Thread: Why Iran Will have a nuclear arsenal?

Originally Posted by Rusky

Yes thats correct in any organization where are people who have to make the decisions, but that doesn't mean that morality doesn't matter. If everything was run for the sake of efficiency then first thing you'd do in a hostile nation would be to terrorize the population with direct military action against the civilians as to prevent the possibility of an enemy sympathetic structure hiding within that population. Thats just an example.

I think the point that was originally being made was, if the president orders a nuclear launch, then it is up to the military to obey those orders, regardless of what they think of them morally (with a limited response time, there simply isn't time for each person in the chain of command to do their own little soul searching before obeying).

And that in order to properly plan a nuclear conflict, the soldiers doing the planning must be dispassionate and emotionally disconected from what they are doing in order to be effective.

Originally Posted by Bulgaroctonus

Pardon me if I have mistaken ideas about the machinery of the military. I try to think like a machine, dispassionately and with calculation. As a result, I view the world as a collection of systems with specific purposes. Logically, if I view an army as a machine designed to kill, all objectives must be geared towards perfecting that system's purpose. In short, increasing amount of enemy deaths while minimizing damage to the army.

You are making the basic mistake of excluding both the humanity of the soldiers and your own humanity therefore you cannot efficiently utilise the machine you speak of as you do not understand it or your own nature.
I do not believe that you are a sociopath as the responses you have posted on other threads, specifically your creativity, preclude that you are. It's easy in a hypothetical situation to divorce your emotions from your decision making, another thing entirely in reality. I like you have not had to face war and I pray I never do, but I do know from my own experiences that you cannot divorce your emotions or humanity from your decision making. I have saved peoples lives, I have watched people die and I have made decisions that directly contributed to two peoples deaths. Even though the decision was the right one I can nevertheless not recall that time without literally having my brain cringe.
OoE has faced those decisions and actions on a scale I can only guess at, and he tells you that you can't divorce the consequences from your actions yet you won't listen to someone who has actual experience of this and continue to debate in a hypothetical realm. Why? Surely someone who can relate actual experience should modify your opinion?

Originally Posted by lwarmonger

And that in order to properly plan a nuclear conflict, the soldiers doing the planning must be dispassionate and emotionally disconected from what they are doing in order to be effective.

On the contrary, the opposite is true. There is a reason why all nuclear release crews must be family men. If you're single or divorced, you're out. The gravity of such orders must be understood and carried out. The soul searching is done during the recruiting phase and throughout the career. It's not done during release but do not for one second think that these people are not tested or continued to be tested to understand the seriousness of any release order.

Commando

Israel does not have the capability to guarantee that a surgical strike will destroy Iranian nuke facilities, all of them, and certainly the biggest challenge will be the distance and the choice of waypoints to Iran, again check out your handy atlas for details...

People seem to think that Israel will use tactical nukes, it wont, unless Iran launches a full scale biological/chemical attack via missiles on Israel, it will not go down that path. There are many reasons for this but most of them are common sense if you follow Israeli millitary mindset.

Originally Posted by lwarmonger

I think the point that was originally being made was, if the president orders a nuclear launch, then it is up to the military to obey those orders, regardless of what they think of them morally (with a limited response time, there simply isn't time for each person in the chain of command to do their own little soul searching before obeying).

And that in order to properly plan a nuclear conflict, the soldiers doing the planning must be dispassionate and emotionally disconected from what they are doing in order to be effective.

Iwarmonger,

You have understood my argument well.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

On the contrary, the opposite is true. There is a reason why all nuclear release crews must be family men. If you're single or divorced, you're out. The gravity of such orders must be understood and carried out. The soul searching is done during the recruiting phase and throughout the career. It's not done during release but do not for one second think that these people are not tested or continued to be tested to understand the seriousness of any release order.

Interesting point. I know that the CIA often always carries out psychological assessment, and many of its operatives are family men for the very reason you mention, they must have the proper motivation that comes with possessing a family. In addition, family men do tend to be less cruel and than single men.

I suppose the loners and psychopaths have their uses in the government, perhaps as assassins and such.

It seems to me a little inaccurate to rule out single and divorced men from nuclear service, but don't make military policy. Many of you are thanking God for that, no doubt.

Originally Posted by Bulgaroctonus

Greetings.

First, keep in mind that I do not have strategic or military training. Therefore, please excuse and correct me if I make any such errors.

Do not sell yourself short: a great deal of strategic policy, decsion making, commentary etc. is promulgated outside of military circles so with some education and critical thinking ability (which you are certainly in posession of and expanding that capability) you will be about as qualified to speculate on strategy as anybody else.

Military training can useful in such endeavors but in lieu of that canvass veterans and heed their points as they are great illuminators of the difference between theory and practice.

The United States faces a shrinking list of options. Negotiations under the feckless Europeans will not work. In fact, such appeasement will probably increase the strategic stength of Iran. Even Security Council sanctions will ahrdly do anything.

I do not find anything to disagree with here and as I mentioned towards the start of this thread unilateral American action of some sort is indicated at this point but I also feel that multinational efforts should be pursued on a parallel track becuase combinations of moves give the best chance of landing hits.

As to negotiations, I still believe that a direct contact between Washington and Tehran ought to be tried. This whole thing is too important to US interests to leave to others who have not proven capable of delivering up until this point. The Iranaians may not listen but I have heard it said that "nothing ventured, nothing gained".

At worst, this might work out to a big zero. At best, the US might acheive its aims and possibly even put the Iranians in an Euro-American orbit instead of a Russian and/or Chinese orbit.

A military invasion or action of some kind is necessary to deter the Iranians from their current course. The strategist Hassan Abbasi is determined to play 'chicken' with the United States. Iran is approaching this situation with pure game theory in mind.

I do not think that the time is right for military action at this point but the clock is indeed ticking and there is no doubt some midnight oil being burned by the contingency planning people.

The United States could institute a draft, but President Bush is not willing to suffer the political costs attendant in that. Like Abbasi said, the United States is risk-averse. Therefore, the lack of political and civil will is paralyzing the U.S. military.

Even is there was a draft, it would not help that much methinks. Soldiering is a proffessional occupation these days and it takes a lot of time and effort to make a good one. Ask Saddam Hussein about the quality of a conscript army in the face of highly trained, highly motivated, mechanized and combined arms forces.

As to political will, I can only call it like I see it: the US has the appearances trying to fight its current wars, battle terrorism and gear up for the next conflict while simultaneously cutting taxes and defense commitments. This is a sign of one of several things and they all bode ill.

However, I am concerned about another thing. The chief weakness of the U.S. is not its lack of infantry. Instead, the U.S. is very vulnerable to an Iranian embargo, and the far worse prospect of the Iranians closing the Straits of Hormuz. Any U.S. attack has to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, and destroy the Iranian ability to seal off the the Straits.

I think that striking at the facilities and the issue of security in the Straits of Hormuz are definitely two seperate issues even if they are run concurrently.

The most credible facility striking scenario I am aware of calls for a minimum of 300 targets and five days of strikes which is a sizeable military operation. The Iranians and sympathetic plane spotters about the region and Europe could probably pick up the telegraphy of an impending strike and act accordingly.

While I do not believe the Iranians could seal the Straits of Hormuz per se, any military action in those crowded shipping lanes will have an effect out of proportion to the effort involved .

While airstrikes and other operations could quickly neutralize AShM shore batteries, small boats darting out into the darkeness, kicking a half a dozen mines overboard and the dissapearing into the night are hard to counter and though such attacks are militarily and tactically marginal, they have in the past proven to have significant strategic impact. The USN has dealt with this Iranian threat before, however, so there is a body of knowledge with which to formulate a partial solution.

If the Iranians were to mine both the Red Sea and the Straits of Hormuz, then the World would have a mess on its hands.

Iranian air defenses, to the best of my knowledge, are reasonably capable and cover all important altitudes and ranges. However, they are said to lack national integration which reduces their effectiveness and makes them a local matter at best.

I fear that a non-nuclear aerial campaign might be unable to acheive both of these things efficiently. The area covered and speed necessary might be too much. However, this is probably not the case. Do you think that a non-nuclear aerial campaign could fully do the job?

Yes, I feel that a non nuclear aerial campaign can do the job if (lets make that a BIG IF) intelligence is up to the task and that is a debatable point.

First, there are conventional weapons in inventory that can burrow deeper and have greater accuracy than many nuclear weapons. Targets that may have required a nuclear response 10 or 15 years ago can be readily destroyed by some of today's conventional weapons.

Secondly, there is the possibility that the US will be striking at decoys or targets that are not as significant as intelligence may have us believe. To me, this contraindicates the deployment of nuclear weapons as the stakes are very high and it would suck to take the risk and expend the military, political and diplomatic captial for a net gain of zero.

You are correct that it is right and good to debate all options but when you think it all the way through, nuking Iran would suck. It would really suck. It would be the suckiest suck that ever sucked. It would suck more than an implosion at the Hoover factory.

Nuclear weapons are a nice thing because they can destroy large amounts of structures (i.e. the Iranian nuclear facilties) and large amounts of people (i.e. the Iranian army), in a short amount of time. A nuclear attack could crush a nation's will and exterminate most of its army.

Debilitating strategic campaigns have been sold in the past on the merit that they will reduce the enemy's will to fight but historically have not always delivered. On the contrary, they can have a propensity to anneal the populous and even give them a reason to fight harder.

Extensive strategic bombardment of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan did not reduce the requirement for a costly invasion of the former and still took five years to answer the latter and even then they were working at best possible capacity up until the nuclear strikes. Japan's warlords seemed to feel that they could fight on even after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks; it was only the sagacity of the Emperor that brought the conflict to a conclusion.

In addition, a nuclear weapon could even be used against a civilian target. A nuclear weapon used against Tehran would probably kill Ahmadinejad and his government. The instantaneous death of about 14,000,000 people in the metropolitan Tehran area could break the Iranian will and force them to surrender. In addition, About 30% of Iran’s public-sector workforce and 45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran and almost half of these workers work for the government.

This may be but:

1. Targetting non-combatants with nuclear weapons might be considered a terrorist attack under US statutes and would almost certainly be viewed as such by many international actors including any allies we muster.

2. You would still have to contend with 70% of the workforce and 55% of the industrial capacity. Given how few insurgents it took to tie down forces and cause a bit of disruption in Iraq, the Iranians would still have some sort of capacity to resist an occupation and use terror and espionage to strike at US interests in the
Gulf region and beyond.

You had mentioned destroying the Iranian power supply earlier. I do think this would be excellent for disrupting the Iranian defense capabilties. However, I imagine that most of the Iranian nuclear facilities are fully outfitted with generators so your strategy would not shut them down, at least not immediately.

Only one way to find out!

As to the technical points that you raise, I do not have a reply. I am researching the different acronyms and weapons that you mentioned.

You ought to look into the subject in general as time permits as I think you would get a tremendous amout information and entertainment out of it.

Nuclear weapons, their history, development and proliferation is a fascinating subject with something for everybody: history, philosophy, pure science, applied science, political science, military history, millitary affairs, etc.

Too, the cast of characters includes plenty of interesting personalities such as Marie Curie, Khurcatov, Robert Oppenhiemer, Fermi, Hans Bete, Einstein, Leo Sizlard, General Leslie Groves, Andre Sakarov all the way up to the notorious Dr. Kahn and let us not forget the contoversial Dr. Teller.

Regards,

William

Gratuitous Comic Interlude Post :

from Randy Neuman "Political Science":

No one likes us
I don't know why.
We may not be perfect
But heaven knows we try.
But all around even our old friends put us down.
Let's drop the big one and see what happens.

We give them money
But are they grateful?
No they're spiteful
And they're hateful.
They don't respect us so let's surprise them;
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them.

Now Asia's crowded
And Europe's too old.
Africa's far too hot,
And Canada's too cold.
And South America stole our name.
Let's drop the big one; there'll be no one left to blame us.

Bridge:
We'll save Australia;
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo.
We'll build an all-American amusement park there;
They've got surfing, too.

Well, boom goes London,
And boom Paris.
More room for you
And more room for me.
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town.
Oh, how peaceful it'll be;
We'll set everybody free;
You'll have Japanese kimonos, baby,
There'll be Italian shoes for me.
They all hate us anyhow,
So let's drop the big one now.
Let's drop the big one now.

---END--