system.

Despite the relative calm on the media front, the Iran issue still lurks large and unresolved in the background. Iran refuses to halt the onward march of its nuclear program; its number of operational centrifuges continues to rise steadily. Iran has earned the ire of American military commanders who claim that Iranian-made bombs and Iranian-trained men are killing Americans in Iraq. And Israel, Iran’s most bitter foe, may soon have more war-hungry forces holding the reins of power once again, with Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm. Mr. Netanyahu was the one to issue this theatrical warning to the world: “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”

Given all this, perhaps Iran could be at the center of this forthcoming “international crisis” that Joe Biden has eerily promised us.

It is worth noting that president-elect Barack Obama and his running mate are ardently pro-Israel and have pledged to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – although the only evidence they seem to have of this mad dash for nukes is a mistranslated quote from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented as an intention to “wipe Israel off the map.” Combined with the fact that Iran is an Islamic state in a post-9/11 world, there seems to be little need for hard evidence to convince the American public that Iran is up to no good.

Mr. Obama has reminded voters that he would not rule out military intervention if he deemed it necessary. He takes the seemingly noble and sensible viewpoint that “aggressive” diplomacy and “international pressure” (sanctions) will be applied first, and if Iran is still unwilling to cooperate after these overtures have been exhausted, a military strike may be in fact wholly justified. “If and when we ever have to use military force against any country, we must exert the power of American diplomacy first. That’s how we gain legitimacy,” said Barack Obama at an AIPAC conference, essentially begging the hawks in the crowd for a little patience.

The stupidity of sanctions can be easily understood by those with a grasp of common sense. They are completely counter-productive to the sanctioning party’s stated aims – unless it really was America’s desire to punish tens of millions of people for the actions of its leaders, and in turn, tarnish its own reputation around the world.

When crushing sanctions were slapped on Iraq throughout the 1990s, Saddam did not downsize his life accordingly. He did not sell his palace or eat spinach out of a can. In other words, the bully’s slice of the pie is not relative to the whole; he will always eat until he is full. So the rest be damned if the pie gets so small that there are only crumbs left to fight over. As a result of nearly 13 years of sanctions, Saddam still lived luxuriously, the Iraqi people were left with crumbs, and a staggering 500,000 children perished as a result. It’s highly doubtful that the sanctions against Iran would ever reach the same level of severity, but regular Iranians are already feeling the hurt from American sanctions in the form of increased commodity prices.

The sanctions inevitably failing to affect Iranian intransigence, and diplomacy doomed to fail (to be discussed later), we are left with the supposed last resort: war. Almost all interested parties, for and against, have acknowledged that this would throw the globe into turmoil. An attack on Iran would set the Middle East ablaze, re-igniting and intensifying conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel. An air strike on Iran would also send oil prices skyrocketing far above the highs seen this past summer. However, the neoconservatives and other proponents of a strike against Iran believe that the ends justify the means, and that sadly, even the use of nuclear weapons may be necessary to stem the evil of this “neo-Nazi” regime.

So you there you have it. Both the outgoing and incoming political leadership intends to deal with Iran using essentially the same tools: half-hearted diplomacy, ineffective sanctions, and disastrous war. This paltry set of options has been repeated so often by all stripes of the American political spectrum that it any other considerations have been muffled, or worse, not even thought of. The main problem with these other considerations is that they point the finger the other way as well. Iran may be a problem, but America is a bigger problem – this is, of course, not a politically viable statement. But let’s just pretend that this article is being read aloud to a deeply hypnotized Obama, and take a look at a few rational, peaceful ways of dealing with a rising Iran (and helping ourselves in the process):

1. End (or at least curtail) the nuclear hypocrisy. Let’s get this straight. Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not possess any nuclear weapons. The United States, in possession of an estimated 5,400 nuclear weapons and instigator of two disastrous wars in the past seven years, is calling Iran’s uranium enrichment – mind you, not weapons production – unacceptable. According to the terms of the NPT, its signatories must put forth an effort to draw down their nuclear arsenals. The U.S., a signatory, has not done even come close to doing that in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the U.S. has allied itself with three nuclear-armed powers that have refused to sign the NPT: Israel, India, and Pakistan. Car bombings still occur in all three of these countries; Israelis never hesitate to tell the world that they live in a state of siege. So isn’t our worry a little misdirected? Condoleeza Rice lamented that the Iranians were not “serious” enough about the negotiations. How is she surprised? The process is so rife with hypocrisies and double standards that it should be seen as nothing more than a joke.

The next American president should downgrade our relations with the non-signatories of the NPT, and publicly announce that he would begin the gradual process of drawing down America’s mammoth stockpile of nukes. They need not worry about feeling impotent, even a 90% reduction of their arsenal would still allow enough firepower to obliterate every major metropolis in the world. The gesture is what counts.

2. Leave Iraq. At this point, an apt analogy for the U.S.-Iraq relationship is that of a jealous and controlling man refusing to see that his partner does not want him in her life anymore; in fact, she may be in love with the man that lives next door. This was demonstrated by a brilliant juxtaposition of clips by The Daily Show: President Bush arriving hurriedly under the cover of night at a military base in Iraq, then a red-carpet reception of the Iranian president at the Baghdad airport in broad daylight, including an effusive exchange of hugs and kisses.

The dysfunctional relationship between the U.S. and Iraq is hurting both countries. The war is sucking 12 billion dollars a month from our national treasury in the midst of an economic crisis in which real money is scarce. Meanwhile, Iranian influence in Iraq continues to grow, a natural outgrowth of a new map of the Middle East in which two Shiite Muslim-controlled countries are bordering each other. As former CIA agent Robert Baer argues in The Devil We Know, what exactly is the matter with this Iranian “meddling?” It was largely due to Iranian influence that Muqtada al-Sadr’s militias, which were instrumental in the bloodbaths of 2006, have been kept at bay.

Thus, Iran could even be valuable partner in keeping order in Iraq during and after the necessary American exit. A quick, orderly withdrawal, which may involve taming our national obsession with “victory,” is the most beneficial solution for all three countries.

3. Reconsider our relationship with Israel. This one is probably the least likely of ever happening, even considering my generosity in writing “reconsider our relationship” rather than “cut ties with.” Israel’s actions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been decried by every reputable human rights agency in the world. It’s “separation wall,” which has often been used as a tactic to steal Palestinian land, has been denounced as illegal by a near unanimous vote of the International Court of Justice. Its use of cluster bombs on populated areas in Lebanon in 2006, including after the implementation of the UN ceasefire, can be seen as nothing less than barbaric. Defenders of Israel lament that the Jewish state is “surrounded by enemies.” Given Israel’s openly cruel treatment of the Palestinians and aggressive foreign policy, this would come as no surprise in a rational world. Yet through intense lobbying over the past century by the Zionist movement, the American political establishment’s subservience to Israel is greater than at any point in history. Its subservience is so obvious that the media were inclined to ask John McCain during the election: “Can Israel do wrong?”

True, Iran may have a repressive government, and true, many Jews died and suffered during the Holocaust, but this situation calls for some serious critical thinking instead of prattling about a “second Holocaust.” Who has the history of aggression, Iran or Israel? Is Ahmadinejad really in control of Iran, does he really have anti-Semitic Hitlerian aims, and furthermore, is it possible that Israel is exploiting the memory of the Holocaust for political gain? These questions must be asked, even considering the avalanche of shrill, defamatory responses guaranteed by an impressive public relations effort on the part of Israel’s supporters. So in short, America’s stance towards Iran should be redirected towards Israel: show us some better behavior and we can be friends.

These three items are, sadly, mostly pie-in-the-sky scenarios, given the current political climate. Yet we are living in an extraordinary period of global tumult, of American decline, in which ideology may finally have to take a back seat to cold reality. One can only hope that Mr. Obama realizes this before the war drums reassume center stage.

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