This guy say’s Iran’s scared. I’m not so sure. They’ve called Bush’s bluff before. America’s not going to attack Iran unless the Iranians do something particularly stupid, and for the Israelis to attack Iran’s nuclear sites would mean them crossing Iraqi airspace which is currently under American and British control, and even if it weren’t, at a range of 1000 miles or so, they’d likely need fuel tankers which are hardly stealthy.
America won’t be out of Iraq until 2009 at the earliest, so a ‘warning shot’ is a little premature.
And if Iran were to do something particularly stupid, then we’d be seeing large areas of radioactivity.
So, am I missing something or has this guy been dreaming?
Here’s the problem. Why would you depend on people to be rational actors at all times? A few years ago if someone told me the Bush administration would invade Iraq on trumped up charges of trying to build a nuclear program and having weapons of mass destruction I would have told them they were crazy. After all, it just seems illogical to risk so many American lives, spend so much money, and risk alienating everyone in the region. It’s probably not a good idea to assume that everyone is going to be a rational actor. Sometimes people just do really stupid things.
At the risk of appearing a condescending dink, I remind that “Iran” is not an entity. Fer sure, there are people in Iran who fear the US, and fear an attack. There are others who would look upon that as a glorious opportunity to affirm their faith in Allah by getting their butts blown off. Then there are the sane realists, who think such an attack unlikely by reason of insanity, but are nonetheless worried due to our national fit of hysteria since 9/11.
However, it really only takes one, maybe two, idiots to start a war, and we already have ours.
Scared? Hell, they’d love for us to start bombing them. The second we start unleashing hell on a mission over Tehran is the moment we lose. Even if their entire military is completely destroyed they will still win in the ensuing chaos.
Guess who the biggest winner of our clusterfuck in Iraq will be anyway…yep, Iran. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Bush and Cheney are Iranian moles. Didn’t anyone ever tell these asses that the Middle East is the grave of empires? There are plenty of examples to study. The British were far and away much better than us at dealing with the locals when it came to imperial adventure abroad, and they couldn’t cut it in the end. And so what, just because we have jets we can do it differently? Apparently these guys haven’t studied asymmetrical warfare at all. As if the last six years didn’t make that blazingly obvious.
But yeah, the Iranian civilians probably aren’t looking forward to it. You know, they get TV over there too. They have newspaper and everything. They probably have sleepless nights when they see Bush talking about how they’re murderers, gonna cause nuclear holocaust, and how they must be confronted.
Personally, I’m looking forward to it. Everyone needs a little excitement, ya know? Green cities on CNN, 10$ gas, our army being swallowed in the sands of Mesopotamia…admit it, it’d be fun. Right now it’s just a long, slow bleed. We need a big event to rubberneck.
The only reason why we haven’t already attacked Iran is because Iraq didn’t just fall at our feet in love like the neocons thought; it’s been a target all along. And what makes you think we’d stop the Israelis ? An attack of some kind is nearly inevitable; the only question is how far it will go; air or land ? Nuclear or non-nuclear ?
You should always fear a nuclear armed nation ruled by lunatic conquerers, and that’s America.
The playbook for Iran to deter an attack by allied forces has been to make it expensive to attack for ambiguous gain. During the Cuban crisis the airforce and navy stated that they would be able to take out ninety percent of the missiles but that ground invasion would be needed to deal with the remaining missiles. This on a relatively small Island ninety miles off the coast of the United States.
Iran has seen Syria’s airforce get creamed in 82 and Desert Storm in 91, they got the message. Their national assets are dispersed and hardened across a wide swath of territory making it a herculean effort both to locate , identify and finally to destroy , and destroy so throughly that it would not be worth the time or effort to rebuild the program.
So in the middle of high intensity watches, the ones where your expecting to see a mass raid at some point, an Israeli airforce strike force saunters in unseen and hits a target thats not supposed to exist.
IF anything , it sounds like Iranian Generals made boasts and promises and the Iranian govt just found out there not worth shit, the question thats making them scared is that do they still have time.
I agree with Der Trihs, although I think he thinks that this is some moral evil. I really don’t care what gets bombed in Iran. If we have to take out some reactors, I’d rather do it quick and clean; the Israelis are good a that.
One other factor, however, is that it’s honestly not at all clear just how corrupt the Mullahs of Iran have become. Some sources imply that they’re rather greedy and hedonistic as far as it goes, and may ahve been softened by the passage of time from their revolutionary rhetoric. Likewise, many old members are dying off.
Because they’d get the blame. There would be no ‘plausible deniability’.
Actually, I’ve just realised how they could do it: go via Saudi Arabia, flying tight with a disguised (not necessarily physically disguised) tanker aircraft so the fighter-bombers don’t show up on radar. On the way back, they pick up a disguised tanker aircraft going the other way.
We’re not going to take out anything in Iran “quick and clean.” Not from the air, anyway.
The first reason is simple: some of these facilities are massively hardened against aerial attack and may require tactical nuclear weapons to destroy/damage.
The second reason, of course, is that any aerial bombardment of Iran will have repercussions which both you and I will feel in the days after.
One note of minor concern: if we attack a nuclear research site, we use, like, bombs. Shit that blows up. And we blow up a place wherein (we are solemnly assured) are deposited a number of very exotic elements: plutonium, uranium, strontium. Which we explode into dust, if our plans are fruitful. Plutonium, uranium, strontium dust, scattered to the unheeding wind, drifting and settling…wherever.
An environmental impact statement might be in order.
Solemnly assured? Well, yeah, it’s not like the Iranians are shy about their nuclear program. The IAEA has inspected it. They’ve already reached the stage where they can enrich uranium, which is needed at a certain level for an energy program. I don’t think they’re in a position to start producing plutonium yet.
But if we dropped an earth penetrating tactical nuke on Nantaz, I don’t think the contents of the centrifuges would reach the surface. I think it’d just be buried under 100 feet of rock and concrete. I could be wrong though.
As I understand it, you can’t really do that. If you want to blast your way into a deep bunker or whatever, you’re talking about one or more megaton range weapons. With lots and lots of fallout.
Naaaah. All you need is a solid nosecone and a delayed detonation, Red. Think of it as a giant arrow that penetrates, then detonates. I rather suspect some calculations could be made as to how far you need to penetrate before the blast is focused downwards rather than upwards. Of course, conventional warheads may do almost as good a job.
I distinctly recall claims that that idea doesn’t actually work, from earlier discussions on attacking Iraq.
Are there any actual experts on this subject on the Straight Dope ?
I’d also like to say that at least politically speaking, it’s not going to matter much if you use one of these so-called tactical nukes or a great big multi megaton H-bomb. We’ll still be known as the country that opened fire with nukes.