Guess running for president in the war monger party can change a person. 

Free trade and an open and honest relationship with Iran would do much more good in the long run to insure peace. 

During a New Year’s Day appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” former Pennsylvania Republican Senator and come-from-behind GOP presidential frontrunner Rick Santorum threatened to attack Iran if he becomes President.

“I would be working openly with the state of Israel and I would be saying to the Iranians, you either open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes – and make it very public that we are doing that,” Santorum told “Meet The Press” host David Gregory. The candidate went on to promise that under his administration, Iranian nuclear scientists “will be treated as an enemy combatant, like an Al Qaida member.”

Santorum’s belligerent rhetoric on the campaign trail presents a stark contrast to statements he made when he served in the Senate. In September 2006, Santorum hosted Reza Pahlavi (more on him later), the son of deposed Iranian monarch Mohammed-Reza Shah Pahlavi, for a meeting with his congressional colleagues. Pahlavi reportedly urged his audience to support a supposedly democratic movement inside Iran. He then emphasized that “the option of war must be taken off the table.”

According to a Yahoo News report on the event posted on Pahlavi’s personal website:

Agreeing that war was not an option, Senator Santorum said, of Reza Pahlavi: “He is a leading and enthusiastic advocate of the principals [sic] of freedom, democracy and human rights for his countrymen;” adding that “Reza Pahlavi has upheld the honor of his country in a time of upheaval and darkness.”

So Santorum was against going to war with Iran before he was for it. And he has yet to offer an explanation for his flip-flop.

Not sure if the Obama administration is that dumb, naive, or just thinks the we are all stupid.  How can you force dangerous sanctions on Iranian oil and not effect the market?

The Obama administration wants to sanction Iranian oil without negatively effecting global oil markets. No, seriously:

The White House said on Thursday the Iran sanctions proposed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama should be enforced in a way that does not hurt the United States’ allies or disrupt oil markets.

“We want to make sure that the implementation of those sanctions is handled in a way that does not inadvertently do any harm to our allies or to the oil markets,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

But a recent Energy Brief from the Council on Foreign Relations concludes that is wishful thinking. The U.S.’s efforts “to sanction Iran’s crude oil exports,” says the CFR report, “has already pushed Iran to threaten ”to disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint, through which nearly seventeen million barrels per day (mb/d), or about 35 percent of seaborne traded oil, moves.”

The escalation has already added a significant, perhaps five to ten dollars per barrel, risk premium into the price of crude oil. The prospect of any further “Iran premium” on oil prices deeply troubles U.S. and EU officials, given the fragile global economy. Currently, they are designing sanctions to minimize the risk that Iran’s exports will be reduced, since that would raise global oil prices. Instead, sanctions would aim at reducing what Iran earns on its sales. Nevertheless, market participants are concerned that the standoff will escalate beyond limited sanctions and disrupt physical supply at a time when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) spare capacity is insufficient to comfortably offset the loss.

The report lays out four scenarios and the deleterious effects each of them would have on oil markets and the economic outlook:

• Partial sanctions on Iran’s crude oil exports; Iran harasses gulf production and shipping
• Complete or nearly complete sanctions on Iran’s exports
• An Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but no oil infrastructure damage or disruption
• A regional conflict, including temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz

All of these possibilities carry dangerous consequences generally, and specifically on oil markets. The last scenario, the report says, “would dwarf any disruption in modern history.” So much for Obama’s cautious approach.