From the New York Times:

Under the new crackdown, the United States is tightening the rules governing countries it has allowed to keep buying Iranian oil, as long as they show they are weaning themselves of it. From now on, when China, Japan, South Korea and India, among others, pay for oil deliveries, they will be required to put that money into a local bank account, which Iran can use only to buy goods within that country.

It would be hard not to see the similarity between this and the ramp up to the 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq.  In fact, it would be hard to see any difference between this situation and numerous other fabrications used by the U.S. to justify its use of war as its primary tool of foreign policy.  This time the WMD is Iran’s nuclear program.

Whether they are pursuing a nuclear weapons program or not, it’s impossible to make a case that Iran poses any direct threat to the U.S.  But. America’s role as defender of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian makes Iran a target of U.S. aggression.  In other words, we are Israel’s big bully brother and it’s become a foregone conclusion that the U.S. will stand side-by-side with Israel against any country Israel feels threatened by.  This is a touchy situation for the U.S. because Israel, with it’s take-over of “The Holy Land” and perpetual antagonism toward its historical residents as well as the surrounding nations, has the unique distinction of being capable of uniting the entire Arab world.  The only force that prevents that is the U.S. which, though its support of numerous corrupt dictators in the area, keeps the Arab countries at perpetually odds with each other.

In fact, the U.S. has a long history of aiding and abetting the subjugation of the Iranian people under despotic rulers, so the fact that they seem less than friendly toward American overtures is not exactly surprising even aside from our recent attempts to destroy their economy and destabilize their current government.

In any case the sanctions, while hurting the people of Iran, don’t seem to be having much impact on Iran’s nuclear policies or their willingness to kowtow to the U.S. government.

“The people may be suffering in Iran,” one senior official involved in Iran strategy said last week, “but the supreme leader isn’t, and he’s the only one who counts.”

And that Supreme Leader just blew off the U.S. offer for one-to-one talks.  I suspect the question the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei keeps asking himself is why the U.S. is so consumed by the Iranian nuclear program while showing no such interest in Israel’s secret development of nuclear weapons.