Daily Iran post: The drama over Iran's nuclear ambitions heats up.
I'm encouraged by France's cooperation, but the wild-cards remain Russia and China. Are they willing to see sanctions imposed on Iran? And I have to ask again: are we prepared to see four million barrels of daily crude removed from the futures markets?
This article gives a glimpse into what would happen if the strait of Hormuz were shut to us for just three months:


"Until and unless the US-Allied stakes in the strait's threatened closure can be reduced, Iran will literally think and act as if it has us over a barrel," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington.
At a cost of about $2 billion, existing pipelines could be refurbished and new pipelines built to take oil from the Saudi Peninsula to non-Gulf ports, Mr. Sokolski says. Today a three-month closure of the strait and a loss of Iranian oil exports would cost the US alone a 4 to 5 percent drop in gross domestic product and cause a 2 percent rise in unemployment.


I say again: our national response to the future of oil has been appalling, and it has led us to this empasse with Iran.