[Skybird]

Oil imports are not stopped, but will be stopped not before summer in another 6 months. Loss of income to Iran is expected to be around one quarter of it'S regular earnings from oil. In other words, 75% of its oil incomes of today stay unaffected.

And the estimation still is questionable, for the oil price is already climbing, and Iran will seek and probably find customers replacing those who now threatened to stop buying in 6 months. What could counter this, is a strong global economic recession and thus falling demand for oil. Anyone interested in more recession?

Iranian population does not uprise against their masters and does not fight to free and change the country, so that they are effected by sanctions maybe is not as undeserved as Catfish indicated. My impression always was that a majority of the population supports and wants the bomb, as a symbol of national pride and sovereignity. To me, it compares to the German population in WWII. While not everybody was a Nazi, still resistence to Hitler was singular only (and even that we do not see in Iran to that scale). The Germans had it coming at them, so do the Iranians.

If your living place is tyranny, you have three options. You stay and adapt, that is what most people do. You leave and run, starting new in another place, that'S what quite some exile Iranians did. Or you stay and fight by any means, that'S what only the few chose to do.

Negotiations did never work and will never work, since it is the itnention of Iran to get the bomb, no matter what. The sanctions in summer are just an expression of how helpless the West feels so that it accepts to buy some more time in the unfounded hope that this nwoulkd make them change their minds. For the West is more afraid of war than Iran is. It also would be expensive - and this with the current crisis of politics and finances.

Iran possessing nuclear bombs and according know-how is still totally unacceptable to me.