or galvanize international opinion against the US
Or perhaps, they do know how to negotiate with the USA because they learned their lesson from Kim Jong Il. Step 1: First, make sure you have your own nukes.
Guess again. I highly doubt that Iran is “shit scared.” An all-out attack on them by either the US or its proxy, Israel (or is tha the other way around?) would surely bring chaos into the whole region – not to mention the very likely posibility of Chinese and/or Russian involment. And Pakistan! Don’t forget nuclear-power, Pakistan.
If anything, we should all be shit scared of the madness of King George, his cronies and their utterly delusional plans.
WW-III anyone?
I tried to find something recent on Iran --but the PNAC website does not seem to have been updated since 2005. I wonder why not?
You don’t negotiate with America; it doesn’t work. Saddam failed because success was impossible. The only thing that deters America is sheer force, which is why they want nukes; why, in fact, it is the Iranian government’s clear duty to build or acquire nukes.
WAG. They probably regret having put it out t here for all the world to see – there goes the “conspiracy theory” rebuttal. Thus any further actions they may have in store are likely to be kept “in-house.”
Still, it’s not hard to deduce that they have a huge hard-on for Iran as it fits into they “global hegemony” agenda quite nicely.
Afghanistan/Iraq…and Iran. Quite the trifecta.
You’ll get no argument from me. Any nation who sees (beyond the bellicose rethoric) two carrier fleets parked just outside their territorial waters would be insane NOT to arm themselves to the teeth and implement as devastating a defensive plan as possible.
Helps too, that Iran is not exactly cash-deprived.
:rolleyes:
You’re quite the little Anti-Zionist, aren’t you?
But it must be clear even to them, by now, that occupying Iran would be impossible. We just don’t have enough troops.
They might be hoping to create a situation desperate enough to justify a draft. Yes, that’s nuts - but so are they.
How exactly does that work?
The President gets us into a war we can’t win, with the secret purpose of forcing congress to reinstate the draft. Except why don’t they just tell him to stuff it and refuse to fund the war? And why the fuck does the president want to reinstate the draft? What exactly does that accomplish for him?
A draft would take an act of congress. A losing war…like what we’re involved with in, oh, say, Iraq…doesn’t force congress to enact a draft. Instead it galvanizes public opinion against the war and eventually continuation of the war become impossible, if only because eventually enough people who would be willing to vote to continue the war have been voted out of office.
Your theory that Bush and Cheney look over a list of options and invariably pick the one that’s the most evil and stupid is just pathetic. Even Stalin and Mao and Pinochet and Mussolini* didn’t enact evil policies just for the sake of doing evil. Evil and stupid people don’t do evil and stupid things for fun but because they’re trying and failing to accomplish some goal that doesn’t look evil or stupid–to them.
*Note ostentatious avoidance of a certain name
Not much. I never said that it would work; I said that that might be what passes for their plan.
So far it’s been pretty accurate. They are evil and stupid.
The big problem is that Bush has already threatened Iran; Iran called his bluff and Bush did nothing. They think he’s a paper tiger, but he’s much more. Coming towards the end of his presidency, he’s got nothing to lose. If Iran were to do something monumentally stupid (e.g. another 9-11), even by one of its proxies, I can fully forsee Bush acting as if Iran were a nuclear power and simply glassing the country. In the very short term there would be widespread shock, but most governments would have a severe case of the shits and in the medium and long term America would benefit substantially.
Suppose; the Iranian regime is actually unpopular-it is on the verge of being overthrown by a coalition of students, liberals, and military officers, who want an end to religious rule. Would Ahmedinejad be so foolish as to keep making those speeches (calling for the anihillation of israel and the US)? I don’t at all understand the iranian posturing-it smacks of deperation. Would the US be wise to pick a fight with iran? no way-but keeping a bit of pressure on the regime might well allow a liberal government to come to power.
Would help. And in point of fact, Ahmadinejad isn’t very popular with the Iranian people right now - Khameini doesn’t want him to be involved with the nuclear program, and the latest local elections in Iran were interpreted as a rebuke of his aggressive attitude. So bombing Iran and telling the Iranians “we don’t like your President” when they don’t much care for him either would be completely moronic. And he has no real power anyway.
The worst case scenario would reduce Iran to Iraq-style chaos. That’s two nations of a combined 100 million people, give or take. (Also, Iran borders Afghanistan.) If you think the Iraq war did a lot to help terrorism, imagine that.
I think it would be more likely. Its called “appealing to the base”. When Bush is trouble he pulls the “gay marriage and stem cells” card, when Ahmedinejad is in trouble he pulls the “lets destroy Isreal” card.
I think the best thing to do would be to keep out. Just because Iranians are reformist does not make they love the U.S. Probably the best way to doom any anti-Ahmedinejad campaign would be to make it look like they were doing the US’s bidding.
But to the OP:
An attack could get VERY bad:
Firstly the attacks themselves would not be a walk in the park. I sure ever since the Osirak attack (which was attacked by Iran as well as Isreal, incidentally) the first design requirement of all Iranian nuclear plants has been “must survive US/Israeli airstrikes”. And they have had alot petro-dollars to set about it.
The Straight of Hormuz (through which 90% of the gulf’s oil passes) is effectively controlled by Iran. They have all sorts of ways to shut this down. That would decimate the world oil market.
The largest parties in the Iraqi government (SCIRI and Dawa ) , and large portions of the Shiite population, are very pro-Iranian. At worst Iran could turn the anti-US insurgency from a primarily Sunni one, with some Shia extremists taking pot-shots, to an all out war with both communities, including large sections of the Iraqi Army (not to mention widespread infiltration by the Iranian army).
Iran also has a relatively sophisticated missile arsenal. For all the hyping of the Patriot-style missile defense, its not obvious how successful they would be. And if Iran decides to tip them with non-conventional warheads there is no telling the kind of damage they could cause amongst civilian populations. If that happened in an Israeli city there is now telling how far their retaliation would go, including their nuclear arsenal. And if Isreal DID use their nukes would the rest of the Middle East set around and take it ? At the very least we could end up with a 1970s style oil embargo.
Stateside, 2008 would see Republican politicians declared an endangered species, verging on extinction. The country wants more military action about as much as New Orleans wants another hurricane. I don’t have cites handy, but I’ve read some congresscritters saying that the current AUMF does not authorize strikes against Iran. Bush would argue his CIC powers, but that’s going to cause a shitstorm in the polls. If Iran were to react by counterattacking or otherwise escalating the conflict, I think you may hear some serious talk about impeachment.
Only way I see Congress granting a new AUMF against Iran is if there’s another major terrorist attack that can be tied to Iran. Even then, I think there’d have to be strong evidence that it really was Iran.
In a purely military sense, we can destroy Iran’s military. It would be tougher than it was against Iraq, and we’d take more casualties, but the outcome is not in doubt. If we did that, we’d then dismantle/destroy anything that might be able to be used in making a bomb. We’d also have another highly unstable country to attempt to rebuild, with an growing insurgency problem.
The big question is who else is coming to the party? China may decide to take out a few satellites and go for Taiwan. NK may decide to head South, or just nuke something because they don’t like being ignored. Israel probably throws a kegger. France will surrender to CNN. Germany will likely be pissed. Even the Brits may frown sternly in our general direction.
I’ve read the above posts with amusement, and agreement.
The USA looks very difficult to negotiate with, and also those that need to do the negotiation don’t really understand the Western mindset.
The Iran/ N Korea stuff does smell of black propaganda, especially as it has not been repeated. The BBC World Service is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and I’ve definitely seen signs that it has been used to ‘float ideas’, for example they did charm offensives on both Syria and Iran a few months ago.
My hunch is that the BBC were directly broadcasting to N Korea and Iran.
In some ways, the solution seems to be that these pariah States should hire Western public relations companies - crazy as it sounds, a team of Israeli inspectors examining Iran’s nuclear facilities would make good copy, as would some cartoons depicting Ahmadinegad and bush as Southpark (?) characters.
The unexpected, and ridicule can be very effective.
47 years of U.S. pressure on Castro’s regime have only served to strengthen his hold on power.
But as has already been shown - the story originated with the Daily Telegraph.