Should/can the Security Council do something about Iran?

Great Debates
21

You might not see it as a fundamental question of their sovereignty, but I would imagine that they see it differently.

Hmm, apparently they aren’t still allowing inspections. It’s not that I think the Europeans are making things up, but I don’t think the Europeans have exactly given up their orientalist streak, and therefore I am skeptical about their ability to judge the matter with anything but their own selfish interests in mind.

Well, I have thought for a very long time that Bush’s goals were along the same lines as his Father’s New World Order designs, and that he is treating the United States military as his own private brute squad. I simply am not certain that the maniac in the whitehouse who’s hand controls the big red button, and who’s Daddy has been manipulating the scene in the Middle East for as long as I’ve been alive has my best interests at heart. What I HAVE seen is a willingness to flaunt all law, both international and domestic.

When the president is asked straight out about lying to the world about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and violating Iraq’s national sovereignty and he tells the reporter, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t understand the question.” and moves on.

I am simply not as convinced that our president is any more reassuring than the president of Iran.

Erek

22

Well…Iran already funds terrorists and I am willing to bet most of it is aimed at Israel or the United States.

For Iran to get to Israel they need to go through Iraq and/or Saudi Arabia. Iraq of course has a good portion of the US army sitting there just now and for the foreseeable future. They could go through Saudi Arabia too I suppose but I doubt they’d fare any better there.

Israel HAS struck at Arab targets such as the Osirak Reactor. Yes it inflamed many muslims but considering many muslims already want to see Israel wiped off the map I doubt the Israelis care overly much.

Israel has shown many times it is willing to take preemptive action with or without the approval of its allies to protect itself. Israel has also fended off several large attacks in the past and for the most part trounced their attackers.

My guess is there would be much howling in Arab countries over an Israeli strike and perhaps an upsurge in terrorist attacks for a bit but beyond that I am not so certain that Iran is in as strong a position militarily as you suggest.

No wonder they want nukes…without them they really cannot do much more than rattle their sabre (from a military perspective).

23

Do you REALLY believe that?

24

As of 1998, Iran had missiles capable of reaching Israel. The Shibab-3. Capable of holding a nuclear warhead. GPS enabled.
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:eu47gv9kaCwJ:www.afpc.org/crm/crm560.shtml+SHIBAB-3&hl=en&client=firefox-a

25

But don’t we control all the GPS satellites?

Sam Stone Yes, I really do believe that. I think that George W. Bush is a psychopath. He’s not the same kind of psychopath, nor do I think he is a religious fundamentalist, at least not a Christian one. I think his loyalty is to Skull and Bones, and that his Christianity is mainly pandering.

Whack-a-mole I didn’t imply an Iranian invasion force, but a muslim invasion force. However, you make some good points.

Erek

26

Okay, so a complete Osirak scenario is out of the question. But still, other than Sam Stone’s speculation at taking shots at Iranain leadership, how about hitting some of the facilities? They’re buried, so use bunker-busters. Can we get them to go down that far?

The problem with the Security Council is that it was intentionally crippled. Even if Russia and China go along with some sort of military action (hopefully last resort), who’s going to provide the troops if came to anything other than airstrikes? The US is already having problems with being in Iraq and Afghanistan, so what could we do other than hitting Iran with air and naval power? Could we move part of the navy into the Caspian Sea? Without the full capabilities of the US military, other countries would have to take up some load. And would we really want Israel involved at any time? For that matter, what will Turkey do?

As for Iranian countermoves to economic pressure, could they really block the Strait of Hormuz? Any ideas of what the UAE or Oman would do if Iran tried it?

27

Then Hamas gets more pissed than it already is, whatever shred of goodwill any western country has with the Shiite population in Iran and Iraq gets flushed down the toilet, and Iran falls under control of the whatever lunatic is waiting in the wings.

And do you think the Iranian army will be any less capable of retaliating after such an assassination?

Not one word from you about the consequences of such a war? Missile strikes against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? Supertankers sunk in the straight of Hormuz, taking the Persian Gulf entirely out of the international oil market? Japan, India, China, Europe, all freezing in the dark?

Do you think Russia, China, or India will just say “Yeah, sure, set the entire Middle East on fire” to either Israel or the United States?

The choice you’re suggesting…nuclear war between Iran and Israel, or a large-scale war against Iran…is completely insane. Neither option is remotely acceptable.

The strait is only about 60 miles wide, the width of the navigable part is less than that, and Iran borders the strait on three sides. They don’t have to block the entire channel to completely screw the world economy: just the part that’s navigable to supertankers. Sink one or two in the right place, you’re done.

As to what UAE or Oman would do…if the Iranian government thinks that the U.S. or Israel is going to try to topple them by force or economic pressure, I don’t think they’ll care much about any response from either UAE or Oman.

28

The bunker busters for Iran aren’t funded:

29

The GBU-28 can penetrate 100 feet of earth or 20 feet of concrete. I do not know if we have anything better or how deep Iranian facilities are.

I still do not know why an Osirak style attack on the reactors that are above gorund would be useless. No one has answered that yet.

I seriously doubt there would be a full-blown invasion or any troops put into Iran for this (barring escalation). Missiles and/or air attacks would probably be all of it to take out key facilities in the nuclear program.

As for Israel doign it that is hard to guess. On the one side Israel attacking anything Arab is deeply provacative over there. Then again, the Israelis and Arabs have been at each other for so long I am not sure what real damage it would do beyond some short-term speechifying by Arab leaders against Israel.

Frankly Israel attacking would probably make the most people happy even if only privately. I doubt anyone over there wants to see a nuclear armed Iran. Not Saudi Arabia, not Russia, not China, not Pakistan…not anyone. Sure the Arab leaders would denounce Israel for such an attack but in private I bet they’d be relieved. Besides…much of the basis for Arab leaders holding power is diverting their people’s anger towards Israel. Anything that continues that is probably fine in their books. The US would be happy not to have to dirty its hands either.

There really is no military response to this either from the Iranians or arab world in general except perhaps for Iran to fling missiles at Israel. I do not see Jordan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia embarking on another full scale war against Israel…especially with the US military hanging in Iraq. If those countries do not go pretty much no one else does either.

I am not sure if they could block the Strait with missiles. If the US navy parked itself there the Iranians have no means of overcoming that (so attack by plane or ship would be out with a US naval presence).

30

I knew that the funding for the nuclear bunker-busters had been cut. I just wondered if the conventional types could have enough penetration without needing the big explosion of a few-kiloton nuclear blast to make up the difference. Kind of a shame, really. I understand the arguments against it, but I kinda liked the idea, although I can’t argue for the use of them.

31

One bunker buster? No.

But we can bomb close enough together to drop five or six in the same hole, or close to.

I don’t know. I don’t know if I see a solution to this without violence. I hope there is, but I see a pattern of aggression, here.

Shit.

32

I think so. Certainly with a nuclear bunker buster, but possibly with conventional weapons.

Even if the facilities can’t be totally destroyed, perhaps the program can be damaged enough to set it back a few years.

No one. No one else has the capability, even if they wanted to. The U.S. is the only country on the planet that can project power on the ground over any real distance. This was largely true all the way back in the first Gulf War, and it’s even more true today, since many of the Gulf War I participants have militaries that are mere shadows of what they were in 1991. Then, the cold war was just winding down, and countries like France and Germany still had large forces. Today, not so much.

Now, if you could get the Arab/Muslim world behind this, then you could get serious ground forces from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, even Iraq. Although I’m not sure you’d want them.

Even with the commitment in Iraq, the U.S. could still mount a pretty serious invasion force. The U.S. can’t sustain a long-term occupation force the size of the one in Iraq for any period of time, but in a shooting war it could call up all the guard, redeploy forces from Germany, South Korea, Okinawa, and elsewhere. Including the guard, the U.S. army has 1.2 million soldiers, of which only 130,000 are in Iraq. Now, for long-term occupation, the Guard can’t be used in great numbers. So suddenly you have to find a way with 500,000 guys to maintain 130,000 in Iraq while maintaining proper rotations and staffing all your other bases around the world.

But if it’s determined that Iran poses a systemic threat and simply must be invaded, and therefore the political will was there, you can just pull up everyone and put them into the fight. As a guess, if the U.S. really had to do it it could launch a war with 500,000 soldiers, while maintaining its presence in Iraq.

And of course, assuming some sort of action doesn’t happen for 2-3 years, the U.S. forces in Iraq may be completely available, prepared, and sitting on Iran’s doorstep. In fact, the invasion of Iraq was a necessary precursor to any future invasion of Iran.

That’s not to say I think a war is inevitable. I sure hope not, because it will be very, very difficult. I’m still hoping that enough pressure can be applied to that regime that it either collapses or a different group stages a coup - one that realizes the dangerous path they were on and makes a serious effort to reform and abandon their nuclear program.

If they put up a blockade of the straight, that’s an act of war. The U.S. could, at the ‘request’ of one of the blockaded nations, simply sink the Iranian fleet in about 15 minutes, after a suitable warning/showdown.

Of course, once they have nuclear weapons, it suddenly gets much harder. Which is exactly why we don’t want them to get nukes. Even if they aren’t crazy enough to simply launch a war against Israel, are they crazy enough to decide to control the world’s oil supply and use the threat of nukes to enforce it?

And of course, the big risk is that they’ll let enough material slip into the hands of terrorists so that nuclear explosions start going off around the world while they maintain plausible deniability.

33

If they’re already being invaded/bombed/assassinated…if they think their entire regime is in jeopardy, in other words…do you think they’ll care?

Sink them. In the strait of Hormuz. That won’t exactly solve the problem.

Not that a naval blockade would be the simplest way for Iran to do this anyway. Plastic explosive, Zodiacs, and a passing supertanker would be far simpler.

34

Agreed. And Hezbollah is the largest terrorist organization on the planet, but we don’t go bananas about it because it has largely left the U.S. alone, concentrating on internal power and attacks on Israel. If they get the U.S. in their sights, it’ll make al-Qaida look like the bush leagues.

I’m not saying there wouldn’t be a tremendous price to be paid. We’re not talking about choosing between good and bad options here. They all suck.

The best asset the U.S. has right now is the Iranian population. They dislike their leadership about as much as we do. If the strikes were surgical enough, followed by a coup or popular uprising against the government, the U.S. might salvage enough opinion in Iran to be able to do business with it.

As for what the Iranian army would do… What? What would they do? Attack Iraq? How does the Iranian army retaliate against an attack from the air?

I just assumed it was a given that a nuclear war would be worse than a conventional one. YMMV.

Maybe. Or maybe it isn’t that bad. Maybe the U.S. air force can keep the strait open. I’d put my money on that.

Conventional missile strikes against American forces I’m not so worried about. As weapons against forces in the field, they’re not so terrifying.

Look: No one is saying we should invade Iran. It’s clearly a very last resort. The question to be answered is, is it safe enough to let Iran have nuclear weapons that it’s preferable to war? I think that’s still an open question.

What, are you suggesting they’ll enter the war on Iran’s side?

As I said, we’re not choosing between varying degrees of good options here. This situation blows. I hope the ultimate winning strategy is to apply enough pressure to that regime that it either backs down or cracks. Perhaps the security council will actionally come to the same conclusion as you have, and agree that it’s actually not in their best interests to see the U.S. go to war with Iran, and agree to sanctions of increasing severity.

The truly insane option is to let the current regime of murderous religious fanatics have the atomic bomb. If Iran gets the Bomb under the current regime, I would bet you even money that there is an atomic explosion in a city somewhere within five years.

What would the loss of New York, or London, or Tokyo, or Shanghai, or Hong Kong do to the world economy? How does a conventional war stack up against a million dead civilians and a world recession on the, “holy crap, that sucks!” scale?

35

I am willing to bet if it came to it the US navy could sink Iranian ships whenever/wherever they chose and need not wait for a ship to get into the Strait…they’d be lucky to make it out of the harbor. A zodiac would never get close enough to anything to do any harm if it was down to a shooting war.

Also remember that plugging up the Strait does not help Iran. They are hugely dependant on oil exports. Not only that I think currently Iran’s largest oil customer is China.

No way does Iran want to push it to the point of giving the US reason to invade their country. They have seen the result of a better military than theirs going against the US and getting rolled in shockingly fast time…it was not even remotely close and it was done twice so it wasn’t a fluke. Indeed I’d wager this is a large factor in Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons. Without them they have no credible military threat to the US.

36

I think you’ll find that the U.S. military has extensively planned for attempts to close that strait. As for sinking ships, why not? Are you suggesting that sinking a single ship or even a hundred of them in the strait will close it? It’s 45km wide. The sea lanes are 2 miles wide. You’ll have to sink a lot of ships.

37

Or, if the strikes are not surgical or not 100% successful, they might rally the populace around the current regime. And a healthy chunk of the Shiite Iraqi populace for good measure.

Why wouldn’t they? Last I heard there was still a substantial U.S. presence there.

A much more important question, I would think, is this: what’s the third option? I don’t know myself (although there would be a hell of a lot more options if so much goodwill hadn’t been purposefully pissed away in the last couple of years for no good reason), but you’re presenting this as a dichotomy.

Probably not, but all three nations have economic interests in Iran that would be seriously screwed by U.S. or Israeli attempts at regime change. If they hear enough bellicose rhetoric, what’s to stop them from, say, arms sales?

No, not really. The sea lanes may be 2 miles wide, but they’re only 100 meters deep at their deepest point. Supertankers sit about 20 meters deep in the water when they’re fully loaded; they’re not going to sail over a sunken ship of any appreciable size in a channel that shallow. And going around is a problem too: while the channel is 2 miles wide, the ships are almost a third of a mile long, maneuver very poorly and take several miles just to stop. And in the strait of Hormuz, they’re going around a curve. It’s like walking a ladder around a corner in a hallway…admittedly the “hallway” is about six times as long as the “ladder”, but the “ladder” also has hundreds of thousands of tons of oil giving it momentum and hence doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. If Iran sinks a couple of supertankers in the strait any tankers behind them will be facing an obstacle course they’re not equipped to run.

And no way do we want to invade, or push Iran to the point where they think they have nothing to lose.

38

lol…because there are a lot less painful ways to die. For Iran to attempt to invade Iraq conventionally while the US is there would be a rather painful way to commit military suicide. I doubt the Iranian army would even make it to their jump off points before they were essentially obliterated as a fighting force. If you think about it some you’ll realize why this is. As a hint think about the last war Iran was in…then consider what their current military state is.

The third option has already been discussed (the first too being negotiations/sanctions and military options)…let Iran basically become a nuclear power. This is pretty distasteful for a variety of reasons but its probably whats going to happen in the end.

BTW, where was this goodwill we pissed away? I wasn’t aware of much goodwill, especially in that particular region. Perhaps you could explain where it was and why it would have made any difference in the current circumstance.

Whats stopping them now? lol, they are ALREADY selling arms and other things to Iran. So are France and several other nations IIRC. Basically IF the UNSC decides to vote for sanctions then that necessarily means that Russia and China ARE on board with sanctions, no? And if they don’t then you can bet your bottom dollar that no matter what the US does (oh, and perhaps the Euro’s though I’ll believe they will do something when I see it) those two nations will try and block things…and make a nice profit on arms sales to boot.

Er…who would be sinking supertankers again (even assuming you are right and a tanker could effectively block the channel :dubious: )? The Iranians? How? Magic? Wishful thinking?

I think Sam was refering to sinking of Iranian craft…something that wouldn’t be very large at all (I think they have some 30-40 ft patrol boats and MAYBE some surplus destroyers and ships around that size). A single US carrier task force would make it suicide for the Iranians to even attempt to venture out. If they attempted to attack via the air by sorte their aircraft…well, as I said above there are easier and less painful ways to die. Finally, if you are thinking of land to sea missiles I’m not aware of the Iranians having anything very sophisticated (though I suppose those pesky French might have sold them some exocets).

All that said the US doesn’t want a military confrontation (at least not a large scal one) with Iran at this time. Hell, I don’t think anyone wants one. Sure, the US could easily wipe up the Iranians just like we did the Iraqi’s…but then what? We’d be in another fucked up occupation that would probably be 10 times worse. At this point its hard to say what is going to happen. I really don’t think the Iranians are going to back down on this…not this time. I think that THEY think that the time is just right for them to do this. I think they see it as a win/win situation for them, and that they hold the trump card in their own oil reserves. NO ONE wants to disrupt that.

What will the Euro’s do in the end? Gods know but I’d guess they will hem and haw and in the end do nothing meaningful…not even sanctions. The UNSC will never vote to punish Iran with sanctions and such as you’ll never get both the Chinese AND Russians on board (hell, I’m not even sure of all the other members :wink: ). What will the US do? I’m not sure. Once diplomacy fails (as it will) the US will have to decide the lesser of two evils…either give it up and let Iran have the bloody things or use air strikes to destroy Iranian infrastructure. And then pay the consequences again as far as world opinion goes (probably be all kinds of protests in Europe as well as the ME). My guess is we’ll let it ride in the end…we really aren’t in a great position to escallate things at this point. What will Israel do? Once diplomacy fails they will lash out almost for sure. How effective they will be though is anyones guess…the Iranians will be waiting with everything they have. Fortunatately ‘everything they have’ isn’t all that much when stacked up against Israels strike capability.

Its a fucked up situation whichever way you look at it, with completely unpalatable alternatives on every side…unless Iran decides to pack it in at the last moment, take whatever bribes are offered and wait until the next time. I’m not holding my breath.

-XT

39

That’s the risk. When I said that the Iranian people are potentially the best asset the U.S. has, I was leaving the implication that a war with Iran could very well lose that asset by radicalizing the Iranians.

Because A) there is no reason to do so, and B) because they would have their hats handed to them.

Did not. I specifically said there was a ‘third way’, which involves leaning on that regime hard, hoping to either force them to back down or to precipitate a coup or revolution. Another possibility might be a U.S. assisted revolution, in which special forces and the CIA prep forces inside the country, help destabilize the regime, pump funds in to dissidents, and then if a revolution kicks off the U.S. military keeps The Iranian air force on the ground. Something like that. Although my opinion of the CIA being able to pull off anything remotely like this has certainly diminished in the past few years.

The other possibility is to allow them to have nukes and start up MAD all over again, this time with a bunch of lunatics. But who knows, maybe there’s a way to manage that. I can’t see how.

Nothing. They’re doing that now. But what do arms sales do? Unless those arms are nuclear missiles, it’s irrelevant what they buy. You can’t buy a military. You can give Iranian pilots the same jets the Americans have, and the Americans will destroy them just about as quickly as if they’re flying their old MiGs. A modern airforce is a lot more than just a bunch of high-tech planes in the air.

But I certainly think it would be foolish to not at least consider the possibility that a conflict with Iran could spiral out of control. That’s got to be factored into the decision, as does other things like China using the opportunity to attack Taiwan. It’s a dangerous world.

Well, to be precise, they could sail over any ship that wasn’t sticking up more than 80 meters from the sea bed. That would be pretty much all of them.

And how long do you really think it would take the U.S. Navy to whittle down any bit of superstructure that stuck up too high? If the economic fate of the world depended on it?

[/quote]

And going around is a problem too: while the channel is 2 miles wide, the ships are almost a third of a mile long, maneuver very poorly and take several miles just to stop. And in the strait of Hormuz, they’re going around a curve. It’s like walking a ladder around a corner in a hallway…admittedly the “hallway” is about six times as long as the “ladder”, but the “ladder” also has hundreds of thousands of tons of oil giving it momentum and hence doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. If Iran sinks a couple of supertankers in the strait any tankers behind them will be facing an obstacle course they’re not equipped to run.

[/quote]

Okay, first of all, these ships aren’t sailing sideways through the straight. That includes one that might be sunk. And while it may be a third of a mile long, it’s only a couple of hundred feet wide. So now there’s a 200 foot wide obstacle in a 2 mile wide strait. And you’re contending that this will be an impenetrable barrier to the world oil supply?

And what if they already think that? What if they fully intend to attack Israel or other western targets, because they are fanatics? What if they are so blinded by zealotry that they manage to convince themselves that the threat of additional nuclear strikes will make them impervious to attack, and besides God is on their side?

40

This goodwill, for example. We had a huge amount of goodwill in the world after 9-11, including in the ME; then we threw it away.