Iran is getting ready to blow.
For starters, the Clerics in Charge arranged for the Danish embassy to be trashed by thugs brought into Tehran especially for the occasion. They threw petrol bombs while chanting “Death to Denmark.”
Then, according to Iranian Commerce Minister Massoud Mirkazemi, because of those “satirical cartoons” all Danish imports will be turned back at custom, and in addition they have cut diplomatic relations with Denmark — now wasn’t that a handy excuse?
Most importantly, Iran has booted out the IAEA and told them to take their monitoring equipment while they’re at it. They’ve got till mid-February to be out of Dodge.
If this were a movie, there would be lots of fast cuts as equipment was loaded onto trucks and moved across the border. Faces would be grim and half-lit in the grainy black and white moments of expulsion.
Does any of this sound familiar? How about the part where the UN impotently stomps its foot? If ever there were a product made for an organization it’s Viagra for the UN. What a large waste of hands fluttering and spokespersons stuttering over their canned remarks to the press while Iran proceeds apace with its plans.
The Officers Club says this is grave news for Israel, which has to make some plans of their own and firm them up real soon in the face of Iran’s ongoing Manhattan Project:
Even the United States may not be able to muscle the political maneuvering room to launch the kind of attack on Iran that would be necessary to knock out its reactors. This crisis comes down to how long Israel feels it can wait for Iran to acquire its WMD and delivery capability.The post at O.C. goes into great detail regarding strategy and objectives (aside from the obvious one of shutting down Iran’s Manhattan Project). They have drawn out Israel’s options specifically and they make their case for a strike convincingly.
This timeline may be running out more quickly than people realize. If state-sponsored uranium enrichment has truly begun in earnest, and delivery capability is being researched, Israel may be forced to act sooner rather than later.
The attack would definitely be a single, massive air strike the likes of which the MidEast has never seen.
The only thing no one has addressed, that I know of, is the fallout — the literal fallout, this time — for Palestine and Jordan (just to name two countries with some concerns about becoming radioactive). While the goal of obliterating Israel is a top priority for countries in the Middle East, it doesn’t seem as though they, or anyone else, has been willing to discuss how they are going to handle the thousands and thousands of radioactive and sick Muslims who will be the “collateral damage” of Iran’s Annihilation Project.
Or perhaps they don’t care? Maybe the erasure of Israel is worth the death, illness, and genetic mutation of thousands of Arabs?
Is there something here I’ve overlooked?
Suggestions are welcome.
13 comments:
Perhaps if we were to become radioactive at multiple locations?
The delivery options would (presumably) be limited due to package size and radioactive signature.
It's hard for me to theorize the strategy of people who endorse delivering and detonating bombs on their person.
I hate to sound like a nut, but now would be a good time to double-check your contingency plans for things unthinkable pre-9/11.
Then, take a page from our Israeli friends and carry on, and hope our governments ignore the U.N. and sucker punch the mullahs.
And some prayer would be nice.
It will be interesting to see what readers far more inteligent than I have to say.
Our fleet of stealth B2s pack a pretty mean punch and the Iranians are defenseless against them. A dozen sorties per bomber launched over a couple of days from Diego Garcia or Guam should do the trick. B-2 "JDAMS" are GPS-guided so each "package" will hit exactly where it needs to. Destroying Iranian nuke capability is NOT the issue. We CAN do it. Only thing stopping us is the all out war that will be declared on us by most of the muslim world afterwards. Iran knows this and doesn't believe we will risk it. Perhaps they are right.
I honestly don't think the health and safety of Palestinians or Jordanians is any factor at all in the minds of the Iranian fanatics. They will simmply rationalize them as martyrs, and act as they see fit. They will only be deterred from nuking Israel by a credible threat from Israel to destroy Iran - which they are indeed capable of, according to the best rumors, and on a second-strike basis (from submarines) at that. If the Iranians can be made to focus on that fact, they will not strike Israel overtly. However, that doesn't stop them form attempting to deliver a weapon "anonymously", if they are allowed to build them. It's hard to see how this one will play out without extremely horrible consequences.
I see where the British Tories are urging appeasement. Glad I don't live there - what a choice.
Dymphna,
Or perhaps they don’t care? Maybe the erasure of Israel is worth the death, illness, and genetic mutation of thousands of Arabs?
That's a huge part of the problem. This death cult doesn't care, and here's where this war and the Cold War differ in an important respect. The Communists would sacrifice themselves if necessary but not as a means to advance their totalitarianism. Furthermore, these Muslim wackos believe that they will go to paradise if they annihilate the Jews, whereas the Communists lived for this world only.
This timeline may be running out more quickly than people realize. If state-sponsored uranium enrichment has truly begun in earnest, and delivery capability is being researched...
I've read the Iran launched a test missile with a reach of 2000 kilometers on January 17. A few days later, Chirac made his surprising statement about France's capabilities to retaliate. I've come to the conclusion that Iran's capabilites caused Chirac to make that statement.
When nations are developing weapons, foreign intelligence is notoriously unreliable because all the development operations are so covert. Even that idiot ElBaradei, who said a few months ago that the West had nothing to worry about from Iran because Iran was complying with IAEA inspections, has carefully acknowledged that he cannot definitively say that Iran doesn't already have a nuke; I read that material in an interview conducted by Newsweek. I didn't sleep much that night!
Now, fanatical Muslims are noted for their hollow boasting. For what it's worth, I don't see Ahmadinejad that way. Furthermore, when Baghdad fell, many of Saddam's nuclear-development scientists fled Iraq. Where did that brain trust go? Where did the centrifuge materials go? Mahdi Obeidi, author of The Bomb in My Garden, has asked those questions. The possible answers are not comforting. Iran has the bucks to buy what it needs to launch a nuclear war, and more than one source is willing to furnish him with what he needs. Maybe I should be using past tense in that last sentence!
Is March 12 the start of the Iranian new year?
I think the willingness of Islamists to sacrifice themselves is way over-estimated. As a.o.w. notes, there is a lot of hollow boasting out there. I think they are plenty willing to sacrifice their "brothers" but the prospect of the actual destruction of Iran, if credible to its leaders, may be deterring.
I think Norooz is March 21. Its always right around the equinox, which is March 20 this year. You can ask your local pet store. Iranians buy goldfish for the celebration, and pet stores in many areas lay in extra supplies. I must say celebrating new year at the beginning of spring instead of the middle of winter makes sense.
I'm not sure whether Iran feels it can afford to telegraph its final preparations, thus giving Israel, the US (and maybe the West) an opportunity to strike first. But if they were confident enough to quietly signal their brothers and sisters at ground zero, I wonder how things would play out if vast number of Iraeli Arabs and Palestinians began leaving the area in a short time period. And especially if any actual attack in such an evacuation's wake were to fail -- knocked out by Arrows or a simple fizzle -- the controversy over what to do with Palestinians/Arabs who fled to allow the nuking of their host and now wish to return would be unsurpassably ironic and familiar.
Of course, this is all just baseless speculation from a cynical Israeli blogger, and not true strategic analysis. But I wrote a little about this scenario in a post called When they flee the Iranian Bomb, which refugees will be pitied?
I agree it is an interesting question. There is a lot of analysis floating around about intricate details of military planning, but there are some very simple, yet compelling questions that are being ignored. Thanks for asking.
It has occurred to me that much of the Danish cartoon trouble may be Iranian sponsored. Consider these attacks :
Storming of the Norwegian PRT in Afghanistan just now. The attack occurred in comparatively calm Maymana in the north-west near Iran and not Kabul or the usually volatile pashtun South. Coincidence - hardly.
Danish battalion - southern Iraq - shi'ite, normally friendly,but also where the hand of Iran is well noted
Embassy in Lebanon (Lebanon - home of Hezbollah, Iranian sponsored for decades)
Palestine (Hamas and Islamic Jihad).
Think of it as fanning the flames to make for a smoke screen for the nuke program, an Iranian play for hearts and minds in case of sanctions or an attack on Iran. Consider how pumped up the ummah was before the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq (that is to say : not at all) and the failure to generate mass outrage. Consider how much trouble that pissing little insurgency has been despite the aforementioned lack of muslim mass action. How would the ummah react to direct action against an Islamic regime right now?
Buried at work this week...but I saw the O-Club posting. For the moment, this comment will have to do for my reaction. I think the Israelis might conduct a very public nuclear test, and otherwise make it clear that their weapons and the means of delivery would survive a strike on Israel.
I don't see that the O-Club scenario, barring the actual use of nukes, could possibly work. It kicks the can down the road a few years, at the cost of an overnight wildly popular Mullah nutjob regime, and -- like they say, probably all out war with the rest of the middle east and world wide isolation and condemnation from everybody cept the American right wing.
If there's a military option out there, the only ones using it are going to be us.
Two jokers in the deck 1) Russia/China. I don't see that they can or will sit by and let us grab control of ALL the oilfiends in the middle east. Maybe nothing they can do, for the moment, to stop us up front, but Radical Islam will have just acquired some serious coat holders. The possibility also exists that we may be miscalculating, and there would be some kind of Rus/China military response. Unlikely, but the possibility exists. Russia I think we can buy off, somehow. China...we need to be prepared to trade Taiwan.
The other joker is this Cartoon scam. I think this is totally an interference play for Iran and Hamas -- to try to affect the willingness of the Euros to support a strong policy in Iran, and to cut off money for Hamas. This is a dangerous play for the enemy -- it might have the opposite effect, at least long enough for us to do something.
As I have said before: if we are thinking about military options, the nukes are the wrong target. Iran is going to have a nuke if it wants one. All the options discussed so far, unless we can kill the scientists, and make the infrastructure unusable, will not end this program. The real danger is this wacko regime. The regime should be the target, not the nuclear facilities.
If there is a more hateful group on Planet Earth, I do not know of them. Not only do many of these extremists hate all things not of Islam, all things Western, all things American, and all things Israel - they hate within their religion. The Shi'ite – Sunni rift is well documented, as are many other intra-Islamic blood feuds. The reason for all of the hatred, and for the ridiculous overraction over the Muhammad cartoon, came to me as I watched the protests on CNN. These people have nothing better to do. Where some people see religious devotion and piety, I see abject boredom. My theory: when people have nothing else better to do than subjugate their female populations and pick the sand granules out of their beards, rioting in the streets over the publication of political cartoons must seem like Mardis Gras. I am not suggesting that the people in these regions do not have harsh lives. They do. They live in inhospitable areas, usually under repressive governments, with nothing to look forward to in their day-to-day lives. Religion and the promises of a better (after)life is everything to many of these people. It is why so many of them are eager suicide bombers, it is why so many of them are easily led into lives of hatred and fear of those that are different.
Is it possible to reason with groups that are so hateful? I am sad to say that I am leaning towards an answer of no. I have always championed the causes of diplomacy over warfare, of peaceful co-existence. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I understood why some in the world would hate us - and why they would feel the need to attack us. It was in the days following the attack, when I watched people from the Muslim world celebrating in their streets, that I began to feel embittered...
http://1manview.blogspot.com
Muslims have long been killing their own for the sake of the struggle against the great satan infidels. Their deaths are necessary and taken into consideration by allah and reward given. Yup, it is that simple, really. Iran will smuggle a couple of suitcase nukes into Israel and take out tens of thousands of palis and Israeli arabs in the process and not bat an eye - they will give no more thought to it than you or I swatting a fly. Hopefully Israel has put the West on notice that if they are hit with Iranian nukes, they in turn will contaminate all the gulf oil fields and send the world's economy down the tubes in a matter of days. What other option does Israel have? Die so we can have cheap chinese textiles in wal-mart?
Lock n' load, Isreal and remember Massada. Israel by itself does not have the tactical capability of taking out Iran's nuke programs.
Dymphna,
Yes, there is something you are overlooking. This from the Hizbollah Leader:
"I am certain that not only millions, but hundreds of millions of Muslims, are ready and willing to sacrifice their lives in order to defend the honor of their Prophet."
You can find that on Infidel Bloggers Alliance from the past couple of days.
In addition, a Mullah in Iran, a couple of years ago, mused about hitting Israel with a nuclear weapon. His quote went something like this,
If we hit Israel, all of Israel will be destroyed, but only a small portion of the Islamic world will be destroyed, so it will be worth it.
They have already counted the costs, and they are willing to eat them.
That is why we must put a stop to Iran's nuclear weapons program, at any cost.
If you want links to the quotes, email me and I will look them up for you.
It will take some time.
Dymphna
I discussed how the potential for fallout among other thing here.
It depends on the bombs, how they’re used, where they’re used, and the weather especially the wind.
It is possible that the wind blowing to the east would solve the “west bank problem” for decades - it would be uninhabitable. But so would a major part of Israel.
More interesting is the possibility that it could blow northwest, which is what I discuss. Along with cartoongate and riots Europe might wake up.
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