International Relations: United States and Beyond

Iran:
        Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 Iran's foreign relations have been shaky to say the least, and with the existance of such terrorist organizations as Hamas and Hezbollah within their borders, the possibility of nuclear technologies is a danger the United States and the U.N. don't particularly want to deal with. Iran's government has not been stable, and with that comes protective measures by the United States and others. In an effort to weaken the current Iranian government the United States and the European Union tried to cut Iran off from the international financial system. In order to do this they put in place sanctions, making it difficult for Iran to produce oil biproducts. Oil and petrolium are the largest exports of Iran and these sanctions made it difficult for the large oil companies to produce exports. Along with the sanctions on the oil industry of Iran, there were also sanctions put on their nuclear industry, in an effort to thwart any thoughts of nuclear weapons made by the Iranian government. These actions were successful and they did put significant strain on the economic system of Iran. To make matters worse Iran has been associated with several attacks on Israel.  In an effort to make the sanctions go away, Iran thretened to cut off their oil trade to six european countries, and on February 19th they did in fact cut off trade with Britian and France. The United Nations sent a second team to inspect the nuclear technologies of Iran, and were not allowed into a few sites, and even worse there were thoughts that the Iranians were going to try to use nuclear technology for weapons.
        The fact that the United Nations is cracking down on Iran is a good thing. They have been harboring terrorists for many years. One of the longest relationships that the United States has is with Israel. And as an ally it is our job to keep other countries from attacking them. This means taking whatever actions are neccessary to keep this from happining, and in this case this means keeping Iran from having nuclear weapons that could be used against Israel. International relationships are things that need to be kept, and if there are disagreements between an allied nation and someone else there needs to be some kind of action taken to keep our allys safe.

Syria:
       The riots in Syria started almost a year ago. They were the first real showing of the unrest in the Arab nations of the Middle East. Still after almost a year there is unrest in the nation, between various racial groups and the government. The Sunnis and other groups have had their differences for as long as they have existed, and this came into action in the riots in Syria.
        The United States has long been the police of the world. We have gotten involved in countries that may not have needed our help. Most of the time with good intentions, but most of the time having bad outcomes. As shown in bothVietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan.