Biggest Question Mark

I've been reveling bromantical since yesterday, even going over the best part with guys friends, by phone and text, like:

"The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long," Obama said in his weekly radio and video address. "But I don't. I work for the American people."

I can't remember the last Democrat that I really thought was a badass. Maybe Bill Clinton when he handily won the apocalyptic-billed staredown with then House Leader Newt Gingrich. Maybe FDR:

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

So unlike Presidents Cheney or Bush Jr., Obama's shown his toughness now months after convincing the last hold-outs that he had it in a campaign setting, now with how he has commenced governing. There's a long way to go but, like FDR, he seems to enjoy a good fight.

I believe the course he's taking on the economy, and hopefully soon the banks, is the right one, and at some level I think all of that is solvable, and that he's making the right bets. And I even believe there is a destination for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will include both Israel's survival and the chance for a non-degraded life for Palestinian families, even if it isn't easy to get there.

But the Iran question is the most problematic of all, the conundrum. The fascist theocracy running the country has no incentive to stop building atomic energy, as the oil will run out, but it also has no incentive to stop moving towards atomic weaponry, if the regime wants to protect itself.

The good news is that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Sunday that Iran is not close to being capable of making nuclear weapons.

The bad news is that the regime is still evil:

A U.S. journalist has been arrested in Iran, and her father said Sunday she told him in a brief phone call she was detained after buying a bottle of wine.

Roxana Saberi, 31, has not been heard from since her last call on Feb. 10, her father, Reza, told The Associated Press on Sunday.

"We haven't heard anything," he said. The family decided to go public, he said, "because we wanted to get some information."

...Roxana Saberi is a freelance journalist who has reported for National Public Radio and other media and has lived in Iran for six years...

...Saberi's father said his daughter was finishing a book on Iran and had planned to return to the United States this year.

The book is about the culture and the people of Iran, he said. She was hoping to finish it in the next couple of months and come home to have it published.

On one hand, they're showing their hand: they're scared enough of her book to arrest her. On the other, they're very, very bad news.

My guess is that this will be the longest game of the Obama Administration. He and Secretary of State Clinton must be prepared for a very long period of engagement in hopes that the longer it goes on, the more it will weaken the existing regime, as did cultural infiltration of the Soviet Union. And think about how much easier it is now to get illicit cultural and political materials from our side into there -- it just beams in. Easier to hide, as you don't even need to store locally anymore.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does there seem to be a knottier problem, especially with Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld having removed Iran's enemies to the West and East. Especially with Iran wanting to best Saudi Arabia in control of the region.

Especially with all that oil.