As Dseid pointed out, there are many things, well short of a thermonuclear explosion, that a proxy of Iran could do in Israel with fissile material.
Given the magic dust, it doesn’t require extra-special imagination or determination to render large lengths of the land toxic and uninhabitable for a while.
Which would also mean rendering it uninhabitable by the Palestinians . . .
Say, there’s an idea! 
Where does that figure come from… ? Wikipedia has figures from FY2004 that put that size of the US Army at just over 1m. Presumably a large large chunk of these (and an even larger chunk of the “front-line” units) are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not that I doubt that if it came down to a “life and death” situation (i.e. “we have nukes and we are launching in 24hrs”), we could scrape together enough forces to invade Iran but it would involve a HUGE human and financial cost, not least because Iraq would almost certainly “boil over” the moment bombs start to fall.
My personal favourite solutions are on record. They involve flooding Iran with miniature satellite dishes and inundating the population with rock music and porn.
There is an old short story by Asimov written before the advent of communication satellites. In this story the US government is worried that the Soviets will launch satellites and corrupt good wholesome Americans with pornographic movies on satellite TV.
Unfortunately Iranian kids already have those things. Iran is not North Korea, there is obviously some repression and censorship, but the urban “youth” are just as modernised as in any other devloping nation.
Don’t forget the current president is a bit a nut-job, but he’s democratically elected nut-job. People will elect real douche-bags when they feel threatened. An additional complication is that that previous president WAS a reformer, but failed to deliver on his promises due to interference by the conservative controlled Theocracy and parliment.
Great solution, Bryan…I must admit that I hadn’t thought of those 3 suggestions.
Also (from what I’ve read in previous threads in this forum), in Iran the president is not quite as powerful as the president is in the U.S. He’s more of a quasi-figurehead, with a big bully pulpit but few important powers or duties, like the governor of Texas. 
Heck, flood them with broadcasts of Yentl and other pro-Jewish fare. The best result I’d hope for is to so infuriate the mullahs that they start ranting and raving and undermine their credibility among their own people.
And the porn? Dark-skinned women in traditional Iranian dress in lesbian threeways moaning in Farsi, so there’s no way they can just write it off as western decadence.
Bow-chicka-wa-lalalalalalalalalaaaaa!
Iran is entitled to nuclear power according to the UN. There has been no proven attempt to obtain weapons grade plutonium. Scott Ritter was on tv the other day and said they are having big trouble getting it to work. Our clainm that Iran is seeking help on the black marlet is true. We closed off legitimate ways for them to obtain it. What they are getting from Pakistan is incomplete and unworkable. He says that Iran has a limited amount of oil compared to other mideast countries. They want to be a petroleum exporter as long as they can. They are trying to use less oil. Many Iranians believe Bushes plan is to get regime change in their country. By whatever means necessary.
Here’s a thread from SkyscraperCity showing the city of Tehran (warning: many, many pictures). Looks like the “westernisation” thing is already working…
US army is only part of the US militray. Check the wiki article for US military, they have the total number of active and reserve at some 2.3 million.
Numbers I’ve seen for troops in Iraq are ~130k. Numbers in Afganistan are much less, ~20k. Again I don’t know if these include support troops in Kuwait and on ships in the Gulf, but even if not I think it’s fair to say that the number of troops involved in the two operations at any one time (including troops about to be rotated in or just rotating out) are easily fewer then half a million, leaving almost two million troops for a hypothetical attack on Iran. And of course an attack on Iran would almost certainly involve sending a lot of troops to Afganistan, Iraq, Kuwait and the Gulf so troops already there could presumably pull at least some double duty and support the invasion as well.
No doubt invading Iran would be a pain and streach the US military even more the it already is. I’m just respoinding to Bob’s statement:
This is my same question: how much of Ahmadedjine’s rhetoric is meant to be taken seriously? I mean when he talks about "driving the Zionist entity in to the sea’-is he really meaning this? or is the tough talk intended for domestic consumption only? I can’t imagine that the ordinary iranian wants any part of a war with israel-they suffered horribly in the war with Iraq (millions of pre-teen age kids were killed). And i just don’t see why an Iranian is so all fired up over the palestinian cause.
But then, Nasser made the mistake of shooting his mouth of-look at what happened to him.
You don’t need fissile material for a radiological bomb, just some radioactive elements. Of course the best way to get those are in a reactor, but there are other sources (radium could be gained from Iran’s stockpile of natural Uranium, for example). So Iran’s nuclear program is certainly not being created with the intent to make radiological weapons, since they could probably do so without (I also imagine that Iran could just agree to the UN regulated reactor and get their materials from that, does anyone know if UN regulations monitors all radioactive materials created in a plant or just potential nuke components?)
And radiological bombs decay down into uselessness within a matter of weeks, so it would be very difficult for Iran to get one to their proxies to smuggle into Israel such a device quickly enough for it to be effective.
Finally, radiological bombs have never been used and how effective they would be is pretty doubious. It would be a hell of a lot easier just to give Hamas or Hezbollah a ton of hi-explosives or a chemical weapon to smuggle into the center of Tel-Aviv if destruction and terror is their aim.
I thought the US was handling the Iran situation the way they were supposed to handle Iraq. Is it working?
Regards,
Shodan
Of course not. For one thing, I don’t know anyone who recommended handling Saddam by labeling him as part of an imaginary Axis of Evil. I also don’t think we were supposed to handle Iraq by rattling sabers after having tied ourselves down militarily so we can’t back it up. As well, I certainly don’t think we should have handled Iraq by shredding our reptuation so no one trusts or respects us, and destroying all our political capital so no one wants to help us. I also don’t think anyone said we should handle Iraq by making vaguely nuclear threats against it, and then expecting them to give up the quest for one of their own.
So no, we aren’t handling Iran like we were supposed handle Iraq; we’re just screwing up again. Inevitable, given the that we have the Incarnation of Incompetence in the Oval Office.
I quite like the idea of bombing Iran with Western toys
Of course, the educated Iranians are no problem, it is the young uneducated ones.
I don’t think the ranting of that mad president is solely for domestic consumption, he is whipping up support from surrounding malcontents, and trying to bait the USA
That bombing with goodies idea could be developed, both the UK and Germany were pretty good at mocking propaganda in WWII
It might be an idea to revive old techniques
I can think of two lines of assault, one would be Mullah mocking, things like cartoons of a Mullah pissing on Iran, photo-shops of Mullahs wearing womens underwear and Mullahs with asses heads.
Another would be pointing out inconsistencies, like the ban on images and the way in which they /do/ have images - also some of the nastier bits of the Koran.
One could suggest that the Mullahs are swiping oil revenue, and that they are living the life of Riley on the quiet. Also one could put out black propaganda, like Mullahs wanting to abolish the use of electricity because it was invented after 600ce.
I’ve a suspicion that one could play on real fears, something like a sequence showing that nutter baiting Uncle Sam, baring is arse at him and saying ‘come and get me’, followed by Sam getting larger and finally using a fly swat on him.
Probably better to stick to mockery.
my emphasis
But who will stick around to be rat in that lab, when the readings spike?
I don’t know if I can swallow this. Back in the day, that may have been the case. Now, there would be too many people calling for a diplomatic solution,a measured response, a cooling off period, etc…
And that would be for an attack on the US.
An attack on another country would receive a more moderate response.
My 2 cents.
hh
More people then would be around if the terrorists just used proven, much cheaper hi-explosives or chemical weapons to kill everyone in the lab.