Heaven forbid a peace scare should break out.
^^This mostly.
Israel can saber rattle better than most as they have shown repeatedly that they will take preemptive action they feel is in their national defense interests.
Bush probably loves the idea too letting the Israelis have at it. In Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech he managed to go after the one country that was the least of the worries. Now he has left the US in a position where it is far less able to deal with issues like Iran.
We also have firm pledges of commitment from Obama and McCain towards Israel so they likely feel emboldened.
How much the Israelis can damage Iran’s nuclear program I have no idea. They have gotten smart and done a lot to protect themselves. But the Israelis are no pushover either.
Hopefully Iran will view this as a credible threat and will become more diplomatic. One can only hope.
I wonder what diplomacy they might undertake, when one nation urges another to attack a third, on the presumption of what they might very well do at some future date. This throws the whole idea of “defense” right out the window. At least the insanity of the Iraq invasion was based on the fantasy of a direct threat to the US!
As much as I admire the Israelis for their pluck and verve, this is a bridge too far.
Well, are you supposed to wait for an attack to be sure that is what your enemies are about? In particular are you supposed to wait for a nuclear attack?
There is no question that Iran is overtly belligerent towards Israel. Iran’s leaders have publicly stated their wish to “wipe Israel off the map”. Just rhetoric Israel should ignore? Iran has been deemed the #1 state sponsor of terrorists in the world and a large part of that is aimed at Israel. Till now though it has not risen to the level that Israel would preemptively attack.
However, Iran with nuclear weapons is a whole other ball game. This is not the fantasy that was Iraq getting nukes. Iran most definitely has a nuclear program and I do not think anyone really denies it.
I can hardly blame the Israelis for getting edgy about this.
I have a very conscious problem with your implication that Muslims are either cowards or incompetants. Do you think they have no pride? No will? No surface-to-air missiles?
Besides… who’s “we”, paleface?
They don’t, huh? So tell me, how’s that little squabble in Iraq going?
That’s not what I asked. It’s a hard question to confront, though, so I won’t press it any further.
Does anyone here think there can be a diplomatic solution?
The Iranian government survives in large part (with its populace) by fanning the flames of hatred for Westerners and Zionism. Practically a guiding principle on all their foreign policy.
Pakistan on their border has nukes and that is not a terribly stable government.
They saw how the US steam rolled Iraq…twice…with a conventional army. I forget which national leader over there said it but something to the effect that the lesson for them was they needed nukes as that would be the only defense they could have that would dissuade the US (I paraphrased that but it was along those lines).
Iran probably sees itself as THE regional power. Little stands in its way except Israel and perhaps Saudi Arabia. Nukes would certainly aid them in that goal.
In short, I would expect them to do everything in their power to obtain nuclear weapons. Any diplomacy and promises to play nice will only be done to engage in a shell game and keep others off their backs till they succeed in their goal.
Am I missing something?
Not exactly on topic, but I was talking about Iran with my sons’ teacher the other day. She said the Persian community in SoCal is stumping hard for John McCain, in the hopes that he does something stupid, like blasting the government of Iran into kingdom come. Seriously- it’s all over the Persian-language TV stations and newspapers.
She says most of them can never go back to their birth country, and would whole-heartedly support US military action against the Iranian government.
Interesting. She is Canadian and Christian now, BTW, but going back to Iran this summer to see her aging mother. She is scared to death, but being a dutiful daughter can be a bitch that way…
Muslims (although i’m talking about Arabs… hope you don’t think they’re the same thing) are neither cowards, incompetants, nor without pride. They’re just vastly underpowered against the armies of America, Israel, and anyone else who’s willing to join in. Therefore, we can bully them around with these precision strike insults to their sovereignty all we want, and unless we really start to humiliate them, they’re not going to fight back. That’d simply be suicide.
They fight as amateur terrorist, but will never in an official capacity.
Maybe you don’t understand this fact, being all gung ho about your enemy. (Though i’m confused by your story… are you an Arab taking my words as a personal insult, or an Israeli with a false impression of reality?) But our worries about Iran and ex-Iraq are all understood from the wrong end. The only thing we worry about is that they’ll stop being so weak as to keep taking our shit. Even if they get nukes they obvious won’t use them, unless we invade.
Middle East countries have far more to fear from us, than we do from them. Don’t you know this? Even with nukes we’ll have the insurmountable advantage. We just hate the thought that we’ll have to think twice about invading.
(Note: Iran handing off nukes to terrorists is a whole other matter, and a legitimate one. But the specific issue of Iran, the country, launching a war is completely crazy.)
btw, do you remember what happened with Iraq? We kept bullying them, bombing them, being dicks to them in person. Eventually when we made up lies about them having WMD, they were too worked up to deny the allegations. They would let America invade, if only out of pride. This is the trajectory that this saber ratling will take with Iran. It’s to put Iran into more of a hole so that it would puff itself up, like we did with Iraq, like a dog.
Then we either feel good about ourselves, for making our propaganda seem like reality. Or else, we take advantage and justify invasion.
If what we honestly cared about is keeping Iran non-nuclear for the long-term future, we’d get the job done a lot better by being soft and non-aggressive. That’s how you deal with a threat if you are in a position of inarguable power and advantage.
The question to ask is, is Iranian saber rattling towards Israel serious or not?
Their leader obviously thinks the country should be destroyed and has said so. They’re pursuing nuclear bombs. Why is Israel the one getting accused of saber-rattling? They’re just parrying Iran’s thrust.
By this theory of threat, the USA was wholly justified in launching a first-strike, thermonuclear war against the Soviet Union. Didn’t they say “we will bury you”? Sure, they claim they were just talking about history and economics, but you know how they are. And didn’t they give material support to regimes that were, in fact, directly attacking out troops? And weren’t they clearly in the process of obtaining more and better weapons? Well, whats to stop them from handing off a few nasty tidbits to the Red Army Faction, or the Weather Underground?
Civilization requires risk. It requires taking the risk of trusting your fellow beings not to be insane. The very essence of our international agreement, the founding principle of the UN, is that aggressive war is a crime against humanity. We charged men with aggressive war, we tried them and we hanged them.
Now we are offered to believe that war is defensive if the party of the first part feels “threatened”. Not even a direct threat, like a massing of troops on a border, but a possible threat. If Israel is justified to war on the basis of belligerent quotes, how less justified is Iran? Do we have news reports of the Iranian head of state urging, say, Syria to launch an attack?
I hold neither party to blame, and neither blameless. As Amos Oz said, true tragedy occurs when both antagonist have legitimate grievances.
Israel is a tiny tiny country, inhabited by Jews, who are a tiny tiny percentage of the world’s people, and who numerous people over the years have literally tried to exterminate. It’s surrounded by big, big countries filled with people who hate them. One of those countries has a leader who says that he wants to remove Israel from the map. This leader is trying to build a device whose purpose is to remove small countries from maps.
What is there not to understand here?
There are so many thoughful posts here! Hope I can match the standard.
There can’t be doubt about a few things. Isreal has nukes and lots of conventional stuff to use before they get to those. Iran badly wants nukes and is getting ever closer to having them. The Isrealis are understandably jittery about being wiped out. Many governments in the region, including Iran’s, aren’t just blowing smoke as regards their intentions.
The problem isn’t that using nukes is suicide, it’s that somebody (Iran for one) may be perfectly fine with suicide. Of course, The Persian populace at large may feel differently, but the Iranian government doesn’t consult them.
Which gets to another, scarier matter. If Iran (for example) were to get sufficiently belligerent AND credibly have the means to deliver a nuclear attack, the Isrealis could plausibly conclude that it would be suicide NOT to strike first.
There are any number of diplomatic, economic, and military safeguards against events going that far, and I sure hope they’re being used as we speak. But the last wildcard is the US. The Bush administration is so far off-kilter, it’s anyones’ guess what false steps or disinformation it might get into. Happily, the US govt. has some extra failsafes that Iran doesn’t. But let’s say that a hostile power does something that causes serious harm to Isreal, in the 50,000 casualty range. Then the Isrealis might feel no compunctions at all about letting fly and worrying about it later.
This is a terribly dark and apocalyptic vision, I know. Please Eris, let cooler heads prevail.
How much more racheted can it get when Iran continually say’s Israel is going to be annihilated?
MAD only works when both parties are sane. Ahmadinejad believes the 12th Imam is getting ready to make an appearance and drop the hammer and that Iran is paving the way. His cryptic threats of imminent doom are way beyond saber rattling. the only good news coming out of his country are clerics telling him to shut the hell up.
Iran has the means to land nuclear missiles on Israel.
Of course they could likely sneak them in. Give new meaning to the term suicide bomber and allow them (maybe) some chance at saying, “Who? US?”
There won’t be anyone left to make that statement.
I guarantee you, if we elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a more moderate President. Ahmadinejad was the bulldog they put in the yard to woof at Bush. Khatami vs Clinton, Ahmadinejad vs Bush.
Though, if the next guy is Rafsanjani, we’re in trouble.