Centerfield

Attacking either Iran or North Korea has never been a realistic or rational option. Of course, we want them to think differently. With respect to Iran, the calculus is different for Israel, however.

Iran is almost exclusively made up of a single nationality and religion.

Um, well, not really. Iran is nearly 90% Shia, but only half Persian. A quarter of the population is ethnic Azeri, they predominate in the northwest, and they're none too happy with the Persian Tehran regime. There's also assorted tribes (mostly Turkic/Turkmenic) in the northeast, and a large number of non-Persian Arabs, Kurds, and Balochis all over the place. Good ethnicity map here that shows the Persian's dilemma a bit more graphically. Iran may be mostly Shia, but it is FAR from "one people." It's much more ethnically diverse than Iraq, and none of the minorities likes the Persians much.

IMHO attacking Iran might be feasible or necessary at some point, but invading Iran would be pretty darn foolhardy. In Iran, the regime is a very real and entrenched diffuse coherent power structure. It can't be taken out nearly as easily as a one-man-rule regime. Change there pretty much has to come from within. And it might not involve any real change of power structure, but a shifting of dominance among factions--the reformists taking parliament back from the hard-liners and reducing the legal powers of the mullahs over the government.

Iran has a democratic system underneath the theocracy which could swiftly pick up the pieces if the hardline Supreme Council was removed. Attacking Iran? Maybe precision air strikes. Invading Iran? Foolhardy to be sure.

As always, Tully, I rely on you for knowing just about everything...

The (weird sort of) democratic pluralism in Iran is what may make possible the success of strong diplomacy, coupled with (hopefully mild) carrots, and backed with a potential big stick of air strikes. Not all factions of the mullahs support the rash approach of their current president. Push the right buttons with the right mullahs, and they may yank their support from him completely and reverse their nuclear course.

In the meantime, the document captured at Zarqawi's headquarters highlights the need for our intelligence agencies to be very, very, very careful in their review of information, watching for planted intel at every step of the way.

Oh yeah. Iraq was essentially a one-man band. Iran offers many more opportunities to play one set of self-interests against another. The mullahs are crazy (to us) but not insane. They too have their self-interests.

1) A lot of the Iranians liked their western freedoms, and they want them back. There was an interesting piece on NPR recently about women protesting for their rights being attacked by (perversely) women police, and Iraqi men coming to the protesters' aid). Why piss off a population that likes freedom and us?

2) Their crazy theocracy was democratically elected. There is no justification at all to attack another democracy. or, if the justification is danger of attack by them, then by that logic Iran should nuke DC right now.

3) The argument "if the terrorists want us to invade, then we shouldn't" is exactly right, and should have been applied to Iraq. Instead, we gave Al Qaeda a spectacular three-year recruiting drive among that small percentage of the planet (say, 90%) who don't want to see Uncle Sam dictating their foreign, domestic, and social policy.

"Their crazy theocracy was democratically elected."

ummm, not exactly, it was a popular choice in 1979, but now the Supreme Council routinely "disqualifies" non-hard line candidates for public office.

The argument "if the terrorists want us to invade, then we shouldn't" is exactly right, and should have been applied to Iraq.

I'm on record here in the past, not sure where, as strongly disagreeing that this argument holds much water. While it makes sense that any policy and tactical decisions we make should be informed by how the terrorists feel about them, it's but one factor to consider. We shouldn't employ a tactic just because the terroists don't want us to, nor should we eschew a tactic simply because the terrorists are looking forward to using it to rhetorical advantage.

It's just silly. If Osama Bin zzladen walks out of the caves of Pakistan and gives up becuase he has decided he'll have more worth to his cause as a public martyr, should we therefore let him go?

Of course not. See, here's the thing...this line of reasoning that we should only do things the terrorists don't want us to do assumes that the terrorists are RIGHT in all their judgements about PR, tactics, etc.

How foolish is that? I say that we should rely on our own judgements based on all the information we can collect and all the secenarios we can hypothetically play out. We're in charge, we have the force, and we'll be well served if our actions are proactive, not reactive.

You're entirely correct of course, Brian. I was speaking rather flippantly with that one. Descending into mere "sound bite" territory, which is always dangerous.

But on this particular issue, I think the memo should give us great pause (and remember, I'm one of the biggest hawks on the board). It lays out a strategy which would, in fact, succeeding in provoking an American attack, if done properly. And Al Qaeda has proved fairly adept at PR warfare and manipulation in the past, so I don't think we should count on them doing it poorly. In light of its plans for manipulating Western opinion by planting disinformation, and in light of the occasional incompetence of the CIA and other intelligence agencies to get things right, we need to be even more vigilant than before about making sure we are reacting to actual events rather than being manipulated by a skillful disinformation campaign.

Agreed. Let's just say that it gives us yet another good reason to at least pause.....

I'm in an agreeable mood today... done.

Nuke Iran and the US will become the "Axis of Evil"

See: Political Hat Trick

What will happen if the US Nukes Iran?

Imagine a world where the US is reviled by every other nation for the unforgivable damage we have done to innocent civilians. Where the US is under a Permanent Oil Embargo by all OPEC member states. Where Canada, Mexico and South America join Europe and Asia to ban all trade with the US and evict all US Military bases from their soil. Where all US citizens with any connection to the Bush Administration are put on a No-Fly List and are banned from travel outside the US. Where all US multi-national corporations are forced to split into separate US and Non-US corporations. Where the all corporations with any connection to the US are forced to change their names to avoid anti-US sentiment.

All this and more can happen if Bush decides to Nuke Iran.

Bush is the Decider. He makes the Decisions and the rest of us have to live with the consequences of Bush's Decisions. Bush's Decisions about the Middle-East have been uniformly bad. Some of them have been worse than bad; they have crossed the line into the zone of Criminal Negligence and Stupidity.

The worst Decision Bush has made in his two terms as President has been to insist that the use of Nuclear Bunker Buster bombs remain in the Pentagon's planning for dealing with Iran.

Iran may be telling the truth when they say that they are only trying to enrich Uranium for nuclear power or Iran may be lying. If Iran is telling the truth and their goal is just nuclear power, then using a Nuke against Iran will guarantee that Iran will go for The Bomb. If Iran is lying then using a Nuke against Iran will only delay Iran getting The Bomb by one or two years and will guarantee that they will attempt to use it against the US.

The US B61-11 Nuclear Bunker Buster bomb is only able to penetrate hard rock to a depth of 10-20 feet before it detonates. At 20ft penetration and maximum yield, the B61-11 can only destroy a facility that is buried less than 600ft below ground. Blast forces can be blocked by simple inexpensive materials like 100ft thick layer of gravel or bags of sand or granulated salt. The limitations of the B61 have been known for years and any Iranian weapons facility will have been built with those limits in mind.

If Iran is actually trying to build a Nuclear Bomb, they will probably have done what Iraq and Pakistan did by building a secret second facility buried deep under ground under the publicly visible facility at Natanz.

The Natanz facility in Iran is known to have a double roof of thick reinforced concrete with 50-75ft of gravel between the concrete layers. The roof is sufficient to protect against any non-nuclear bunker buster (even the US air forces MOAB bomb). Natanz could probably also survive a low yield Nuclear Bunker Buster bomb.

If the US actually used the B61-11 bomb in Iran against the Natanz or Isfahan facilities more than 100,000 civilian deaths could be expected in iran, Afganistan and India.

Um, DG, who advocated the use of nuclear weapons against Iran?

Straw Man Alert!

You did, Pat. Don't you remember?

DG,

Imagine a world where the US is reviled by every other nation for the unforgivable damage we have done to innocent civilians. Where the US is under a Permanent Oil Embargo by all OPEC member states. Where Canada, Mexico and South America join Europe and Asia to ban all trade with the US and evict all US Military bases from their soil. Where all US citizens with any connection to the Bush Administration are put on a No-Fly List and are banned from travel outside the US. Where all US multi-national corporations are forced to split into separate US and Non-US corporations. Where the all corporations with any connection to the US are forced to change their names to avoid anti-US sentiment.

Hmmm, I could be wrong, but I believe you left out: "Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria."

LMAO. Oh yeah, real wrath-of-God stuff....

No! Not the dogs and cats lying down as one! Oh, the huge manatees...

Well, this thread strikes me as odd. Hi Bobby.

Let’s see…..take the thoughts of a terrorist in Iraq as some formula regarding Iran? Iran is not like Iraq nor is it like North Korea, which claimed de facto right to bare nukes. Not much we could do about that great strategy. It sounds like most here would do nothing, or even respond once well-fortified positions at the neck of the "Persian Gulf" began fitting more lethal varieties of warheads. And then do what? Maybe we should wait until Iranian stealth subs or stealth drones are cranking off clandestine assembly lines in secret underground facilities.

The proposal by Bush didn't seem to set penalties. It was a strange gesture, almost either a capitulation or a final gesture. Russia and China instead of really pushing a sincere effort to bring Iran around are busy composing an energy/military alliance hegemony of their own with Russia selling fighters to Chavez and China's record recently exposed.

I would love to hear more about why we should consider to sustaining the trillion dollar preventative use of force in Iraq, and not use such force (none of it occupational or after a bit more "diplomacy") in the case of a much more dangerous adversary. I do not wish to sound belligerent, nor do I casually suggest tough measures (in which lives are lost), but why would we allow choke point extortion, wmd to terrorists and a growing threat to our forces and allies? Here in NYC we hear our police chief explain Iranian spying of our city infrastructure requires the money the Feds withhold. Bolton can barely contain himself when asked about Iranian sponsorship of terrorism. Rice even gets miffed. Such a wait until after the fact approach has implications. I do not see how this does not make Israel our hit man.

No one I have heard has suggested more than expeditionary forces to eliminate nuke facilities along with the elimination of conventional forces that respond aggressively and threaten the “Gulf”. It would not be an occupation, but satisfy the reasons for invading Iraq threefold. Did Bush so screw it up in Iraq for the price of letting Iran declare it has nukes, and thus its right is reality? I suppose our military cannot win in Iraq and respond to Iran. That would be fighting more than one and a half major conflicts at one time. I wonder how we would fair against Russia or China.

Tell me Bobby, how’s it going in Somalia? What will we face a few years out while Negroponte says ten years for Iran to build nukes? What say you about Iranian Z-strategy based on AQ in Iraq? Could the US could even prevent Iran from building the delivery systems and stealth weapons for their terrorism and extortion/network? Maybe Murtha is right. Pull em back.

Excuse the typos, it was a long day....