Of course, the global ambitions of the Revolutionary Republic's leaders and footsoldiers is all the fault of Israel. That is convenient.
And of course there's no point in trying to stop them getting nukes and we can't complain about it anyway because we all have them. If we gave up our nukes en masse, I reckon that the Iranian leaders wouldn't bother trying to get their own. I mean, they just want to be left alone reallty, don't they. Don't they?
As for Robbins, I reckon senario 1 is wrong: I don't think the Coaltion would bomb Tehran or doing anything much is Iran did engage in energy blackmail. They'd just about stretch to public bluster, backdoor "please don't" diplomacy, useless sanctions.
Matt b's almalgamation of Iranian and Iraqi Shi'ites is an elemental mistake: the idea that the political Shia are pro-Iranian is fallacy; the idea that they would abdicate national sovereignity if Iran asked is a ludicrous fantasy.
There are a few people in and close to the Bush Administration who care about Iranian democracy, a few more who think supporting its emergence would be good for US interests, and, unfortuately, quite a lot more who think that the better option would be to engage the mullahrocy in proto-detente. The Bush Administration doesn't have any policy on Iran. It's in total dissaray.
Iran's vast oil and gas reserves are important because of the leverage it gives them, in the Caspian, over Russia, China, and well the world.
Nuclear bombs will kill off any hope of democratic change in Iran.