Listening to CSPAN the other day and some fairly elevated US General in charge of a lot of acronyms was going on before a congressional committee about how long term negotiations with Iran were not very fruitful and that Iran must not be allowed to be a state with nuclear weapons. How that just can’t happen. It cannot stand.
So… let’s say sometime in 2013 or 2014 Iran announces they have a bomb. A deliverable small nuke ready to roll. They have defied our will.
What real world consequence will likely happen at that time? Does the sabre rattling stop and the sabre actually get pulled out and we go to war with Iran? Or do we accept that as the new reality and negotiate with them?
Will Israel take unilateral action if we do not back them up?
We back down. The fact is, we do treat nuclear armed countries much better than non-nuclear armed countries. We start actually, seriously negotiating with them instead of just rattling sabers.
If they manage to actually build one or more, it’s a game changer…but we aren’t going to invade a nuclear armed country.
More likely scenario is a pre-emptive strike by the U.S., NATO, Israel, or Israel flying jets with U.S. markings, or some combination of those parties when the consensus of the intelligence community is that Iran is close to building a bomb.
To play devil’s advocate - one could argue that the constant leaking from Israeli/US sources of plans to bomb Iran is treating them different. I don’t recall hearing that about NK.
We don’t back their neighbors for invading them, we don’t sponsor terrorist groups inside their borders, we don’t shoot down their airliners, we don’t constantly threaten them with military attack…lots of ways.
Have to say: we do very little. We just wait, and continue to isolate them economically, and hope that, some day, they are willing to engage with the rest of the world in a responsible fashion. Meanwhile, we keep them targeted with our own weapons, and make sure they understand M.A.D.
My crystal-ball-gazing prophetic powers tell me that there won’t be an air strike on their nuclear factories; the political fall-out (okay, bad choice of idiom) would be pretty bad.
When in the past 24 years has the US shot down any Iranian airliners and when have they ever done so deliberately.
The only case I know of the US shooting down an Iranian airline occurred back during the Reagan administration and was clearly an accident and doing so was actually a huge boon to the Iranian government.
Anyway, your comment seems to suggest this is something that happens on a regular basis and that they are deliberate acts by the US government so please show us some recent incidents of the US government shooting down Iranian airliners as well as evidence that it was deliberate as opposed to accidental.
BTW, when the US gave aid to the French resistance was it backing a terrorist group?
If you feel they weren’t then please explain your reasoning.
Who cares what he has to say about our support for this resistance/terrorist/freedom fighter organization or that one? Who cares about any of our perceptions on whether this or that organization is composed of terrorists?
His point is that from Iran’s perspective, we are supporting militant anti-government forces in their territory. The French resistance and the varied militant anti-government forces are viewed the same way by their respective occupying forces. Maybe now you see you don’t have much of a gotcha question.
The US does nothing, but it’s political position in a region it cares about becomes stronger. We are not generally popular there now, we are hedonistic godless imperialistic pigs. But at least we aren’t a Shiite fundamentalist regime with regional scores to settle and armed with nukes.
We don’t need to do anything when Iran becomes nuclear, their enemies will come to us.
You’re right. We have not aided the numerous resistance groups inside NK. Oh, wait. There aren’t any!
Similarly, the thriving NK international airline industry carrying throngs of NK tourists overseas has never been subject to an accidental US missile launch. Can you remind us how many such flights there are from NK? I lost track.
No, I’m trying to argue that we haven’t treated them differently in an substantial way, except that we’ve probably been more aggressive towards NK than Iran, if anythting. I’m certainly not arguing that we’ve treated them exactly the same, instance by instance, but might I reming you that we actually fought a real, live war against NK?
If you’d like to go point and point and show that all the aggressive acts we’ve taken against NK are somehow less than those taken against Iran, know yourself out. They just don’t compare.
The reason the US and Israel are able to make threats about the actions they will take to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is because they know Iran is not pursuing a weapon and has no intention of doing so. Therefore they know they will never have to back up their hawkish rhetoric with action. They score points with voters at home for “facing down the threat” when there is no threat at all.
It makes sense for Iran to want to be a nuclear power. It sees itself as the legitimate, prevailing power in the Muslim Middle East. It’s long running enemy, Israel, is a nuclear power. The most parsimonious answer is that Iran is indeed seeking to be a nuclear power.
I’m afraid that it’ll sound like I’m picking on GWB again, but the Clinton Administration had programs in place to reward North Korea for not developing nuclear weapons. Bush rescinded these programs and began treating NK with respect only after it had nuclear weapons, as described in this article:
Similarly, did not Iran make conciliatory gestures toward U.S.A. ca 2002, and accelerate its weapons program only after being rebuffed?
Wrong and wrong. Iranian reigme would be happy to survive this decade. And Israel is not Irans long running enemy, Iran was best of buds with Israel until the Shah was kicked out and furthermore Iran saw Iraq as the main threat until 2003.
