Thread: Should Israel Attack Iran's Nuclear Reactor?

Originally Posted by Bluesman

Is SecDef a political appointee, or is he a uniformed officer? I forget, sometimes.

He's the former and he was appointed by the previous President.

Originally Posted by Silent Hunter

He's the former and he was appointed by the previous President.

Yes. In other words, it looks like he'll do what he has to do to keep that job. No shift in policy too wild, no philosophical reversal too radical. You don't often see people with that kind of suppleness of principle.

keith,

Yes. In other words, it looks like he'll do what he has to do to keep that job. No shift in policy too wild, no philosophical reversal too radical. You don't often see people with that kind of suppleness of principle.

all i'm going to say to that is that you don't know the man. at all. this is a man that makes private, personal trips to Arlington Cemetery in his spare time.

neither have you looked at his policies or philosophies over the last few years if policy-shifting and philosophical reversal is the conclusion you arrive at.

and i am STILL angry at you for, in effect, calling the officers and compatriots i work with on a daily basis obama-bots or political whores. if this was the massive strategic blunder directed from above that you say it is, we would have more than a few high-ranking officers that would be willing to fall on their swords and resign over this.

EDIT: okay, i'm taking a break from this thread. this directly touches on the honor of the wingmen around me and the more i think about it the angrier i get. and keith, you deserve better than whatever idiocy comes out of my mouth then.

Originally Posted by astralis

keith,



all i'm going to say to that is that you don't know the man. at all. this is a man that makes private, personal trips to Arlington Cemetery in his spare time.

neither have you looked at his policies or philosophies over the last few years if policy-shifting and philosophical reversal is the conclusion you arrive at.

and i am STILL angry at you for, in effect, calling the officers and compatriots i work with on a daily basis obama-bots or political whores. if this was the massive strategic blunder directed from above that you say it is, we would have more than a few high-ranking officers that would be willing to fall on their swords and resign over this.

EDIT: okay, i'm taking a break from this thread. this directly touches on the honor of the wingmen around me and the more i think about it the angrier i get. and keith, you deserve better than whatever idiocy comes out of my mouth then.

Look, mate, I'm not REALLY impugning anybody's honor, here. But SOMEbody will carry out the President's orders, no matter how awful and damaging they are.

And they ARE.

This is what ALL of us that have served are taught: 1) you owe obedience to your chain. 2) You also owe them loyalty. 3) You also owe them the courage to tell them when they're wrong.

But at the end of the day, the last one is LAST. The first one is FIRST. If you object to the decision, ranger up and speak up. Tell 'em what you believe, even if it makes you unpopular, or even if it costs you something.

And then, the guy that gets paid more than you will make a decision. When he does, and it goes against what you believe, you will execute your orders anyway, which is Principle #1. And you will make the world believe that you're enthusiastic about it, because of Principle #2, above.

I have no way of knowing if Principle #3 was followed. I have no way of knowing if Principles #1 and #2 even entered the picture. That's as it should be. A united front is what the world is seeing, and the only way this catastrophe could be made any worse is if the people you put so much faith in violated these three simple principles, and allowed dissention to make clear that Obama is being resisted by men that are duty-bound to follow him.

But one thing I do know, absolutely: whatever anybody in this administration may say, this is a terrible decision that may cost us more than Munich '38 cost the world. It is a disaster.

Sorry for jumping into this thread. I'm trying to see where to put this news report.

Medvedev: Israel not planning to strike Iran

2 hrs ago [AP] MOSCOW — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says Israeli officials have assured him that they are not planning a military strike on Iran. In an interview with CNN television broadcast Sunday, Medvedev also confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a secret visit to Moscow this month that included a meeting with the Russian president.

In a transcript of the interview released by the Kremlin, Medvedev hedges on the question of whether Russia would support Iran if it were attacked by Israel.

Although Russia has no defense agreement with Iran "this does not mean we would like to be or will be indifferent to such an occurrence. This is the worst thing that can be imagined," Medvedev said of a potential Israeli strike.

"What would happen after that? Humanitarian disaster, a vast number of refugees, Iran's wish to take revenge — and not only upon Israel, to be honest, but upon other countries as well."

"But my Israeli colleagues told me they were not planning to act in this way, and I trust them," Medvedev said.

It was not clear whether those referred to included Netanyahu. Israeli President Shimon Peres also reportedly told Medvedev in a meeting this month that Israel wasn't planning an attack on Iran. But Medvedev gave the first confirmation from the Russian side that a meeting with Netanyahu had taken place.

Netanyahu vanished from public view in Israel for most of the day on Sept. 7. His office said he had visited a secret security facility, but there was widespread speculation that he had gone to Russia — either to pressure Moscow not to deliver S-300 air-defense missiles to Iran or to inform the Kremlin of attack plans.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu came to Moscow. He did this under a closed regime, this was his decision. I don't understand what this was connected with, but sometimes our partners decide it this way," Medvedev said. He did not give details of the meeting.

Russia signed a contract two years ago to sell S-300s to Iran, a move that disturbs Israel because the missiles would substantially boost Iran's defenses. However, no deliveries have been made public. ....

Sigh.

The Long Retreat
Our security will now depend on the kindness of strangers.

By Mark Steyn


Was it only April? There was President Obama, speaking (as is his wont) in Prague, about the Iranian nuclear program and ballistic-missile capability, and saluting America’s plucky allies: “The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles,” he declared. “As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile-defense system that is cost-effective and proven.”

On Thursday, the administration scrapped its missile-defense plans for Eastern Europe. The “courageous” Czechs and Poles will have to take their chances. Did the “threat from Iran” go away? Not so’s you’d notice. The dawn of the nuclear ayatollahs is perhaps only months away, and, just in case the Zionists or (please, no tittering) the formerly Great Satan is minded to take ’em out, Tehran will shortly be taking delivery of a bunch of S-300 anti-aircraft batteries from (ta-da!) Russia. Fancy that.

Joe Klein, the geostrategic thinker of Time magazine, concluded his analysis thus:

This is just speculation on my part. But I do hope that this anti-missile move has a Russian concession attached to it, perhaps not publicly (just as the US agreement to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey was not make public during the Cuban Missile Crisis). The Obama Administration's diplomatic strategy is, I believe, wise and comprehensive—but it needs to show more than public concessions over time. A few diplomatic victories wouldn't hurt.

Golly. We know, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Joe Klein, and many others, that we critics of President Obama’s health-care policy are by definition racist. Has criticism of Obama’s foreign policy also been deemed racist? Because one can certainly detect the first faint seeds of doubt germinating in dear old Joe’s soon-to-be-racist breast: The Obama administration “needs to show more than public concessions over time” — because otherwise the entire planet may get the vague impression that that’s all there is.

Especially if your preemptive capitulations are as felicitously timed as the missile-defense announcement, stiffing the Poles on the 70th anniversary of their invasion by the Red Army. As for the Czechs, well, dust off your Neville Chamberlain’s Greatest Hits LP: Like he said, they’re a faraway country of which we know little. So who cares? Everything old is new again.

It is interesting to contrast the administration’s “wise” diplomacy abroad with its willingness to go nuclear at home. If you go to a town-hall meeting and express misgivings about the effectiveness of the stimulus, you’re a “racist” “angry” “Nazi” “evilmonger” “right-wing domestic terrorist.” It’s perhaps no surprise that that doesn’t leave a lot left over in the rhetorical arsenal for Putin, Chávez, and Ahmadinejad. But you’ve got to figure that by now the world’s strongmen are getting the measure of the new Washington. Diplomacy used to be, as Canada’s Lester Pearson liked to say, the art of letting the other fellow have your way. Today, it’s more of a discreet cover for letting the other fellow have his way with you. The Europeans “negotiate” with Iran over its nukes for years, and in the end Iran gets the nukes and Europe gets to feel good about itself for having sat across the table talking to no good purpose for the best part of a decade. In Moscow, there was a palpable triumphalism in the news that the Russians had succeeded in letting the Obama fellow have their way. “This is a recognition by the Americans of the rightness of our arguments about the reality of the threat, or rather the lack of one,” said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma’s international-affairs committee. “Finally the Americans have agreed with us.”

There’ll be a lot more of that in the years ahead.


There is no discreetly arranged “Russian concession.” Moscow has concluded that a nuclear Iran is in its national interest — especially if the remorseless nuclearization process itself is seen as a testament to Western weakness. Even if the Israelis are driven to bomb the thing to smithereens circa next spring, that too would only emphasize, by implicit comparison, American and European pusillanimity. Any private relief felt in the chancelleries of London and Paris would inevitably license a huge amount of public tut-tutting by this or that foreign minister about the Zionist Entity’s regrettable “disproportion.” The U.S. Defense Secretary is already on record as opposing an Israeli strike. If it happens, every thug state around the globe will understand the subtext — that, aside from a tiny strip of land on the east bank of the Jordan, every other advanced society on earth is content to depend for its security on the kindness of strangers.

Some of them very strange. Kim Jong-Il wouldn’t really let fly at South Korea or Japan, would he? Even if some quasi-Talibanny types wound up sitting on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, they wouldn’t really do anything with them, would they? Okay, Putin can be a bit heavy-handed when dealing with Eastern Europe, and his definition of “Eastern” seems to stretch ever farther west, but he’s not going to be sending the tanks back into Prague and Budapest, is he? I mean, c’mon . . .

Vladimir Putin is no longer president but he is de facto tsar. And he thinks it’s past time to reconstitute the old empire — not formally (yet), but certainly as a sphere of influence from which the Yanks keep their distance. President Obama has just handed the Russians their biggest win since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Indeed, in some ways it marks the restitching of the Iron Curtain. When the Czechs signed their end of the missile-defense deal in July, they found themselves afflicted by a sudden “technical difficulty” that halved their gas supply from Russia. The Europe Putin foresees will be one not only ever more energy-dependent on Moscow but security-dependent, too — in which every city is within range of missiles from Tehran and other crazies, and is in effect under the security umbrella of the new tsar. As to whether such a Continent will be amicable to American interests, well, good luck with that, hopeychangers.

In a sense, the health-care debate and the foreign-policy debacle are two sides of the same coin: For Britain and other great powers, the decision to build a hugely expensive welfare state at home entailed inevitably a long retreat from responsibilities abroad, with a thousand small betrayals of peripheral allies along the way. A few years ago, the great scholar Bernard Lewis warned, during the debate on withdrawal from Iraq, that America risked being seen as “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” In Moscow and Tehran, on one hand, and Warsaw and Prague, on the other, they’re drawing their own conclusions.

It is interesting to contrast the administration’s “wise” diplomacy abroad with its willingness to go nuclear at home

In the liberal US forums I lurk on the greatest enemy seems to be the one within. The Mullahs are cool but the GOP needs to be put down by any means necessary.

Originally Posted by Mihais

From their p.o.v is tying American forces in Iraq.They had every right to consider US and Israel a threat in the light of bellicose statements from both these countries.

The US, Israel or the UK for that matter, don’t have anything to envy the Mullahs in bellicose rhetoric. By the same token, all these countries would have a pile of casus belli with the Islamic Republic.

But without entering into perceptions of threats (it is remarkable how the state of confrontation between Iran and Israel is entirely a religious zealots’ hallucination – so intricate, and yet so ABSURD), and whatever their motives for doing it, the fact remains that they did attack Iraq.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

Aren't the al-Quds palestinian?.

No, they are a branch of the IRGC.

By the way, the dictator A-jad, freshly blooded from the recent coup (which did kill a bunch of Iranians to advance its ideals), just appointed Ahmad Vahidi as defence minister – a guy who used to head the Quds Force, and who is wanted by the Interpol over the bombing in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead.

My point is not that Iran is a peace-loving nation that just wants to hug everyone, but that it prefers to let others pay the 'butcher's bill' for spreading its influence. I could also have pointed out that proxy armies are popular in the ME (I have elsewhere). Syria, Israel, Iran & Iraq (off the top of my head) have all used them to some extent. They weren't included in my statement.

Iran may be willing to fight Israel to the last Palestinian, but I'm yet to see it put its own people in the firing line in any great numbers except when Saddam invaded. The young man who made the initial post was getting a bit excitable, I tried to present a more nuanced perspective.

Again, if there is something I've missed by all means point it out.

Which is next to irrelevant for the Israelis’ security calculus.
Even if you are right on that point, it doesn’t really matter whether it is Iranians or a terrorist proxy Army that does the dirty work, does it?

So while I don’t disagree that there are national security and prestige factors here, what you are missing is that one reason why the Iranian regime wishes to become a nuclear power, is because it wishes to wage war against its enemies.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that they will actually nuke somebody; but it would make terrorist or conventional attacks so much safer and therefore, likelier. A nuclear Iran would restore to the Islamic world the nuclear deterrent it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it guarantees more conflict under an Islamic nuclear umbrella. Have you seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel since the USSR collapse? Is it a coincidence?

And then there is the issue of this mad dog and his repulsive threats expressed in repulsive language; and the thing is, it makes sense to act deranged in nuclear poker. With the Bomb, A-jad will likely increase the frequency of his threats to wipe Israel off the map, let alone if Israel dares retaliate against the murderous islamo-fascist gangs otherwise known as Hamas or Hezbollah – this by itself could break Israel’s will.

Originally Posted by Castellano

Which is next to irrelevant for the Israelis’ security calculus.
Even if you are right on that point, it doesn’t really matter whether it is Iranians or a terrorist proxy Army that does the dirty work, does it?

So while I don’t disagree that there are national security and prestige factors here, what you are missing is that one reason why the Iranian regime wishes to become a nuclear power, is because it wishes to wage war against its enemies.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that they will actually nuke somebody; but it would make terrorist or conventional attacks so much safer and therefore, likelier. A nuclear Iran would restore to the Islamic world the nuclear deterrent it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it guarantees more conflict under an Islamic nuclear umbrella. Have you seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel since the USSR collapse? Is it a coincidence?

And then there is the issue of this mad dog and his repulsive threats expressed in repulsive language; and the thing is, it makes sense to act deranged in nuclear poker. With the Bomb, A-jad will likely increase the frequency of his threats to wipe Israel off the map, let alone if Israel dares retaliate against the murderous islamo-fascist gangs otherwise known as Hamas or Hezbollah – this by itself could break Israel’s will.

C,
1.Every Western and Arab intelligence service has it's eyes on them(and I bet many of the technicians working for the western companies are used as humint,as well as many opposition sympathizers so we're not deaf and blind)
2.OeE has repeatedly stated that Iran CANNOT build a nuclear weapon outside IAEA supervision.I trust the colonel more than any Israeli hand wringing.Any expulsion of IAEA experts and B-2's take-off.
3.IF Iran gets WMD's in sufficient numbers to detter any conventional attack(a SF scenario at this moment),MAD comes into play
4.All the nukes didn't prevent USSR,(a country orders of magnitudes more powerfull in every aspect than anything Iran could be) to starve and fall.
5.Nobody attacked Israel because they lack the capability to defeat Israel in a conventional war.
6.During the Cold War,there were dozens if not hundreds of wars by proxy on every continent except Europe and somehow nobody pushed the button.So I would not be to worried about Israel's lack of means to pursue it's security interests(i.e kick Hamas from time to time) even if Iran gets the nuke.
p.s Mate,like I told before,we share some fundamental points,but sometimes your language reminds of the language of ''politrucs''.

Originally Posted by Castellano

No, they are a branch of the IRGC.

OK, but again, not exactly the equivalent of sending combat formations accross the border.

By the way, the dictator A-jad, freshly blooded from the recent coup (which did kill a bunch of Iranians to advance its ideals), just appointed Ahmad Vahidi as defence minister – a guy who used to head the Quds Force, and who is wanted by the Interpol over the bombing in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead.

Sounds like a bad man. Don't know what this has to do with anything I posted.

BTW, what do the deaths of a relatively small number of Iranians at the hands of the current regime have to do with its willingness to use nuclear weapons on Israel? We've already agreed that A-jad is a nasty bit of work. If you want to make the leap to national suicide you'll have to do better than that.

Which is next to irrelevant for the Israelis’ security calculus.
Even if you are right on that point, it doesn’t really matter whether it is Iranians or a terrorist proxy Army that does the dirty work, does it?

It does in the context of the statement I was addressing.

So while I don’t disagree that there are national security and prestige factors here, what you are missing is that one reason why the Iranian regime wishes to become a nuclear power, is because it wishes to wage war against its enemies.

A presumption on your part.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that they will actually nuke somebody; but it would make terrorist or conventional attacks so much safer and therefore, likelier. A nuclear Iran would restore to the Islamic world the nuclear deterrent it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it guarantees more conflict under an Islamic nuclear umbrella. Have you seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel since the USSR collapse? Is it a coincidence?

Yes. Once Egypt made peace the game was up. It worries me that you might actually think you have a point here.

And then there is the issue of this mad dog and his repulsive threats expressed in repulsive language; and the thing is, it makes sense to act deranged in nuclear poker. With the Bomb, A-jad will likely increase the frequency of his threats to wipe Israel off the map, let alone if Israel dares retaliate against the murderous islamo-fascist gangs otherwise known as Hamas or Hezbollah – this by itself could break Israel’s will

OK Castellano, I have had enough of this. You have the gall to address this to me

Let's not parrot the Iranian regime propaganda soundbites

, yet you spout off stuff like this. Do you even read this stuff back to yourself? Israel won't be able to respond to attacks? Its will have its will broken? Spare me.

I'm done wasting my time with you. I have set up a thread where you can correct my every mistake. If I have anything further to say to you it will be there.

Originally Posted by Mihais

C,
1.Every Western and Arab intelligence service has it's eyes on them(and I bet many of the technicians working for the western companies are used as humint,as well as many opposition sympathizers so we're not deaf and blind)
2.OeE has repeatedly stated that Iran CANNOT build a nuclear weapon outside IAEA supervision.I trust the colonel more than any Israeli hand wringing.Any expulsion of IAEA experts and B-2's take-off.
3.IF Iran gets WMD's in sufficient numbers to detter any conventional attack(a SF scenario at this moment),MAD comes into play
4.All the nukes didn't prevent USSR,(a country orders of magnitudes more powerfull in every aspect than anything Iran could be) to starve and fall.
5.Nobody attacked Israel because they lack the capability to defeat Israel in a conventional war.
6.During the Cold War,there were dozens if not hundreds of wars by proxy on every continent except Europe and somehow nobody pushed the button.So I would not be to worried about Israel's lack of means to pursue it's security interests(i.e kick Hamas from time to time) even if Iran gets the nuke.
p.s Mate,like I told before,we share some fundamental points,but sometimes your language reminds of the language of ''politrucs''.

I agree with some of the points but not all.

I know you don't like the "islamofascism" term; maybe is not very academic but it has some other virtues. Anyway, here is a defense of the term:

The term Islamofascism was first used in 1990 in Britain's Independent newspaper by Scottish writer Malise Ruthven, who was writing about the way in which traditional Arab dictatorships used religious appeals in order to stay in power. I didn't know about this when I employed the term "fascism with an Islamic face" to describe the attack on civil society on Sept. 11, 2001, and to ridicule those who presented the attack as some kind of liberation theology in action. "Fascism with an Islamic face" is meant to summon a dual echo of both Alexander Dubcek and Susan Sontag (if I do say so myself), and in any case, it can't be used for everyday polemical purposes, so the question remains: Does Bin Ladenism or Salafism or whatever we agree to call it have anything in common with fascism?

I think yes. The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements.

Defending the term "Islamofascism." - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

It contains an error though, in reality it was José Millán-Astray (founder of the Spanish Legion) the one who coined "Viva la Muerte!"

Originally Posted by Bigfella

OK, but again, not exactly the equivalent of sending combat formations accross the border.

Right, but I guess I have to remind you that you said:

"Iran under the Mullahs has never directly invaded or even attacked a neighbour"

Sounds like a bad man. Don't know what this has to do with anything I posted.

BTW, what do the deaths of a relatively small number of Iranians at the hands of the current regime have to do with its willingness to use nuclear weapons on Israel? We've already agreed that A-jad is a nasty bit of work. If you want to make the leap to national suicide you'll have to do better than that.

I explicitly didn't make that leap, and the post you replied with gracious condescension wasn't necessarily making it, either.

A presumption on your part.

Or rather the most logical conclusion to the observation: "Iran is not a peace loving nation"

Yes. Once Egypt made peace the game was up. It worries me that you might actually think you have a point here.

There can be no War without Egypt, and no Peace without Syria - is often said with at least some truth.

I still think that for example something like 1973 would have been unthinkable w/out Soviet nukes. Regardless, should present day Iran get nukes, the resulting nuclear umbrella for terrorists is I think simply undeniable. As would be more Iranian regime meddling where it shouldn't for so many reasons, and where it wasn't meddling back in say...1973.

See the point?

OK Castellano, I have had enough of this. You have the gall to address this to me , yet you spout off stuff like this. Do you even read this stuff back to yourself? Israel won't be able to respond to attacks? Its will have its will broken? Spare me.

So you don't foresee the double message — there was no Holocaust, but there might well be one soon.
It is actually a quite logical point; a no-brainer really.

Got any notion of empathy? The walk in other people's shoes thingy?

Maybe you should read more Shakespeare.

But you want facts, well;

Bon Appetit:

Almost a quarter of Israel's seven million citizens would consider leaving the country if Iran becomes a nuclear military power, according to a new poll.

Israelis may emigrate over nuclear threat - Middle East, World - The Independent