"The structure of the question implies a situation in which the United States has more or less complete freedom of action in which to pick and choose among options. That is not the case. As Paul Krugman has pointed out, America stands on the brink of disaster economically. The shape and condition of our social contract a year from now is debatable if the economic crisis can not be mitigated. In that context it is doubtful if we can afford the two wars we are now fighting much less the costs that would inevitably derive from yet a further war against Iran. This overriding economic restraint makes a mockery of loose talk of an American war with Iran. In purely military terms, are there serious people who can not see how much the position of our forces in Iraq would be damaged by regional reactions to an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities or the mere perception of American complicity in an analogous Israeli attack? What has happened in the Khyber Pass recently speaks volumes of the kinds of additional dangers that a rash use of military force would bring on." See more. pl
RSS- Tit for tat until it all goes boom
- Deadly H5N1 avian influenza strain detected on mainland Antarctica
- “BYD is launching its next-gen Blade EV battery soon with more range and even lower cost”
- Iran launches air attacks on Israel
- ISW on the developing Ukrainian defense industrial base and Russias strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure
- Britain? Kaput! By Walrus.
- Declaration “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity
- The situation and some possible courses of action … A Pat Lang post reposted from 26 February 2022
- HARPER: COL. W. PATRICK LANG R.I.P.
- A Note On Our Folly By Walrus
Ron Paul gets better looking every day.
The National Journal is highly respected inside the beltway (and perhaps outside where I now live). First real mention I have seen linking potential social breakdown to failure of the stimulus package and no real recalibration yet of US foreign policy or military capability. In that sense alone this is a significant statement from the editors and staff of the NJ. Question, PL do you see any real readjustments yet (maybe too early) in forign policy and military policy? The extract in WAPO of the new Thomas Ricks book is interesting to me largely because it indicates the at least the ARMY is a learning organization. NO real indication yet of that for the other services or DOD generally. Nor for the State department, nor for the Intel community. Give me hope, PL that some of these others can learn from their past mistakes and corrupt cultures which will not survive major social disruption in this good old USA. And of course looking much closer to revolution in Mexico this week. Only the Mexican military preventing vast social upheaval and breakdown but not sure the cartels won’t win.
Excellent article. I hope to hell someone in power pays attention.
You gotta love Michael Scheuer: “Before President Obama decides on a policy toward Iran, he might try to accurately define the nature of the threat that country poses to genuine U.S. interests.” Once we’ve defined that then maybe we can define some objectives and strategies.
Oh right! But that isn’t the American way! As in Iraq and Afghanistan, America trumps up some manufactured rationale, invades the country, kills a lot of people, destroys a lot of stuff, and only later tries to figure out why it all seemed such a good idea at the time.
Colonel: this goes directly to my point (on which I think we are probably in agreeement) that the old paradigm of the US as the world’s cop with freedom of action virtually anywhere in the world is utterly obsolete. I think this is a really important piece of information that needs to be added to our foreign policy considerations. Is there anyone out there making this point to whom serious people listen?
The Colonel and Scheuer are spot-on. Iran is not a present threat to the USA, and we don’t have the resources to confront them.
In addition, things are going pretty well in Iraq, and we don’t want to upset that now, do we?
If the Israelis do upset things in Iraq by bombing Iran (as it will — the USA will be perceived as standing by), it won’t be forgotten.
Why no mention of OIL? An attack on Iran is going to affect the supply dramatically.
The following gives hope that Iran will cease being a pariah.
Christian Science Monitor reports: Bowing to months of pressure from political allies, Iran’s former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, on Sunday declared he will run in the June presidential vote.
The black-turbaned cleric – who won landslide victories in 1997 and 2001 on the promise of restoring the rule of law, loosening social restrictions, and ending Iran’s isolation – will now be aiming to restore his political reputation while challenging Iran’s arch-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Colonel,
Netanyahu is acting like a major nuclear power, when in reality he’s a two-bit player. If Netanyahu managed to garner the Israeli PM spot, with its small (but deadly) nuclear deliverable arsenal at his disposal, it will be Netanyahu and Israel who are the real threat to our U.S. as well as Europe, in more ways than one.
Nevadan, Ahmadinejad was the man of the times for the Bush II fiasco. It’s Netanyahoo now I worry about.
I like looking at anecdotal stories at the fringe that nobody pays attention to. Often they tell a lot about general trend at the center. Things like rocket launch number, track and field performance over times, large scale construction skill don’t lie. (at least they are not a sustainable lie without turning into potemkin village joke.)
US foreign policy, specially on Iran has deviate too far from national interest. Nobody does honest accounting what is happening, what we want, and what we actually able to do.
It is time to make an honest assessment of US middle east policy. Israel, Saudi, Syria, Iran, Egypt, …Pakistan, Afganistan…(Russia, China, India)..
time to look hard, cause obviously … we don’t know what we want. everything is running on bureaucratic cruise control.
Political corruption prevails. Cute at first, but after awhile
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/09/AR2009020901678.html?hpid=topnews
The 69-page report authored by nine-time Olympic gold medal winner Carl Lewis and eight other members of an independent task force recommended an overhaul of the organization’s high-performance program, improvements to its anti-doping policies and the termination of its million-dollar relay program, which it described as “a waste of money and a failure.”
The report caps what has been a difficult decade for USA Track and Field, which has struggled to maintain its standing as the world’s most decorated track team while being battered in recent years by doping revelations and seemingly declining interest — NBC arranged to have Olympic swimming and gymnastics, but not track, live during its U.S. telecasts during the Games last August.
The USATF’s five-year-old National Relay Program, which has involved various relay-team training camps throughout the years and been led by coach Brooks Johnson, received the heaviest criticism. The dropped batons in the Olympics were the most recent in a history of errors among U.S. relay-team members; seven U.S. relay teams have been disqualified at major events for bobbles, lane infractions or doping violations since the program began. The report also chided USATF for allowing shoe companies and agents to effectively take over the management of track and field.
Jim Lobe: Ledeen Once Again Has His Hand on the Iranian Pulse
Mr Faster Please had another conversation with the late James Jesus Angleton via his ouija board. His way to make fun of us slow folks, I guess.
Ahmadinejad can only be reelected by the election of Netanyahu and the appointment of Dennis the menace by Obama.
IMHO, Livi will win tomorrow and the bucket-list guys will be going to Tehran.
Colonel,
Your M.E. prescription makes sense but I fear it isn’t doable given the visceral fear of Iran that permeates Israeli elites. I wish Obama the best. It’s perhaps even more of a challenge than stabilizing the economy.
This is going to be a veeeerryyyy long 8 yrs. Israel is turning hard right and just about any sane person expect they are going to start a war one way or another.
On top of that Israel is now proposing “one region, two states.” WTF?
are they preparing for another scam already? so soon?
They should just say it outloud, we want all the land and F the palestinians. They can have their “state”, but we got to keep land, air, what the palestinian can do in it, etc. We gonna blow up the entire middle east if that’s what it takes.
Somebody should come down hard on the Israelis, sign peace treaty and create 2 states, or you will be on global boycott list like the apartheid regime. They’ll have to fight Hamas using a slingshot once the plug is pulled. None of their microelectronic manufacturing line will work (no gudance and control for anything), nevermind the rest of their fancy toys…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/09/AR2009020902098.html?hpid=topnews
One Region, Two States
Dissenters from the two-state solution contend — not without some reason — that Gaza and the West Bank are too small to absorb the Palestinian refugees. Yet this would also be the case under the one-state formula; it would result in a state that is merely 24,000 square kilometers and that already overflows with a population exceeding 10 million (5.5 million Jews and 4.5 million Arabs). While cynics might question the size of the West Bank and Gaza, optimists should look no further than Singapore for reassurance.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/10/stories/2009021059991200.htm
Iran may give India access to Afghanistan
NEW DELHI: Iran on Monday said India could soon have a sea-cum-land route that would give Indian goods access to Afghanistan and further on to Central Asian countries, bypassing Pakistan.
Tehran also said that as a friend of both Pakistan and India, it would “have to play a role” in reducing tensions between the two countries and ensure that differences over the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline are overcome.
Speaking to journalists here, Iran’s Ambassador in India Syed Mahdi Nabizadeh said Iran was attempting to make its Chabar port viable by declaring it a free trade zone and improving the logistical infrastructure. A road or rail line from the port could take Indian goods to the Afghan border.
From there, a 217-km India-built road from the Afghan border town of Zaranj will provide the last-mile connectivity to Delaram located on the “garland highway” of Afghanistan which connects most of its major cities, including Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz. Some of the offshoots of this road, also called the North-South corridor, go into Central Asia.
The question – to which pl’s piece is a reply- includes the ‘clenched fist’ quote.
My question is what clenched fist?
If the NIE and Iran say they are not developing weapons, IAEA inspections are clean (apart from being unable to explain some documents of unknown origin which they claim are fabricated), accusations of any major complicity in IED’s in Iraq have died down, arming Hama’s has just been shown to be a very sick joke, which leaves arming Hezbollah. I would not want to clog your blog with an attempt at a comprehensive list of the non-state organisations that have been supplied arms by the US over the years but if we are going to try and find a workable definition for ‘State sponsors of terrorism’ it might be tricky to find one that included Iran but exclude the US, and my country the UK.
DIRECT negotiations, NO preconditions, and get on with it…now.
A useful book for context is Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance, the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US (New Haven: Yale, 2007). Trita lays out Israeli machinations, duplicity, and the like.
American planning for the region must have a broad framework: Turkey, Iran, Arab states, and Israel not to mention South Asia, too.
No more Israel-centrism. Stepped up counterintelligence pressure against Israel with more wide ranging investigations and prosecutions in the AIPAC case please. Fresh NIE on Israel.
Brief President Obama on Eisenhower’s handling of the Suez crisis and US sanctions imposed or threatened to be imposed.
Bedside reading: Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez. Eisenhower Takes America Into the Middle East (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981).
On the economic front, Kilcullen estimates that Afghanistan alone will cost us about $25 billion a month. For 10 to 15 years. Assuming everything goes well.
Steve
How to make my blood boil: read these lines. The temerity of Israel to dictate to the US …
I completely disagree, now, with a two-state solution. FIrst, it wont happen. Second, all this folderol about Israel being a democracy is just that. It’s time it ‘fish or cut bait’. Israel (Jewish) can be like Italy (Catholic) with Jerusalem like the Vatican.
Exactly what is the threat that Israel is going to do to Iran? Bomb it? With what? Nuclear-tipped bunker busters, and enflame the entire region? Does it want to start WWIII in order to secure its security and no one else’s? This is an insanity, and the open debate about this medieval city-state is not going on in this country because of a fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. Actually, because we permit warmongers like Abe Foxman — who would be out of a job if he couldn’t do it — to set the debate for us and threaten lives and careers if we dont comply.
As far as I am concerned, Colonel, Israel has become the domestic part of what you military guys call ‘enemies, foreign and domestic’.
Colonel,
The next response after yours on the National Journal site is ‘Dov S. Zakheim, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer (2001-2004), Booz-Allen Hamilton.”
Upon reading it it makes you wonder which government he supports. He certainly doesn’t seem to have America’s best interests at heart.
One would think that if the current economic crisis has constrained the United States, then it also would constrain Israel.
Here’s a little account of what The Lobby did to Michael Scheuer (who also posted his POV on this topic in the National Journal Blog above Col. Lang’s entry) for being candid about his views about the distorting influence of uncritical bipartisan Israel Firsting.
http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=14221
Apparently, the First Amendment is null and void at the Jamestown Foundation. More kabuki theater from the “scholarly” community, where a pretense of academic freedom substitutes for the real thing. Just another think tank in the tank for Zionism.
Israel election result is in, now they have to create the coalition. We’ll see how all this affect their outlook with Iran. Assuming Kadima doesn’t change, their largest partners also dont seem to varied widely.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/11/0547/30437/722/695917
Kadima winning 28 seats and Likud winning 27 out of a possible 120. It seems it is going to be hard for Kadima to form a coalition government but this does not mean it cannot be done.
The reason it is going to be hard for Kadima to create a coalition is because Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party is expected to get 14 seats with Labor only getting 13 and the Shas party (right wing leaning and openly saying they want Likud to win) with 11 seats.
So looking at just the top 5 vote getting parties the right wing block already has 53 seats with Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, and Shas.
If you had in the right wing parties of United Torah Judaism, Jewish Home and National Union who are going to get 11 seats this gives the Likud a narrow majority of 64 of the 120 seats.
If we do the simple math this mean that Kadima’s coalition only has 56 seats.
HOWEVER… Shimon Peres the current President of Israel and former Labor party leader and PM, chooses who is allowed to form a unity government. With Kadima receiving the most votes it is hard to see how he cannot give Kadima the first crack at this.
a short blurb about saudis DF3, and google earth (and potential respond if israel/iraq going nuke)
I still think saudi will be among the first going nuclear if escalation heat up, they have financial resource and connection to buy expertise and equipments.
http://geimint.blogspot.com/2009/02/saudi-arabias-ballistic-missile-force.html
CONCLUSION
The Saudi Arabian ballistic missile arsenal is one of the most interesting and important military aspects of the developing Middle Eastern political and military landscape. As Iran moves forward towards its alleged nuclear weapons program, Saudi Arabia may well attempt to acquire a similar capability for its missiles to serve as a deterrent. The potentially destabilizing effects of such a move, given the Kingdom’s position regarding Israel, could ignite a new arms race, and even military conflict. The fact that this significant development may be related to a military capability that few individuals realize exists highlights the need for closer military analysis of potential adversarial situations worldwide.
Posting this comment post-Israeli election. Since a competent government [US?] plans for most reasonable contingencies–such as Israel even having an election– what policy choices does this foreign dictate or offer for US? Or is this another US policy of choosing to wait to see what the other guy (nation) does first? Where is a foreign policy that can be understood domestically and by foreign governments and populations? Talk about public diplomacy let’s take a formal position on the Israeli nuclear capabiliy? There is difference in exercising discretion and doing nothing!
curious:
To my knwoledge there is no techncial capability or potential technical capability along the lines that you have suggested is any Arab country except perhaps Egypt and/or Algeria.
The Arab states of the Persian Gulf will never have credible military capabilities (regardless of how much hardware they buy) since the leaders of these states are more afriad of their own militaries than any external foe.
In a way, they are acting in a very similar way to the Abbasid Khalifs. The Abbasids did not truts either the Persians or the Arabs so they brought in the Turkic slave soldiers. In time, the Turkic slave soldiers called the shots in Baghdad.
Every single piece of Saudi’s military system are bought from other country, their most advance oil processing plants are all western technology, if not run by western trained engineers. All their keys national security points depend on west compliance. Major weapons suppliers are tripping on each others when Saudi wants anything.
So far Saudi has maintained their true skill: soft power based on oil. Bush, Saudi’s base, clash with prince Turki, $150/barrel oil are Saudi’s true power. Saudi is essential part of global economy.
The hardest part to guess is what saudi’s upper leadership have in mind, so far they see no need for even thinking about nuclear, but if they want nuclear, they will get nuclear. Saudi genuinely believe in soft power. But if Israel and Iran start waving nuclear, Saudi will be the first to have one. They will have to restore balance of power.
with US compliance, they will get it in less than 5 yrs. Without, slightly longer.
Saudi’s is not on anybody’s watch list, they can import entire set of isotopic plant if they want from Belgium or netherland. They can buy any commercial vacuum pump money can buy from germany, japan or russia, if not US company. Country like belgium, netherland or germany are not going to jeopardize their energy and financial stability over some dual use technology. Saudi doesn’t need to develop their own technology and they are more than capable to run complex chemical engineering system. Pakistan, France, Sweden, Russia or China will be more than happy to tell them how to make warhead.
Without US compliance? Pakistan, Japan, North Korea, Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, France, China, Russia are more than happy to do business with Saudi for various reason.
Saudi is major global player, they are key player in world banking and a major middle east market. Getting 5 CDs ROM filled with technical data, training session, and few tons of equipments are trivial. They don’t need to figure out how to stabilize highspeed rotor, they just buy a complete set of assembly.
Japan, South Korean or Taiwan will be glad to tell them pretty much anything about advance engineering and electronic.
Hell they can clone the entire Pakistani’s nuclear research overnight in exchange for few billion dollars.
Basically, they have access to key technology and doesn’t need to research everything from scratch. They don’t need clandestine program, they can do it in the open and nobody will mess with them. They won’t get the latest technology, but more than advance enough. Whatever Pakistan, North Korea, Brazil and Argentina can do, they can do better overnight.
I almost forgot this bit. Bush did offer Saudi nuke. (like I say. if Saudi wants nuke, half the planet will be tripping on each other giving them nuke.)
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/05/16/saudis-to-bush-so-sorry-but-that-uranium-looks-tempting/?mod=WSJBlog
So, where do we stand? The Saudis can’t help, Bush national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters. “What they’re saying to us is…Saudi Arabia does not have customers that are making requests for oil that they are not able to satisfy.” Which does raise the question—isn’t the U.S. a customer of Saudi oil?
But the Riyadh meeting wasn’t entirely fruitless. Despite coming up empty-handed on its oil request, the White House said it will offer Saudi Arabia more help protecting its oil infrastructure from terrorist attacks. Oh, and the U.S. will also give Saudi Arabia civilian nuclear technology so that Saudi Arabia can jumpstart its domestic energy transformation. From the White House this morning:
Curious:
I am afraid we have to agree to disagree.
Fundamentally, I think, our difference lies in the weight we each assign to the human element. I believe SA does not have the human capital to utilize whatever hardware its leaders choose to buy. I believe that there isn’t the minimum number of competent Saudi Arabian technicians and engineers to design and build thermal power station let alone a nuclear enrichment facility.
This is my opinion and perhaps I am wrong.
ah, but if the saudi would to do uranium enrichment with US technology (assuming centrifuge, instead of laser separation), there isn’t going to be much “human element” needed.
Saudi can simply send a a group of engineers to be trained in top university to run the line. And get best commercial and academic engineers to work on new line. The line itself will be built by best chemical and industrial engineers money can buy. No amateur hour for sure. (think dudes from MIT leading US-German team of engineers and korean construction company.)
The rotor and tube won’t be touched by human hands at all. It will be fully assembled and installed by robot inside clean room. There isn’t going to be imperfection of contamination. Saudi will get a perfect large diameter rotor working right from day one. It will be bigger than anything out there. (I mean, it is an old techniques. Nothing new.) The saudi won’t start with 10-15 inch tubes, they will start with improved early 00’s design probably bigger than 3 feet. (composite built by robot is very recent technology, nobody has it except few US and japanese companies)
so, welding, assembly, operation will all be automatic. Minimal human error. Human role will be only for monitoring operation. Enrichment is a straight forward chemical process afteral. One can train a monkey to push the button. 3-5 yrs at most.
design and research on the other hand are out of the reach of Saudi.
Heated discussion on Iran’s last rocket launch. As usual, a rocket launch always makes everybody busy calculating something … (biggest surprised, the liquid engine performance is much improved if the rocket is 2 stage. that means Iran has passed the original scud limitation.)
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2181/why-would-a-2-stage-safir-be-surprising
Say the rocket has 20 tons of usable propellant in the first stage, 2 tons structure and residuals, and 4 tons upper stage. Then the vacuum delta-v is 2.6*1.466 = 3.81 km/sec, assuming a not-unreasonable figure of 2.6 km/sec for a Scud-derived missile, with improvements since the 1960’s.
If the second stage has a residual weight fraction of .14 and exhaust velocity of 2.8 km/sec (similar technology, longer nozzle), then the vacuum delta-v is 5.5 km/sec. Total delta-v is then 9.3 km/sec.
This is enough to get into low earth orbit. I’m assuming a residual mass fraction of about 9% for the engines, structure, and residuals of both stages, and 200 kg extra on the upper stage for guidance and control, and payload. The upper stage is shorter and fatter than the lower, giving better mass ratios for structure, but the nozzle on the engine will be longer, and it’s always harder to make a light structure on something small, because of minimum gauge thickness, etc.
If vacuum delta-v of the first stage is about 3.8 km/sec, then it should attain about 2.6 km/sec at burnout, with a maximum cloudtop-to-cloudtop range of 675 km, so it might fall 700-800 km downrange, depending on the details of the trajectory.
I don’t know why a two stage to orbit liquid-propellant rocket is so surprising. Sputnik was launched with a stage-and-a-half configuration.
curious:
I think you have entered the realm of fantasy with you robotic factory etc.
However, the more fantastic is the quaint notion of Saudi engineers; seeing is believing.
As far as I have been able to fathom, the major heart-burn of the US & EU with a nuclear capable Iran is that then Iran cannot be subject to the implicit threat of an air war (largely waged by US).
Likewise for the missile capability – you got to war with your neigbour and finally kill him but you loose and eye or a hand. Some would call that a victory – others a disaster.
Those idiots who put such notions on the table, together with their illustrious predecessors who aided and abetted the rape of the Chemical Weapons Treaty by Iraq, have made the world more dangerous for themselves as well as for others.
They should have taken the honorable way out and fallen on their own swords rather than lurking around in this or that dark corner of US& EU – pushing the same insane policies.
I think Iran biggest problem is creating perfectly aligned rotor assembly and centrifuge tube, right? Because the control is done manually. (eg. Iran cannot get automatic composite fiber taping machine for eg. Iran is on ban list for high precision milling machine. beyond design, those are next big engineering problem.)
as for plant operation, isotopic separation plant is a dumb/fairly simple chemical processing plant.
(compare this to multi batch pharmaceutical line, specialized polymer or sensitive bioprocessing. now those are fickle machines that needs continuous baby sitting.)
anyway, robotic. see this composite machine. now imagine several order of magnitude more precise + temperature and full atmospheric control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GDqxnahwbk
(ever been to hardrive rotor assembly plant? inside seagate plant (those rotor spin at 7-15K, all of them has to work properly. granted they are not 30-50K rpm like high performance centrifuge. but same thing really… All those are machine assembly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4qBl8x3tC0
—————–
regarding nuclear weapon.
I for one personally think, the only use coming out of nuclear weapon is this:
a lot of smart people work on it. and when the project is over, finally the nation will wake up. That this whole nuke thing is fairly useless as a weapon of war. It won’t bring peace. It only brings the conflict to different level. (see past experiences US-soviet, Pakistan-india, etc) Peace and security still have to be sought, it won’t come automatically after one has nuke.
so, all those new technology essentially will be a lesson learn and confident building strategy. Basically a nation grows up and becomes more than simply following nationalistic instinct.
Peace won’t come magically just because a nation has nuke.
As far as I have been able to fathom, the major heart-burn of the US & EU with a nuclear capable Iran is that then Iran cannot be subject to the implicit threat of an air war (largely waged by US).
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 14 February 2009 at 12:36 PM
Yes there is that. But the biggest one, Iranian progress underlines a fact that the world is much bigger place than US ideologue and politicos want to accept. It is not about the war really (we do have tons of war every where afteral.) But that there are ways beyond east/west plus unipolar jibe. The idiot in charge can’t handle it. So everybody puts it in best fit known process. It is more about how dare Iran making progress defying effort to contain it. Afteral we won the cold war. It exposes the limitation of “unipolar” myth. “we thought we are king of the hill, after soviet collapse.”)
What’s worst, Iran actually plays along with this game. The east-west game, instead of trying to find its own role and future.
for eg. I bet Iran top leadership hasn’t put time answering this important question: suppose Iran has nuclear. then what? what long term policy should Iran have? What regional role and geopolitical plan should Iran adopt.
This is important unless Iran wants to repeat past mistake of endless cold war arm race, perpetual flux of shifting strategic equilibrium and geopolitical balance.
Once Iran declare nuke, that weapon will demand much bigger responsibility, political skill, leadership maturity.. nevermind much larger national economic footprint and growth stability.
The game will be much more complex. The whole thing won’t stop just because there is nuke.
so you see, we all trapped in same myth, confusing technology as the answer of all world problem. Technology is not the ultimate answer, it’s only a tool to solve problem and challenge. The challenge itself still need to be answered properly.
Curious:
The threat comes from Israel (and also from the United States) and not from Iran, in my opinion.
US indulges Israel’s fantasy of being a nuclear power in order to scare every single state within the range of Israel’s delivery platforms. These include Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Malta, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia etc.
Without the Israel’s nuclear threat, and Don America’s offer of protection, the southern flank of NATO would disintegrate. What reason is there for Greece, Turkey, Italy, Malta to stay in NATO now that USSR exists no longer? Where is the threat to them?
Likewise for the Arab states that out of fear of Israel’s WMD have to kowtow to every fantasy project that comes out of Washington D.C. This fear is carefully cultivated by the United States to bind these states to US policy positions in Levant & the Persian Gulf – always pleading impotence in the face of the usual suspects: Jewish lobbies, AIPAC, etc.
Without Israel’s nuclear weapons the Arab states would not need US protection – they could chart an independent course. [Iran quit the protection racket of Don America 30 years ago and thus subjected to the normal vilification that one would experience in these types of circumstances.]
Clever people, the Americans. Their useful idiots being the leaders of state of Israel (a.k.a. the Zionist entity).
Really & truly, if US & EU desire peace in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean they would disarm Israel – in my opinion.
Babak:
Thanks for your recent comments. You raise a number of interesting points, and it’s a pleasure to read what you write.
I think this is especially noteworthy:
Really & truly, if US & EU desire peace in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean they would disarm Israel – in my opinion.,
This would be a noble goal, and while it may seem infeasible politically, it would go a long way towards ending an arms race in the middle east.
We speak a lot about the need for democratic governments to demonstrate “transparency”, but having all of our leaders publicly subscribing to an obvious delusion (namely that Iran is the nuclear problem in the middle east) is not transparency. It’s quite the opposite…
I think that open discussion of the Israeli nuclear arsenal is one of the best first steps the world can take towards a path leading to a better world for the people of the middle east.
It’s high time we stopped pretending that Israel is some enlightened beacon of democracy in that region: it’s closer to being a theocracy that is armed to the teeth via a rogue nuclear weapons program, and we should think and act according to that simple reality.
Likewise for the Arab states that out of fear of Israel’s WMD have to kowtow to every fantasy project that comes out of Washington D.C. This fear is carefully cultivated by the United States to bind these states to US policy positions in Levant & the Persian Gulf – always pleading impotence in the face of the usual suspects: Jewish lobbies, AIPAC, etc.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 16 February 2009 at 04:26 PM
yeah, we all read the paper, but those are things you can’t control. The best you can do is read the situation correctly, anticipate move, and prepare.
From where I am sitting, I really don’t think Iran leadership comprehend what having a nuke means. It won’t be “the world will finally accept and open up to Iran”, we got the big one. but most likely it will be “omg, the crazies now have nuke. prepare counter strategy.”
that’s just one. another scenario, if everybody has nuke, does Iran have the capability to react correctly in the event of nuclear launch? You are not going to have the luxury contemplating if a radar bleep is thermonuclear head and you should retaliate or not. You want a cold war with Israel, then you will get a cold war with Israel. As a nation you have to do soul searching, figuring out each apocalyptic scenarios and what they mean.
You are going to have complete radar warning, deep intel, if not a “red phone” with Israel, 24 hrs ready launch, counter strike, armageddon scenario, etc. that’s just simple direct scenario. Now add political transition, misunderstanding, misreading, a wacko leaders itching to hit the button, or the other side has the clever idea to do sneak attack and fail… Welcome to thermonuclear war game.
Iran hasn’t contemplated this!
Like I say, a lot of very smart people has thought about this first time around. An entire branch of mathematics exploded to explore the possibilities. This is a very precise, quick and deadly game. You are not going to find what you want in it. But you can’t get out. I am sure your mathematicians already calculate the equilibrium point by now, given various known variables.
The game itself will devour a country’s soul first before anybody launching an attack.
Why do you think we are so paranoid about somebody else having nuke?
curious:
You wrote: “Why do you think we are so paranoid about somebody else having nuke?”
That is because we are in the State of Fall. Every thing flows from that once you understand it.
To overcome it you have to practice courage of highest kind: Be Not Afraid” as Jesus, the Blessed Son of Mary, stated in many of his hadiths.
religion won’t save anybody on nuclear arms race. It’s all analysis, modeling and strategies.
that is why it is so scary. that is why even until now we still talks about missile defense, mirv, advance radar, newer submarines, etc.
but don’t believe me. do your own calculation and modeling.