The Israelis have assets in Iran and could have them smuggled in.
You need to understand two things about me. The first is that I am always 100% serious and never tell anything but the truth. The second is that I am sexually attracted to Komodo dragons.
Disguised as what?
I did take your golem plan with a grain of salt but based on what I’ve seen so far on these boards, you very possibly could have been perfectly serious.
And watch out for those teeth.
Evil is arguable, depending on how you define the term ( I think I’d prefer the slightly more nuanced “autocratic zealots” ). But stupid and self-destructive? At least to that degree? Not IMHO.
Give them a bit more credit than that. They did not get where they are by being dumb - even theocrats have to play politics, internal or otherwise. It’s also a strategic error to pass them off as simply crazy.
A couple of things:
Firstly, like I mentioned above, it has been well established that nuclear weapons are nearly useless for achieving any diplomatic goals. Many Iranians hate the political entity of Israel, but would in no circumstances want to physically destroy the land upon which Israel sits. To the contrary, the desire to reclaim that land for the people it was stolen from is (ostensibly) the goal, and so turning large parts of it into a radioactive wasteland is not a realistic option.
On the other hand, nuclear weapons can actually function as a deterent in a real existential crisis. Iran somehow launching a single nuclear attack against the US is not a threat to the US’s existence, but a conventional invasion by the US of Iran is an existential threat against Iran, at least in the eyes of a ruling regime. The threat of a rational government using a nuclear weapon because they want to achieve some mundane diplomatic aim is not realistic, but when they’re fighting for their very existence it is.
Which brings me to my second point. The harshest rhetroric isn’t coming from your so-called “mad mullahs” but from people like Ahmadinejad who are politicians. Elections in Iran are highly restricted and not free and fair by any definition, but there is a competitive elective process. The idea of using external threats as a scapegoat and as an electoral issue is probably as old as elections themselves and Ahmadinejad is a master of it. Of course, we haven’t helped with our more-or-less unprovoked invasion on their southwestern border. If you’re a voter in Iran and you have been led by electioneering and state media that the threat of an unprovoked invasion by the US is a real concern, wouldn’t acquiring nuclear weapons be a pretty good idea?
And obviously you smuggle the golems in as clay and then have an undercover rabbi perform the proper ceremony once you’ve cleared customs.
How close is a golem to a simulacrum? Because we’re already to drones, simulacra can’t be far away…
Potentially being invaded by the US is only an existential crisis for those who are utterly ignorant of history. Every nation we’ve invaded/conquered in our entire history still exists, and in every case I can think of, was better off afterwards. Iranians should welcome an invading American army, particularly one that topples the regime, with open arms. We’d rebuild and improve everything, spending trillions of dollars in the process. We’d buy all their stuff and give them group discounts on our stuff. Then we’d start kicking ourselves in the butt for being there (particularly if there was a presidential election in the offing) and leave, leaving most of the tanks and guns and stuff behind. What’s not to like, I say.
It’s stupid, evil, and crazy to deal with a popular uprising not by addressing the concerns of the disaffected, but by gunning down hundreds of your own people in the streets. That’s when it seemed to me that the regime had made a disconnect from sanity. And as far as stupidity goes, continuing the “death to Israel” rhetoric and the nuclear weapons program when all that does is make Iran a pariah is indeed stupid. And making your people suffer is just plain evil.
Well, that is obviously not a forgone conclusion even among those of us who have a generally positive view of American motivations abroad. I imagine it is doubly so among people living somewhere with the biggest counter-examples to the west and east of them.
nm
:dubious: What? Does your US history end at 1890? The only invasions I can think of that can even remotely be considered a net gain are the CSA, the Third Reich and…uh…Panama in 89, I guess. I’d really like to hear your rose colored perspective on the invasions of North Korea & Vietnam.
In a world with several nuclear powers, and many more potential nuclear powers, it would be to America’s advantage to prevent such weapons from being used, and failing that (as in this case) prevent them from being used again. A nuclear aggressor would serve as a lesson other potential aggressors could not ignore.
At the very least, American nuclear weapons would have to be used to knock down the Iranian nuclear sites. We have to use nukes out of all proportion to the number they used. We will not allow the other guys to select their own level of pain. We do that for them.
So a single nuke on an Israeli target would require at least three American (not Israeli) nukes on military targets. These weapons would have to be detonated in a way to EMP every transistor in Iran. (After all, everything in Israel, Lebanon and Jordan would be fried.)
Hitting Tehran? That is hard to imagine as the Americans view the Iranians as captives of their own government. Ideally, the US would not rule out a second wave of attacks on population targets. The threat alone ought to destabilized the Iranian government.
Then the US would proclaim some sort of policy that the us of any nuke anywhere in the world would trigger the most severe actions by any American government.
This is the first post advocating the use of nuclear weapons I have been able to get behind.
Yes, I do think that an overwhelming response is required, and if is military targets I think nukes are the way to go. But still I think they should be used very sparingly (if you can describe such a weapon such a way).
More than anything else, the regime that authorised the first strike has to be totally obliterated, they have to cease to exist, they must be crushed.
But turning vast areas into slag, not to mention the radioactive fallout over innocent countries is not going to help - and is just going to make America into a villin.
Another issue raised by someone upstream was would Iran pop a nuke on (say) Tel Aviv. They might.
No Arab country would, the secret to Israel’s safety from an Arab nuke is baked in. Nobody could kill a lot of Jews without killing a lot of Muslims. Even the hardest core of Islamic terrorists try to avoid killing fellow Muslims. (I know there are lots of exceptions.)
But the Iranians consider Sunis to be just-barely Muslims. Further Persians have a long-standing willingness to kill Arabs by the basketful. If anyone were to actually use one of these fool things, it would be the Iranians.
The Pakistanis would be a close second if they thought the Indians were about to overrun them.
It’s funny you would afford a reasonable grounds for nuclear option to Pakistan but for Iran, it seems, they’d do it just because (just because also covers cliché of “long standing hatred”). Why wouldn’t Pakistan (which is much more combustible and unreliable than Iran) simply drop the bomb that they already have at their pleasure?
I seriously wonder where people come with this idea that Iran (i.e. Iran’s current regime) would just simply drop the bomb at their pleasure which currently means, as soon as they have a capacity to do so.
I’d be interested in reading on how did posters obtain that opinion that is being used as a rule and as a fact.
Because it’s fun to engage in some righteous-revenge-style kill/crush/destroy-them-all talking points porn.
It’s not like American history is not filled with examples of such honourable acts.
History would indicate otherwise. There’s been internecine warfare in the area since before the dawn of recorded history.
Wow. Anti-Americanism trumps reason, logic, and history.
The part of Korea–South Korea–that we “invaded” and continued to occupy after the truce is indeed better off–much better off–than in, say, 1951. We withdrew from North Korea voluntarily in accordance with the truce.
Vietnam is certainly much better off than it was under a series of military-backed despots in the 1960s. You could also argue that North Vietnam’s lot improved along with that of the South. It’s not the outcome we wanted, but that’s irrelevant.
Other examples are Japan in 1945, Iraq in 2003 (whether you want to admit it or not), and, arguably, all of postwar Western Europe. But if you think that America is evil and has crushed writhing nations under its bootheel, I doubt I can dissuade you from that POV.
Well, just look at Greenslime, brainwashing obviously works.
Semi Hijack
Before anyone else takes the bait, and tries talking sense to Der Trihs about America and the military, it is important to review his history and his stance on this subject. Simply searching threads about Iraq will do that for anyone who has the time and the galloshes, but I’ll try to sum it up:
America is the worst country, ever. It is a hairs breadth away from being a theocratic dictatorship, ruled by genocidal maniacs.
America in Iraq engaged in genocide.
American forces in WW2 were almost as evil as Germans and Japanese.
This is largely because anyone in uniform is a war criminal. He cheers the death of US soldiers, and views insurgents as “freedom fighters”.
Anyone who speaks with personal knowledge of the rules, training, and restrictions put on US soldiers to avoid civilian casualties, is lying, or brainwashed.
In summation: attempts to discuss the military in general, US foreign policy, or anything in the middle east is a lost cause, and I highly encourage folks to move on and focus on discussion with rational posters on these subjects.
/Hijack
This isn’t a rational subject.
And the fact that many Americans think it’s rational is why Trihs needs to shout so loudly.