Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Grizzly on January 14, 2012, 05:54:47 am
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Here is the Foreign Policy article (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag)
I find the whole story rather weird. The USA is Isreal's biggest ally, why risk detoriating the alliance to gain another ally? I fail to see the strategic value in this. But then again, I also fail to see why Israel is so upset about Iran lately. Even if they ever get a nuke, MAD is still in effect...
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I guess that cost/benefit analysis was in favor of that move. I'm sure that they had an explanation prepared in case US found out.
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Here is the Foreign Policy article (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag)
I find the whole story rather weird. The USA is Isreal's biggest ally, why risk detoriating the alliance to gain another ally? I fail to see the strategic value in this. But then again, I also fail to see why Israel is so upset about Iran lately. Even if they ever get a nuke, MAD is still in effect...
MAD won't deter people who sincerely believe that if they die in a war with 'infidels', that their eternal fate is then secured in heaven (with 72 virgins, yada yada), and who have been trained since being able to comprehend speech that Israel / USA are enemies who only want to take over all that belongs to them / kill their family / etc, etc.
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probably because the US wouldn't actually care.
this also gives the US an out if it's ever found out doing something unsavory, it could disown whoever was in charge and claim it was actually mossad agents.
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Mossad has historically shown they don't give a flying **** who they offend among their allies. Look at the passports used during that assassination in Bahrain not long ago. This isn't exactly surprising, and despite maybe annoying the US slightly, lasting repercussions aren't on the table.
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Even if they ever get a nuke, MAD is still in effect...
MAD makes an assumption the other guy does not want to die. What makes Iran (and North Korea) so disturbing a prospect with nuclear arms is that they do not understand us and we do not understand them enough to be sure their leadership doesn't want to die and hence be sure that MAD actually works.
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Even if they ever get a nuke, MAD is still in effect...
MAD makes an assumption the other guy does not want to die. What makes Iran (and North Korea) so disturbing a prospect with nuclear arms is that they do not understand us and we do not understand them enough to be sure their leadership doesn't want to die and hence be sure that MAD actually works.
Here is the Foreign Policy article (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag)
I find the whole story rather weird. The USA is Isreal's biggest ally, why risk detoriating the alliance to gain another ally? I fail to see the strategic value in this. But then again, I also fail to see why Israel is so upset about Iran lately. Even if they ever get a nuke, MAD is still in effect...
MAD won't deter people who sincerely believe that if they die in a war with 'infidels', that their eternal fate is then secured in heaven (with 72 virgins, yada yada), and who have been trained since being able to comprehend speech that Israel / USA are enemies who only want to take over all that belongs to them / kill their family / etc, etc.
Looks like the propaganda's working, guys
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Wat?
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If Turambar is saying what I think he is saying, then I agree with him. Iran's and NK's leaders are not people who are commited to leadership in order to carry out an ideology. They simply use an ideology to stay in power. Usually, getting nuked is an awfull way to stay in power.
The idea that Iran and NK are insane ideologists is usually stressed by some other nations who then use it as an excuse to exercise more power in those regions. Hence Turambar's propaganda remark.
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As far as I can tell the current leadership of both countries has no actual interest in nuking anyone. They simply like to look like they might in order to get concessions/piss people off.
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As far as I can tell the current leadership of both countries has no actual interest in nuking anyone. They simply like to look like they might in order to get concessions/piss people off.
Seems more like, to me, that both countries leaders want nuclear weapons to protect their regimes from foreign intervention. Just look at how we deal with Pakistan versus how we dealt with Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya.
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Usually, getting nuked is an awfull way to stay in power.
Usually? Considering the number of countries nuked here: Are you, by any chance, from Vasuda Prime? :p
The only country nuked here was Japan, and if I remember correctly, their governments continued well enough after they surrendered.
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Except for that stuff about MacArthur rewriting their constitution for them and us still having a military base there. Though yeah, they got better.
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Usually, getting nuked is an awfull way to stay in power.
Usually? Considering the number of countries nuked here: Are you, by any chance, from Vasuda Prime? :p
The only country nuked here was Japan, and if I remember correctly, their governments continued well enough after they surrendered.
They certainly did not continue on the same level though (Japan completely lost their sovereignity untill 1952, anda p perently much changed afterwards). MAD also wasn't in effect yet, and Japan certainly had a problem if the USA decided that they would hit Tokyo next (which they might just have considered if Japan had not surrendered, but I am not an expert on this period of history)
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If Turambar is saying what I think he is saying, then I agree with him. Iran's and NK's leaders are not people who are commited to leadership in order to carry out an ideology.
This sounds pretty, but in the end, it's not sufficient. Hitler was committed to an ideology to maintain power, so he'd never do something like the Holocaust, right?
Right?
Uh-oh.
The ideology is existent and they claim to follow it and abandoning the ideology will abdicate their power as effectively as nuking someone. Moreso, really, since at least nuking someone will be proof they believe what they're saying, and both countries are in a position where their leadership needs to prove the sincerity of its belief and the truth of its causes to keep the population placated.
But this is actually not remotely relevant to what I was saying and neither you nor Turambar were perceptive enough to grasp that. Neither nation views reality through a similar enough lense to the one we have for there to be a surety on the other side's opinions, thoughts, and feelings. In saying they embrace ideology to maintain power, you are making a claim you are not able to support, because you can't simulate the thinking of Kim Jong Un or the Ayatollahs. Even if what you say is true, the possibility for serious miscommunication leading to someone thinking they have the green light is still unacceptably high. Saddam invaded Kuwait because he decided we'd let him and it took killing an awful lot of people to straighten the man out, and he was reasonably responsive and perceptive by our terms.
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This sounds pretty, but in the end, it's not sufficient. Hitler was committed to an ideology to maintain power, so he'd never do something like the Holocaust, right?
The holocaust was a relatively unknown subject untill the US soldiers found those camps. The holocaust was directed against a minority of people and did not threaten the security of a country with nukes.
The ideology is existent and they claim to follow it and abandoning the ideology will abdicate their power as effectively as nuking someone.
How does not nuking Israel mean that Iran is abandoning its ideology? It has not nuked Israel for a while now, and nobody complained. Things like the sharia law still are in effect, i'd say that has more to do with their ideology...
But this is actually not remotely relevant to what I was saying and neither you nor Turambar were perceptive enough to grasp that. Neither nation views reality through a similar enough lense to the one we have for there to be a surety on the other side's opinions, thoughts, and feelings. In saying they embrace ideology to maintain power, you are making a claim you are not able to support, because you can't simulate the thinking of Kim Jong Un or the Ayatollahs.
So what you are saying is that because we don't really know what the other side might do, we should employ worst-case-scenario thinking? Why isn't the US then taking steps against Israel?
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The holocaust was a relatively unknown subject untill the US soldiers found those camps.
False, for the record. The camps were know by at least 1944 as people who had escaped from them made it to England.
The holocaust was directed against a minority of people and did not threaten the security of a country with nukes.
Ah, to be young and naive and not consider the implications. (And a minority? Come now, huge cross-sections of Germany and Eastern Europe ended up in the camps, just most of them didn't die because they hadn't run out of Jews yet.)
Whole sections of Poland and the Ukraine were depopulated by the Germans. That's an attack on a nation state. (And then the Soviets depopulated others.) But really, drawing an artificial distinction between killing six million random people and killing six million people by nuking several cities is a bizarre, irrational one.
The will to do it is there. And the Holocaust, directing it and creating it and carrying it out, actually took a lot more people (though a lot less industrial capacity) than building an atomic bomb would. Killing six million people is practically an industry all its own, a significant commitment of state resources equivalent easily to small war.
How does not nuking Israel mean that Iran is abandoning its ideology? It has not nuked Israel for a while now, and nobody complained. Things like the sharia law still are in effect, i'd say that has more to do with their ideology...
Iran has never had the capability to destroy Israel before. But destroying Israel is one of the key tenants of their internal propaganda and their ideology. If they have the means and do not act, it signals they do not intend to carry through.
Iran is in much the same position the Soviet Union was. It had a revolution that promised people new and better things, a new and better government and a better life, if only they would unite. It didn't happen. They have now turned to the external enemy strategy, and say that these external forces bar the way and if you will back us we will destroy them.
But this only buys you time. You have to eventually do it, or at least appear to be making progress in that direction or to be serious about it, or your populace will get feed up with your bull****. Why do you suppose Iran was so eager to tout the US carrier leaving the Gulf and claimed their warships chased it in a grand sham? They need buy-in that they're making progress. They're not getting enough of it.
So what you are saying is that because we don't really know what the other side might do, we should employ worst-case-scenario thinking? Why isn't the US then taking steps against Israel?
Why should the US take steps against Israel? We know how they think. We've got plenty of people who can tell us. They are predictable, and behaving in a predictable fashion is the basis on which someone can be reasoned with and thus the fuel on which diplomacy runs. We don't like how they act, but that does not make them threatening in this fashion.
And more seriously are you suggesting that nobody should ever prepare for the worst case?
I'd also note that the government of Iran, the actual power part, is still composed of mullahs who participated in the revolution. The idea that a revolutionary is always one seeking power is...unlikely. Such men must often believe simply to convince and rally others to their cause.
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Another things is that such ideologically driven people are more likely to take extreme measures as they invariably believe that the result out weighs the cost, if they even consider the cost in the first place. The general population will support their leader's decision because they also believe the decision was the right one due to propogander and or a general national prejudice which the leader used/created to help cement their power and/or Its politically the best option to support the action.
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And more seriously are you suggesting that nobody should ever prepare for the worst case?
There have been several occassions in the US history where the goverment took measures against threats (some of them non existent) which turned out to do them much harm in the long run. I am thinking Iraq here, amongst others.
(Rest of the post
Very well explained. I completely forgot about the Slavish peoples, as well as the "1984" thing. I still get the feeling that most of it is related to staying in power, instead of ideology, though.
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But destroying Israel is one of the key tenants of their internal propaganda and their ideology.
Prove that.
I offer this as counter-evidence to anything you say.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-ahmadinejad-really-say-israel-should-be-wiped-off-the-map/2011/10/04/gIQABJIKML_blog.html
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But destroying Israel is one of the key tenants of their internal propaganda and their ideology.
Prove that.
I offer this as counter-evidence to anything you say.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-ahmadinejad-really-say-israel-should-be-wiped-off-the-map/2011/10/04/gIQABJIKML_blog.html
As your own source points out, the "wipe Israel off the map" is probably a mis-translation or at least a phrase where the original meaning was lost in translation. However, Iran's policies (as detailed in that source) do not support a two-state solution and openly declare they wish to see a referendum encompassing the Palestinian areas and the current state of Israel that would see one whole state in the region with a single government. This policy effects the destruction of Israel. Sure, it's by non-military means but there is no question that a referendum of all the peoples in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel would revert the region to Palestinian control and eliminate the state of Israel.
To anyone who has studied the long and sordid history of the region, a single state solution may be desirable on paper but it is unquestionably a bad idea in practice - the events between 1948 and now demonstrate that admirably.
To summarize: Iran may not [openly] advocate for the military destruction of Israel, but their stated policy objective is to eliminate a Jewish state in the Middle East through, at minimum, political means. Iran supports giving the Palestinian peoples the right to self-determination, while essentially removing it from Jews by relying on the tenet of the tyranny of the majority (and don't kid yourself for one second that Iran wants their new Palestine to function as a democracy, that is decidedly not in the cards). This is why a two-state solution becomes the only fair outcome for all the parties involved.
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As your own source points out, the "wipe Israel off the map" is probably a mis-translation or at least a phrase where the original meaning was lost in translation. However, Iran's policies (as detailed in that source) do not support a two-state solution and openly declare they wish to see a referendum encompassing the Palestinian areas and the current state of Israel that would see one whole state in the region with a single government. This policy effects the destruction of Israel. Sure, it's by non-military means but there is no question that a referendum of all the peoples in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel would revert the region to Palestinian control and eliminate the state of Israel.
However, it does not involve nuking isreal, which is what everyone is upset about, and which I still do not get.
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Exactly the point I was making.
As for the tyranny of the majority comment, how is a tyranny of the minority any better?
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Prove that.
Iran directly and openly funds Hezbollah, whose stated ideology is the destruction of the State of Israel. They are openly supportive of this cause and have consistently provided Hezbollah with weapons and supplies to carry it out.
And would you honestly tell me that one may name another nation "the Little Satan" and not be declaring their desire to destroy it? If anyone of power in a country is permitted to make such a comparison and keep their job then surely this is a sign of declared and deep enmity?
There is perhaps an element of naivete at work. I've recently been reading about the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and that many in Iran expected at the time that after the hostages were released relations would normalize. But being naive and armed with nuclear weapons is nearly as bad as being destructive and armed with nuclear weapons.
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Iran directly and openly funds Hezbollah, whose stated ideology is the destruction of the State of Israel. They are openly supportive of this cause and have consistently provided Hezbollah with weapons and supplies to carry it out.
Given that the original post is about Israel recruiting Sunni terrorists to overthrow the Iranian government and install a Sunni leadership for the country you're making an argument that is massively hypocritical.
And would you honestly tell me that one may name another nation "the Little Satan" and not be declaring their desire to destroy it? If anyone of power in a country is permitted to make such a comparison and keep their job then surely this is a sign of declared and deep enmity?
But enmity is not enough. Did not a previous American President refer to Iran as being part of the Axis of Evil and yet keep his job? Hell, during the cold war (when MAD was pretty much the only check and balance) didnt an American president mention The Evil Empire?
In case it wasnt clear, I'm not asking you to prove that Iran has a problem with the existance of the state of Israel. I want you to prove your earlier assertion that there is reason to believe the Iranians might launch a suicidal first stike. That's a rather massive assertion and it therefore requires some pretty serious proof.
Now before anyone goes off the deep end, I'm not in favour of them having nukes. But my objection is not one against the current regime, its a simple argument that I do not believe Iran is stable enough keep nuclear weapons safe. If that is your issue, so be it. But to argue that Iran won't understand or respect MAD you're going to have to provide a little more proof than some petty name calling at the level your own country has engaged in. Even showing the support terrorism isn't the level of proof required for this argument.
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As for the tyranny of the majority comment, how is a tyranny of the minority any better?
It's not - hence a two-state solution.
And can anyone honestly say that they are 100% OK with the Iranians having control of nuclear weapons? FFS, I'm not 100% OK with the Americans having control of nuclear weapons.
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Yes but the issue is not whether Iranian foreign policy is fair or just or even a good idea. The issue is the assertion that Iran can't be relied on to not launch nuclear weapons because they somehow are too insane to fear MAD.
This assertion has not been proved in any way, shape, size or form and I've even posted evidence of the Iranians seeking a diplomatic, non-violent solution. You might not agree with that solution, but you can't discount it and replace it with a paranoid fantasy that Iran want to launch a first strike simply because you don't like the idea of them having nukes.
There are valid reasons to not want them to have them. But arguing that they will attack Israel and damn the consequences, despite a complete lack of evidence, simply proves Turambar's comment
Looks like the propaganda's working, guys
was spot on.
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Given that the original post is about Israel recruiting Sunni terrorists to overthrow the Iranian government and install a Sunni leadership for the country you're making an argument that is massively hypocritical.
Hypocrisy does not make it factually wrong, so I will assume you've conceded to my argument.
You're also making a bizarre assumption that I support what Israel did. I haven't said that anywhere and for the record I don't. I engaged with Joshua's discussion about why people don't want an Iran with nukes. There's no hypocrisy here to be had even if it had a factual bearing on this argument, which it doesn't.
I want you to prove your earlier assertion that there is reason to believe the Iranians might launch a suicidal first stike. That's a rather massive assertion and it therefore requires some pretty serious proof.
Did we not spend damn near fifty years very close to somebody launching a suicidal first strike? I'm old enough to remember the Cold War, just barely. I presume you're not since you're even going to try to make this argument.
The power to launch a first strike has never lain in the hands of the people whom it will do the most harm to. You don't poll the population of Tehran or Moscow before the missiles fly. It lies in the hands of the leadership. With the Soviet leadership (and indeed the US leadership of the Cold War) there was always a bottom line: these were men who did not want to die, and who had invested their lives in building their own empires inside the state, things they did not wish to see destroyed as any man does not wish to see all he has created destroyed.
With the people who can make this decision in Iran, there are very large differences from this model. The people who can authorize a first strike are religious leaders who speak of the glory of martyrdom and the rewards it will gain you. If you say something enough times, there is always a danger you will start to believe it.
More concretely they are a separate body from the bureaucratic machinery that runs the country, untouched by it. They have not built their own empires or otherwise committed themselves to the life of their country and their people. There is no investiture here, no stakeholding. The country and the people are abstracts to those of ultimate authority. (Over and above the already abstract nature of these things to someone of an authoritarian government.) There is danger to both parties in this distance no matter how you consider it.
You are in effect saying that someone who has ascribed a nobility to suicide, and who has no vested interest in his own survival, is not more likely to take an action that will result in his death.
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Given that the original post is about Israel recruiting Sunni terrorists to overthrow the Iranian government and install a Sunni leadership for the country you're making an argument that is massively hypocritical.
Hypocrisy does not make it factually wrong, so I will assume you've conceded to my argument.
You assume incorrectly. As I posted later you need to do better than point out that they support terrorists before you can claim what you have claimed. Next time try reading my posts before you reply to them.
You're also making a bizarre assumption that I support what Israel did. I haven't said that anywhere and for the record I don't.
Again, I made no such assumption. I pointed out that your evidence is flawed since it isn't used as evidence that Israel is a danger to Iran.
Did we not spend damn near fifty years very close to somebody launching a suicidal first strike? I'm old enough to remember the Cold War, just barely. I presume you're not since you're even going to try to make this argument.
You presume incorrectly. You really need to stop making these assumptions as my last three responses clearly prove you're really bad at it.
The power to launch a first strike has never lain in the hands of the people whom it will do the most harm to. You don't poll the population of Tehran or Moscow before the missiles fly. It lies in the hands of the leadership. With the Soviet leadership (and indeed the US leadership of the Cold War) there was always a bottom line: these were men who did not want to die, and who had invested their lives in building their own empires inside the state, things they did not wish to see destroyed as any man does not wish to see all he has created destroyed.
With the people who can make this decision in Iran, there are very large differences from this model. The people who can authorize a first strike are religious leaders who speak of the glory of martyrdom and the rewards it will gain you. If you say something enough times, there is always a danger you will start to believe it.
More concretely they are a separate body from the bureaucratic machinery that runs the country, untouched by it. They have not built their own empires or otherwise committed themselves to the life of their country and their people. There is no investiture here, no stakeholding. The country and the people are abstracts to those of ultimate authority. (Over and above the already abstract nature of these things to someone of an authoritarian government.) There is danger to both parties in this distance no matter how you consider it.
You are in effect saying that someone who has ascribed a nobility to suicide, and who has no vested interest in his own survival, is not more likely to take an action that will result in his death.
That's a pretty weak argument though. The same argument could easily have been made about several people in both the American and Russian militaries during the Cold War. Are you actually claiming that neither of those sides should have had nukes?
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The issue is the assertion that Iran can't be relied on to not launch nuclear weapons because they somehow are too insane to fear MAD.
That wasn't in evidence from your response to NGTM originally, and I confess I had just been skimming the thread until that point.
While I wouldn't go so far as to claim the Iranians are too insane to fear MAD, NGTM made a very legitimate point earlier - it doesn't have to be too insane to fear MAD, a simple failure to fully comprehend what the other side is thinking can be enough to render MAD useless.
Even during the Cold War, MAD doctrine was always a shaky concept at best (despite what some analysts still say on the subject) because the Soviets and the Americans did not fully understand each others politics - there was always the very real possibility that one side could misinterpret the other's actions and the nukes could start flying due to nothing more than an innocuous mistake in interpretation. Fortunately for all of us alive today, the hotline was established to help resolve these issues following the Cuban missile crisis when cooler heads realized that MAD only works if you understand the position the other guys are taking.
The trouble with Iran today is there is a massive disconnect between the position of their leaders, and the position of the Western world. We really don't understand Iran, and they sure as hell don't understand the rest of us (a fact that's done nothing but get worse since the 80s). The trouble with Iran entering the nuclear game is that the rules, so to speak, are already fairly-well established, but the Iranians are quite likely not to realize that fact. Unlike Pakistan and India, which both had relationships with Western powers that basically said "here are the rules we're all playing by, don't do something outside the rulebook that looks crazy to the rest of us," or North Korea, who got the memo from the Chinese, Iran doesn't have a real nation sponsor. China is a major economic partner for them, but the foreign policy interaction seems to end where the money stops. Russia has little to no influence there, the Middle East in general despises them, and the West is collectively tearing its hair out. For MAD to work, Iran needs to understand the game. Whether or not they will is an entirely open question, which means MAD doctrine as far as the Iranians are concerned is unreliable, and therefore Iran having nukes is a really bad idea.
I didn't get the impression that NGTM was saying that Iran would rush out to nuke Israel, more than Iran cannot be relied upon to understand the rules by which MAD operates and therefore there is a distinct possibility that they could be willing to use nukes or nuclear threat in a way that they might deem limited but the rest of the world would not. Middle Eastern politics are crazy by anyone's standards - the Israelis have also shown a willingness to use nuclear weapons outside of the traditional limits of MAD (it is surprising how few people know how close the Israelis came to using them in the Golan Heights), and it really isn't that far a stretch to see an Iranian willingness too.
So to address Joshua's original post in the thread: no, MAD is not still in effect when it comes to the Middle East. Letting Iran develop nuclear weapons is a really bad idea - not because they would immediately rush out to nuke Israel, but because their actions are not predictable by other nuclear-armed nations.
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MP-Ryan makes the point. The danger here is not only that Iran would launch a first strike and either not appreciate or not care about the consequences, but that they would do something that will provoke an Israeli/US/European first strike because they don't understand or don't care about what Israel/US/Europe thinks of what they're doing, and one of the oldest tenants of warfare is that it is better to give than to receive.
Add this to the other risk factors I've enumerated about the people who have the button in Iran and it gets substantially worse, because they say things that make them look significantly more dangerous than anyone else on the face of the planet when it comes to understanding MAD.
So this stop assuming thing you keep talking about, you'll have to forgive me, but I don't think I need to consider your advice valid when you've been arguing against a thing in your head this whole time.
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MP-Ryan makes the point. The danger here is not only that Iran would launch a first strike and either not appreciate or not care about the consequences, but that they would do something that will provoke an Israeli/US/European first strike because they don't understand or don't care about what Israel/US/Europe thinks of what they're doing, and one of the oldest tenants of warfare is that it is better to give than to receive.
I think Iran knows exactly well what they are doing. After all, they have been stripped of their internationally guaranteed rights despite their compliance with the treaties , their nuclear-armed neighbour is publicly considering military strikes and contemplating forceful regime change, they are under covert terrorist attacks and a superpower is boasting gunboat diplomacy right across their their borders.
Add this to the other risk factors I've enumerated about the people who have the button in Iran and it gets substantially worse, because they say things that make them look significantly more dangerous than anyone else on the face of the planet when it comes to understanding MAD.
Now you can tell me who are responsible for pushing the button in Iran, why they are apparently unstable and what exactly they have said. Thank you in advance.
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The trouble with Iran entering the nuclear game is that the rules, so to speak, are already fairly-well established, but the Iranians are quite likely not to realize that fact.
Catchy! You could have a career at Time Magazine or Newsweek.
Like the last guy said (and what somehow hasn't been brought up so far) is that Iran began didn't really begin investing in weaponized technology until after the invasion of Iraq. Technically their program began after the Americans gave them nuclear technology in the 1950s, but that's another story. Looking at how things went, they know they're living American election cycle to American election cycle hoping they don't vote in another idiot. There's a risk that they will, and Iran would be insane not to develop nuclear weapons. For them it's a matter of survival.
Being able to shake their nukedick at Israel is just a nice bonus. Actually starting a nuclear war with Israel would still be a very bad idea on their part. The few dozen relatively low yield nuclear missiles they might be able to build over the near term would be a fraction of Israel's arsenal, and first strike has never been a viable strategy with these weapons involved, especially since the invention of hardened silos. A "Remember Pearl Harbor!" type retaliation would devastate the country and very likely result in political instability. So realistically, attacking Israel is probably the last thing Iran would want to do with its weapons. They will still rouse the masses in calls to exterminate Israel, but what's new there?
I didn't get the impression that NGTM was saying that Iran would rush out to nuke Israel, more than Iran cannot be relied upon to understand the rules by which MAD operates and therefore there is a distinct possibility that they could be willing to use nukes or nuclear threat in a way that they might deem limited but the rest of the world would not. Middle Eastern politics are crazy by anyone's standards - the Israelis have also shown a willingness to use nuclear weapons outside of the traditional limits of MAD (it is surprising how few people know how close the Israelis came to using them in the Golan Heights), and it really isn't that far a stretch to see an Iranian willingness too.
It is a stretch. If you're referring to 1973, Israel was close to being overrun and depleting its remaining oil. Iran and Israel are just not likely to start a conventional war that would threaten the survival of either.
So to address Joshua's original post in the thread: no, MAD is not still in effect when it comes to the Middle East. Letting Iran develop nuclear weapons is a really bad idea - not because they would immediately rush out to nuke Israel, but because their actions are not predictable by other nuclear-armed nations.
Nothing in this post is meant to advocate assisting undemocratic countries with a history of funding terrorist attacks against the West in developing nuclear weapons. But there is nothing we can do at this point to prevent it apart from very expensive measures. The Iranian government probably sees its nuclear program as important insurance against the return of Cowboy Diplomacy, and sanctions and airstrikes are unlikely to sway them.
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Best solution : Sign a mutual defence treaty with Russia or China in return for stopping development of nukes. :p
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That actually might work, but they can't really trust someone else. What Iran could do is play the old Alpha Centauri AI trick like Iraq did. Borrow money from France and Germany on a very long payment plan during one of your wars. Then when you get invaded, at least the international community will decry the injustice. It's a moral victory.
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Catchy! You could have a career at Time Magazine or Newsweek.
Like the last guy said (and what somehow hasn't been brought up so far) is that Iran began didn't really begin investing in weaponized technology until after the invasion of Iraq. Technically their program began after the Americans gave them nuclear technology in the 1950s, but that's another story. Looking at how things went, they know they're living American election cycle to American election cycle hoping they don't vote in another idiot. There's a risk that they will, and Iran would be insane not to develop nuclear weapons. For them it's a matter of survival.
Being able to shake their nukedick at Israel is just a nice bonus. Actually starting a nuclear war with Israel would still be a very bad idea on their part. The few dozen relatively low yield nuclear missiles they might be able to build over the near term would be a fraction of Israel's arsenal, and first strike has never been a viable strategy with these weapons involved, especially since the invention of hardened silos. A "Remember Pearl Harbor!" type retaliation would devastate the country and very likely result in political instability. So realistically, attacking Israel is probably the last thing Iran would want to do with its weapons. They will still rouse the masses in calls to exterminate Israel, but what's new there?
Which is all well and good, but does not at all address the fact that Iran does not have a solid connection to an existing nuclear power, has historically shown they have knowledge and interest of little more than their own region, and cannot be relied upon to correctly interpret the way that MAD doctrine functions. You adroitly stepped by the whole objection in the first place. Why Iran wants and is developing nuclear weapons is patently obvious, and as I've already said, a direct attack on Israel is also very likely not their intention. The trouble is, there is really no indication that Iran would be able and willing to understand the rules of the nuclear game as it has been played since the Cuban missile crisis. Or did you miss that whole theme of inadvertent nuclear disaster due to poor communication? Since 1949, the world has been more at risk of nuclear war by accident than design. Giving the Iranians access to nuclear weapons just increases the risk.
It is a stretch. If you're referring to 1973, Israel was close to being overrun and depleting its remaining oil. Iran and Israel are just not likely to start a conventional war that would threaten the survival of either.
Extrapolate. The Iranian government has shown a willingness to do anything they have to to take and keep power. If the Iranian government structure was threatened and they had a nuclear arsenal available, it would be considered a viable option. The Israelis were ready to drop nukes literally on their doorstep when the country was threatened; I don't see the Iranian leadership being any different if it comes down to their own survival versus that of the general population (which they largely consider expendable). It wouldn't take a conventional war with an aggressor.
Nothing in this post is meant to advocate assisting undemocratic countries with a history of funding terrorist attacks against the West in developing nuclear weapons. But there is nothing we can do at this point to prevent it apart from very expensive measures. The Iranian government probably sees its nuclear program as important insurance against the return of Cowboy Diplomacy, and sanctions and airstrikes are unlikely to sway them.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be making the attempt. Sanctions and non-military measures may be the impetus ordinary Iranians need to toss their current government and create a democracy, albeit an Islamic one. Not saying it would be friendly to the West, but it would be a significant improvement in the lot of ordinary Iranian citizens.
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Best solution : Sign a mutual defence treaty with Russia or China in return for stopping development of nukes. :p
Mutual defense treaties turned out so well in 1914 after all...
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Only cause one of the sides didn't understand the concept of MAD as it was understood in 1914. You've already conceeded that both Russia and China do understand the concept.
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Which is all well and good, but does not at all address the fact that Iran does not have a solid connection to an existing nuclear power, has historically shown they have knowledge and interest of little more than their own region, and cannot be relied upon to correctly interpret the way that MAD doctrine functions.
what
Why cannot Iran be relied upon in this matter? Care to elaborate? Is the concept of MAD some kind of secret, instead of forming a very, very public basis for diplomacy for the duration of Cold War? Are the Iranians somehow unable to skim through thoudands of books, policy reports and intelligence analysises written about the stuff?
And moreover: Why does one think that in the case of Iran actually arming itself - which is apparently not in sight - it will become isolated and lonely? What about their ties with countries like India, China and Russia - all nuclear powers, by the way?
The trouble is, there is really no indication that Iran would be able and willing to understand the rules of the nuclear game as it has been played since the Cuban missile crisis. Or did you miss that whole theme of inadvertent nuclear disaster due to poor communication? Since 1949, the world has been more at risk of nuclear war by accident than design. Giving the Iranians access to nuclear weapons just increases the risk.
Oh, so they are incapable of learning from widely publicized mistakes, that were easily corrected using 1960s technology or improved communications etiquette. Which is all very, very basic for every single developed country in the world. Mind tell us, why do you think Iranians are unable to secure a centralized and tightly controlled launch system, but India, Pakistan and Russia in 1992 were more than able to do so?
Extrapolate. The Iranian government has shown a willingness to do anything they have to to take and keep power. If the Iranian government structure was threatened and they had a nuclear arsenal available, it would be considered a viable option. The Israelis were ready to drop nukes literally on their doorstep when the country was threatened; I don't see the Iranian leadership being any different if it comes down to their own survival versus that of the general population (which they largely consider expendable). It wouldn't take a conventional war with an aggressor.
Isn't that the entire point of nukes? They raise the bar pretty high. Of course, then again, India and Pakistan. Hey, the world still hasn't ended.
Nothing in this post is meant to advocate assisting undemocratic countries with a history of funding terrorist attacks against the West in developing nuclear weapons. But there is nothing we can do at this point to prevent it apart from very expensive measures. The Iranian government probably sees its nuclear program as important insurance against the return of Cowboy Diplomacy, and sanctions and airstrikes are unlikely to sway them.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be making the attempt. Sanctions and non-military measures may be the impetus ordinary Iranians need to toss their current government and create a democracy, albeit an Islamic one. Not saying it would be friendly to the West, but it would be a significant improvement in the lot of ordinary Iranian citizens.
[/quote]
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what
Why cannot Iran be relied upon in this matter? Care to elaborate? Is the concept of MAD some kind of secret, instead of forming a very, very public basis for diplomacy for the duration of Cold War? Are the Iranians somehow unable to skim through thoudands of books, policy reports and intelligence analysises written about the stuff?
And moreover: Why does one think that in the case of Iran actually arming itself - which is apparently not in sight - it will become isolated and lonely? What about their ties with countries like India, China and Russia - all nuclear powers, by the way?
Actually, yes, Iran's government's grasp of history is very limited. We're talking about a government that consistently denies the Holocaust ever occurred. MAD is based on well-established rules about how to interpret behaviour which have evolved to form a common ground between cultures. Iran doesn't have common ground with any of those cultures, and has a poor grasp of how decision-making occurs outside their own borders.
Iran's ties to the countries you've named are economic, not sociopolitical. Russia, China, India, and Pakistan hold no political sway in Iran, nor do they have any policy influence on Iran's foreign policy (other than economic sanctions).
Oh, so they are incapable of learning from widely publicized mistakes, that were easily corrected using 1960s technology or improved communications etiquette. Which is all very, very basic for every single developed country in the world. Mind tell us, why do you think Iranians are unable to secure a centralized and tightly controlled launch system, but India, Pakistan and Russia in 1992 were more than able to do so?
I didn't say they couldn't secure a centralized and secured launch system, I said they couldn't be trusted to interpret the actions of other nuclear-armed nations correctly. Again, poor grasp of history, myopic world view, lack of understanding outside of their immediate region, etc.
Isn't that the entire point of nukes? They raise the bar pretty high. Of course, then again, India and Pakistan. Hey, the world still hasn't ended.
India and Pakistan's governments aren't widely detested by a large proportion of their citizenry, nor have they shown willingness to torture or kill their citizenry en masse. Iran has. Iran has a very unstable system of government that formed after they made specific promises about creation of a republic in the wake of the Shah's ouster that were in turn broken to create a totalitarian religious state. Why do you think the Iranian government is so friendly with Syria? Both have little to no regard for their subject populations. Both would do nearly anything to stay in power. Iran cannot be trusted not to use nuclear weapons internally should it appear their government was about to fall, nor can they be trusted not to use them externally should it appear their neighbours decide to get rid of the government that's causing the region all kinds of grief and supporting an enemy (of the neighbors) religious sect.
It boils down to this: Iran cannot be trusted with nukes because they cannot be trusted to act in a way consistent with other nuclear-armed nations, because at no point since the revolution have they acted in a rational or predictable manner. Letting Pakistan and India arm themselves with nuclear weapons was a tiny mistake compared to the catastrophe of allowing the Iranians to develop them. With the exception of Syria, they are surrounded by a religious sect entirely opposed to their existence. That's not a good recipe for stability.
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Only cause one of the sides didn't understand the concept of MAD as it was understood in 1914. You've already conceeded that both Russia and China do understand the concept.
...and would therefore never sign a mutual defense treaty with Iran, because the terms would be impossible to live up to. Not a bad idea on paper, but distinctly impractical =)
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An interesting discussion I had with somebody off an SSBN pointed out something else about Iran vs. The World and their nuclear program.
There's actually a great deal of thought that went into the planning with the US vs. the USSR/Russia because of the sheer number of warheads both sides had. Both sides employed a counter-force strategy because they had a lot of nukes and counter-force makes a degree of sense. As their plans got more elaborate and they had to come up with uses for all these extra nukes it meant delving into where they'd go and what that means. They started thinking about Day Two and Day Three, about what would be left standing and the consequences of preceding actions, and everybody got pretty scared.
Iran will never build and maintain enough nukes to delve into the strategy of their employment. They don't have a targeting problem because they don't have enough weapons. Their capability will be essentially demonstrative. They cannot destroy the ability of their enemies to make war with the nuclear capability they could build, to physically allocate enough bombs to destroy all major bases, units, and communications hubs. They can only terrorize a prospective opponent by vaporizing a few major cities or a few military units.
Iran has no physical reason to think of nuclear weapons and their usage the way the major nuclear powers or even India and Pakistan do.
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Giving the Iranians access to nuclear weapons just increases the risk.
It does, and it allows them to sell the technology to anyone else too. The one good thing is that it will deter the US from trying to invade. But I don't think that either are particularly likely. The main downside to Iran developing nuclear weapons, though, is just the increased tensions we've already seen. Pricier oil and people dying due to the rhetoric on both sides and Israeli countermeasures.
Extrapolate. The Iranian government has shown a willingness to do anything they have to to take and keep power. If the Iranian government structure was threatened and they had a nuclear arsenal available, it would be considered a viable option. The Israelis were ready to drop nukes literally on their doorstep when the country was threatened; I don't see the Iranian leadership being any different if it comes down to their own survival versus that of the general population (which they largely consider expendable). It wouldn't take a conventional war with an aggressor.
Iran's only real external threat is the United States. Which would create problems if we invaded, but hopefully that won't happen. Romney isn't crazy. Otherwise, internal use of nuclear weapons is a risk, just like it was with the breakup of the USSR. But if the government desired to do that, they have plenty of chemicals at their disposal anyway.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be making the attempt. Sanctions and non-military measures may be the impetus ordinary Iranians need to toss their current government and create a democracy, albeit an Islamic one. Not saying it would be friendly to the West, but it would be a significant improvement in the lot of ordinary Iranian citizens.
That (sanctions) has been tried many times and has never once worked. Not sure what these non military measures are. It probably is worth letting Israeli intelligence do what it can to slow down Iran's nuclear research, but it's not something the United States should get involved in. The drama over the threatened strait closure, for instance, accomplished nothing besides higher oil prices.
Which is all well and good, but does not at all address the fact that Iran does not have a solid connection to an existing nuclear power, has historically shown they have knowledge and interest of little more than their own region, and cannot be relied upon to correctly interpret the way that MAD doctrine functions.
If Iran was attached to one of the (practically nonexistent) nuclear power blocs around today, that would make little difference. It wouldn't add much restraint to their policy, since proxy states are expendable (part of the reason why the CMC occurred). I haven't seen anything to indicate Iran has little knowledge of the world outside their own region, whatever that means; they're ideological and violent, but that's not the same as not knowing what you're doing. Likewise, if their leaders have ever taken a history class I'm sure they understand MAD as well as anyone posting on General Discussion. But we already seem to agree that an Iran-Israel nuclear war is largely a video game plot idea, so there's nothing else to be said about MAD.
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Iran will never build and maintain enough nukes to delve into the strategy of their employment...
Iran has no physical reason to think of nuclear weapons and their usage the way the major nuclear powers or even India and Pakistan do.
Iran might end up building 10-20 nukes. That's about what the arsenals of India and Pakistan were during the Kargil war. No particular grounds for saying that the three countries differ in capability. This is a tangent, though.
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It does, and it allows them to sell the technology to anyone else too. The one good thing is that it will deter the US from trying to invade. But I don't think that either are particularly likely. The main downside to Iran developing nuclear weapons, though, is just the increased tensions we've already seen. Pricier oil and people dying due to the rhetoric on both sides and Israeli countermeasures.
Iran doesn't need nuclear arms to deter a US invasion. Nobody in US policy is stupid enough to think a military invasion of Iran would go well, particularly after the Afghanistan/Iraq debacle. The West has other means of effecting regime change in Iran (which is undoubtably in progress).
Iran's only real external threat is the United States. Which would create problems if we invaded, but hopefully that won't happen. Romney isn't crazy. Otherwise, internal use of nuclear weapons is a risk, just like it was with the breakup of the USSR. But if the government desired to do that, they have plenty of chemicals at their disposal anyway.
Iran's main external threat is the array of Sunni and other non-Shia Muslim states it is surrounded by, NOT the United States. The only thing that fundamentalist Muslims in the region hate more than the US is the different fundamentalist Muslims in the region. This is why Iraq basically erupted into civil war after the 2003 invasion.
That (sanctions) has been tried many times and has never once worked. Not sure what these non military measures are. It probably is worth letting Israeli intelligence do what it can to slow down Iran's nuclear research, but it's not something the United States should get involved in. The drama over the threatened strait closure, for instance, accomplished nothing besides higher oil prices.
Harsh UN sanctions can economically cripple Iran. In fact, they're well on their way to doing so, which is why the Iranians started with all the military posturing in the Gulf, trying to save face back home and put on a good show for the domestic audience (nobody else took them the slightest bit seriously). Sanctions can and do work against hostile regimes, particularly those with large internal resistance groups, which Iran has in spades (as you'll note every time a viable political challenge occurs). Non-military measures include intelligence, monetary, and materiel support of internal resistance groups, and can be quite effective - ask the Russians sometime.
If Iran was attached to one of the (practically nonexistent) nuclear power blocs around today, that would make little difference. It wouldn't add much restraint to their policy, since proxy states are expendable (part of the reason why the CMC occurred). I haven't seen anything to indicate Iran has little knowledge of the world outside their own region, whatever that means; they're ideological and violent, but that's not the same as not knowing what you're doing. Likewise, if their leaders have ever taken a history class I'm sure they understand MAD as well as anyone posting on General Discussion. But we already seem to agree that an Iran-Israel nuclear war is largely a video game plot idea, so there's nothing else to be said about MAD.
Iran has spectacularly failed to predict intervention by West on several occasions, despite obvious signs that intervention would show up. Their biggest blunder was probably the Iran-Iraq war, but they haven't done themselves any favours in the last decade either. Their worldview is myopic at best.
Now, whose alt-nick are you?
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Nobody in US policy is stupid enough to think a military invasion of Iran would go well, particularly after the Afghanistan/Iraq debacle.
Do you believe George W. Bush and Mitchell Bachmann are intelligent men and women? It can happen. I'm not even kidding.
Iran's main external threat is the array of Sunni and other non-Shia Muslim states it is surrounded by, NOT the United States. The only thing that fundamentalist Muslims in the region hate more than the US is the different fundamentalist Muslims in the region. This is why Iraq basically erupted into civil war after the 2003 invasion.
Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Come on. They are worried about Iran invading them, if anything. The one regional power that can stand up to them is Iraq, but there's nothing we can do about that. It would involve another bloody chemical warfare slugfest regardless. I guess I can't really disagree with you though. Another Iran-Iraq war wouldn't make any sense, but it could still happen.
Harsh UN sanctions can economically cripple Iran. In fact, they're well on their way to doing so, which is why the Iranians started with all the military posturing in the Gulf, trying to save face back home and put on a good show for the domestic audience (nobody else took them the slightest bit seriously).
Not going to work. There's too much at stake for them to drop their nuclear program. Most likely things would end up like Iraq, where we were still dependent on inspections to prevent a nuclear program. The Iranians do not want inspections and sanctions at the same time.
I would have preferred the approach that Colin Powell suggested, where we're basically willing to accept reactor construction while making weaponization a little harder, discarding sanctions in exchange for inspections. This is an approach the Iranians had, earlier, been agreeable to. It would at least slow things down. But too late for that, probably.
Sanctions can and do work against hostile regimes, particularly those with large internal resistance groups, which Iran has in spades (as you'll note every time a viable political challenge occurs).
I think you'd have a hard time finding more than or two (if any) historical examples of sanctions having effect in changing national policies. South Africa isn't the clearest one.
Non-military measures include intelligence, monetary, and materiel support of internal resistance groups, and can be quite effective - ask the Russians sometime.
Well, if we're going to speak very generally, I guess I can't disagree with you. Sure, we can probably fund Freedom House and stuff like that without creating too much problems.
Still, intervening in a country's politics could easily go wrong. We thought supporting the mujaheddin and Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets was a pretty morally unambiguous cause, but in the long run those kind of projects ended up creating problems and breeding resentment. So I'm not too excited about tweaking with the politics of other countries. The current government in Iran is pretty sane by middle eastern standards. It could be a lot worse and a lot more unstable.
Iran has spectacularly failed to predict intervention by West on several occasions, despite obvious signs that intervention would show up. Their biggest blunder was probably the Iran-Iraq war, but they haven't done themselves any favours in the last decade either. Their worldview is myopic at best.
Doesn't prove that "Iran" has no knowledge of the world anymore than Poles or the Russians must have no brains for allowing themselves to be invaded so many times. But whatever.
Even failing to call the Iran Iraq war is forgivable. They can't predict idiotic moves on other countries' part, especially when the US misled Saddam into expecting help.
And mods, please, what is it with the verification?
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Now, whose alt-nick are you?
Huh? What's an alt nick? I'm too busy supporting Karajorma's point to look that up.
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You're getting the verification thing because you haven't posted anywhere that actually counts your posts (i.e anything actually Freespace/FS2_Open related).
Now, whose alt-nick are you?
Huh? What's an alt nick? I'm too busy supporting Karajorma's point to look that up.
MP-Ryan was questioning whether you're a legitimate new poster or someone using a second account in order to post.
Iran doesn't need nuclear arms to deter a US invasion. Nobody in US policy is stupid enough to think a military invasion of Iran would go well, particularly after the Afghanistan/Iraq debacle. The West has other means of effecting regime change in Iran (which is undoubtably in progress).
It's okay if you've blanked out Bush's term in office as a traumatic event. I sometimes wish I could.
But to claim that there is no reason for Iran to believe that someone in the US might try an invasion of their country is ridiculous in the extreme. Bush was still pushing for it even when it was obvious Iraq's invasion had turned to ****. While no one might plan one now, idiots have short memories, it's doubtful that in 10 years the lessons of Iraq will be as fully appreciated as they are now. I can't blame Iran one iota for not being willing to wait for the idiots in America to start sabre-rattling before they start working on nukes.
This entire debacle is, after all, the direct result of the previous American idiot president and his inability to keep his mouth shut.
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Actually, yes, Iran's government's grasp of history is very limited.
umm
We're talking about a government that consistently denies the Holocaust ever occurred. MAD is based on well-established rules about how to interpret behaviour which have evolved to form a common ground between cultures. Iran doesn't have common ground with any of those cultures, and has a poor grasp of how decision-making occurs outside their own borders.
You are seriously comparing diplomatic rhetoric with political savviness?
Do you think Iranian leadership actually acts the way it talks? Like, just as we speak they are doing their hardest to bring down the Great Satan and Israel, bombing them all the time?
I keep looking and I don't actually see Israeli government performing a literal holocaust in Gaza. I cannot really see Iranian government currently in the process of "kill all jews", can you point me in the right direction? I think I once even saw a president to talk with the leaders of a country he called "Evil Empire"!
Iran's ties to the countries you've named are economic, not sociopolitical. Russia, China, India, and Pakistan hold no political sway in Iran, nor do they have any policy influence on Iran's foreign policy (other than economic sanctions).
What is the difference between economic and sociopolitical ties in international relations?
Why are China's interests in Iran's oil somehow just economic and not sociopolitical. How Russia selling them modern armament is just economic and not sociopolitical. How India's refusal to participate in sanctions against Iranian oil is just economic and not sociopolitical.
I didn't say they couldn't secure a centralized and secured launch system, I said they couldn't be trusted to interpret the actions of other nuclear-armed nations correctly. Again, poor grasp of history, myopic world view, lack of understanding outside of their immediate region, etc.
Iran, the nation with poor understanding of history (btw a previous large regional power, subject of Middle Eastern politics since... forever)
India and Pakistan's governments aren't widely detested by a large proportion of their citizenry, nor have they shown willingness to torture or kill their citizenry en masse. Iran has.
New nuclear powers have always been very stable and popular. I mean, Mao and Stalin - they certainly didn't kill anyone.
Iran has a very unstable system of government that formed after they made specific promises about creation of a republic in the wake of the Shah's ouster that were in turn broken to create a totalitarian religious state.
You kinda forget about some relatively important developements here.
You do realize that one of the reasons Iranians are so suspect of Western influences was the Shah, right?
Why do you think the Iranian government is so friendly with Syria? Both have little to no regard for their subject populations. Both would do nearly anything to stay in power. Iran cannot be trusted not to use nuclear weapons internally should it appear their government was about to fall, nor can they be trusted not to use them externally should it appear their neighbours decide to get rid of the government that's causing the region all kinds of grief and supporting an enemy (of the neighbors) religious sect.
And yet you seem to be worried about the potential nuclear weapons of a state that does not possess them instead of something like Pakistan, which has nice elements like rogue intelligence etc.
It boils down to this: Iran cannot be trusted with nukes because they cannot be trusted to act in a way consistent with other nuclear-armed nations, because at no point since the revolution have they acted in a rational or predictable manner.
No.
Iran has been one of the more predictable and above all peaceful than most actors in Middle East. They have been so peaceful that the last time they were at war wasin 1980s when a US-backed neighbour attacked them in a resource war and then the rest of the world ganged up on Iran while they were being bombed with nerve gas.
You state that Iran is essentially a mad dog. What you can bring forth is a bunch of words. Bring us actions! Bring us actions that clearly, demonstrably show that Iran is somehow worse than everyone else, including nuclear powers and other players in the Middle East. You show us how a nation that has been a target of angloamerican meddling since 1950s should trust them. How they act completely unrationally when they are constantly attacked and when they are under constant threats of regime change. When their neighbours are occupied by a hostile power that beats the wardrums. When their last war was a US-sponsored war where chemical weapons were used against them.
Letting Pakistan and India arm themselves with nuclear weapons was a tiny mistake compared to the catastrophe of allowing the Iranians to develop them. With the exception of Syria, they are surrounded by a religious sect entirely opposed to their existence. That's not a good recipe for stability.
Should they just DIE or something?
Hey wait a minute:
Letting Pakistan and India arm themselves with nuclear weapons was a tiny mistake compared to the catastrophe of allowing the Iranians to develop them.
India and Pakistan had hostile relationships. They had been in a war. They have huge populations and large armies.
Somehow, arming these two guys with nukes is a tiny mistake compared to Iran. Which has not attacked it's neighbours for 250 years.
Just why you think this is - is it because of your very, very special own "Iranians are dumb and cannot understand for example what is written right here."
Look, I am willing to believe that you really forget about Iran's geopolitical situation and their situation with IAEA and Israel - which is really relevant - because you simply forget them, not out of malice. Because it really follows the hawkish Western line, where Iran must. Be. Put. Down. (lolz).
Then, however, you are willing to state that Iranians do not know history or MAD. That because of their lack of allies in political sense means that they are somehow more untrustworthy. That nuclear Iran is somehow a larger threat to the world than nuclear Pakistan and India.
What do you base this on? Because your argument is full of both or prejudices (Iranians are bad), weird statements (Iran does not know history and are unable to, like, you know, read books) and pretty grand sidelining of the entire reason why the Iranians feel threatened and act in that way.
edited because yeah, the last one was pretty hars.
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Calm down Janos. I happen to largely agree with you but there's no need to get nasty about it. That said, I've already overlooked some pretty snide comments from the other side of this discussion so if anyone starts getting shirty, they're taking some time off.
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This entire debacle is, after all, the direct result of the previous American idiot president and his inability to keep his mouth shut.
I'll see your Dubya, and raise you a Michael Moore.
Janos... at least give him a chance to respond first. I don't think MPRyan is a textwall climbing enthusiast.
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Ok, I made a mistake and wrote a reply before I had gotten my morning coffee and nicotine :P Sorry!
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Not going to work. There's too much at stake for them to drop their nuclear program.
This assumes a nuclear weapons program going on. This is highly debatable. Right now it actually looks like a good deterrant.
Most likely things would end up like Iraq, where we were still dependent on inspections to prevent a nuclear program. The Iranians do not want inspections and sanctions at the same time.
It worked really well on Iraq. After a decade of crippling sanctions they are blamed for developing WMDs. A war is propped up. Even inspections cannot stop the progress. Iraq is invaded, it's economy crushed, population slaughtered and the country descends on sectarian chaos. All while they were being both under sanctions and under inspections.
I would have preferred the approach that Colin Powell suggested, where we're basically willing to accept reactor construction while making weaponization a little harder, discarding sanctions in exchange for inspections. This is an approach the Iranians had, earlier, been agreeable to. It would at least slow things down. But too late for that, probably.
Why? IAEA and Iran are actually talking right now. They have scheduled more meetings. IAEA even stated that they did not find Iran redirecting enriched uranium to weapons program.
However, the recent rhetoric from the West has made it evidently clear that after Iraq, they are pretty ready to attack yet another nation. Iran is ****ed, they are trying to minimize damage. It's pretty certain that Iran will be bombed, no matter how well they comply.
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This assumes a nuclear weapons program going on. This is highly debatable. Right now it actually looks like a good deterrant.
Or they might have their first successful nuclear test next year. Who knows.
It worked really well on Iraq. After a decade of crippling sanctions they are blamed for developing WMDs. A war is propped up. Even inspections cannot stop the progress. Iraq is invaded, it's economy crushed, population slaughtered and the country descends on sectarian chaos. All while they were being both under sanctions and under inspections.
I don't disagree, but you seem to think that inspections caused all those things. Or at least I think that's the point of that paragraph.
Why? IAEA and Iran are actually talking right now. They have scheduled more meetings. IAEA even stated that they did not find Iran redirecting enriched uranium to weapons program.
That's good to hear. However the IAEA has had some difficulty (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/world/middleeast/irans-supreme-leader-threatens-retaliation-against-attack.html) in the country lately. Still worth trying, since inspections don't cause nearly as much diplomatic tension as some other measures.
However, the recent rhetoric from the West has made it evidently clear that after Iraq, they are pretty ready to attack yet another nation. Iran is ****ed, they are trying to minimize damage. It's pretty certain that Iran will be bombed, no matter how well they comply.
Don't say something is certain unless you're willing to bet on it.
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Or they might have their first successful nuclear test next year. Who knows.
Claims of Iran having a functional nuclear program right now require evidence. The evidence for the program right now is circumstantial, subject to partisan interpretations and sketchy. It would not be wise to act on the information itself.
I don't disagree, but you seem to think that inspections caused all those things. Or at least I think that's the point of that paragraph.
No, I tried not to. It just proves that inspections are worth nothing if the decision to go to war has already been made. In this case Iraq cooperated with inspections while under sanctions and what did that get them: conquered. This lesson has not gone unnoticed in the world.
Why? IAEA and Iran are actually talking right now. They have scheduled more meetings. IAEA even stated that they did not find Iran redirecting enriched uranium to weapons program.
That's good to hear. However the IAEA has had some difficulty (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/world/middleeast/irans-supreme-leader-threatens-retaliation-against-attack.html) in the country lately. Still worth trying, since inspections don't cause nearly as much diplomatic tension as some other measures.
[However, the recent rhetoric from the West has made it evidently clear that after Iraq, they are pretty ready to attack yet another nation. Iran is ****ed, they are trying to minimize damage. It's pretty certain that Iran will be bombed, no matter how well they comply.
Don't say something is certain unless you're willing to bet on it.
"Pretty" is the key word there :P
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An interesting discussion I had with somebody off an SSBN pointed out something else about Iran vs. The World and their nuclear program.
There's actually a great deal of thought that went into the planning with the US vs. the USSR/Russia because of the sheer number of warheads both sides had. Both sides employed a counter-force strategy because they had a lot of nukes and counter-force makes a degree of sense. As their plans got more elaborate and they had to come up with uses for all these extra nukes it meant delving into where they'd go and what that means. They started thinking about Day Two and Day Three, about what would be left standing and the consequences of preceding actions, and everybody got pretty scared.
Iran will never build and maintain enough nukes to delve into the strategy of their employment. They don't have a targeting problem because they don't have enough weapons. Their capability will be essentially demonstrative. They cannot destroy the ability of their enemies to make war with the nuclear capability they could build, to physically allocate enough bombs to destroy all major bases, units, and communications hubs. They can only terrorize a prospective opponent by vaporizing a few major cities or a few military units.
Iran has no physical reason to think of nuclear weapons and their usage the way the major nuclear powers or even India and Pakistan do.
As a deterrent against a hostile nuclear-armed nation in the same region it is a completely viable strategy, though. It's is aimed as a countervalue tool against regional powers, also acting as a counterforce in the case of military attack. They only need a few warheads to form an effective deterrant against hostile neighbours. I think this is their game if they will pursue nukes.
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No, I tried not to. It just proves that inspections are worth nothing if the decision to go to war has already been made. In this case Iraq cooperated with inspections while under sanctions and what did that get them: conquered. This lesson has not gone unnoticed in the world.
Inspections and reconnaissance force them to move their program underground, figuratively and sometimes literally, and creates many tiny inconveniences for Iran, like causing them to restrict information on the program to a smaller group of their leadership and scientists. This makes it at least a little bit harder for them to eventually develop weapons. It is not going to conclusively prove that Iran doesn't have a program; you're probably the only person in the world who still believes that. ;7 Actually, that is a legit point. But I'll get to it. You're right that it won't prevent them from being invaded if the decision has already been made. But I'm pretty sure Obama is not going to try that.
It might actually be best to help Iran develop nuclear weapons as soon as possible, so that our future president Rick Perry doesn't have any more excuse to invade them. Wait, did I say that out loud? Just kidding.
Actually, since you asked and it sounds like fun, I'll even start discussing evidence of the existence of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Firstly there's the great risks they're willing to take in the face of sanctions just to establish processing capability when they could instead import fuel from, say, Venezuela with less diplomatic hassle. There's their refusal to accept the nuclear fuel bank plan or international fuel supply guarantees. For some reason, they insist on developing their own processing capacity. It's strange they aren't satisfied with enriching uranium below 20%, above what civilian power generally requires. Lastly, there's "why not?" If they have the plutonium, the centrifuges, and the missiles in hand, there is not a whole lot keeping them from developing nuclear capability fairly quickly.
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Inspections and reconnaissance force them to move their program underground, figuratively and sometimes literally, and creates many tiny inconveniences for Iran, like causing them to restrict information on the program to a smaller group of their leadership and scientists. This makes it at least a little bit harder for them to eventually develop weapons. It is not going to conclusively prove that Iran doesn't have a program; you're probably the only person in the world who still believes that. ;7
http://americanvisionnews.com/1258/defense-secretary-admits-iran-not-pursuing-a-nuclear-weapon
Not quite.
Actually, since you asked and it sounds like fun, I'll even start discussing evidence of the existence of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Firstly there's the great risks they're willing to take in the face of sanctions just to establish a nuclear program when they already have abundant oil power.
Irrelevant. Iran has a lot of gas and lots of oil. It exports a lot of it to get money and struggles with energy problems internally. Gasoline is expensive. Iran has every right to develop peaceful nuclear power under NPT. They are absolutely under no obligation to use their strategic resources simply because it might irritate someone.
There's their refusal to accept the nuclear fuel bank plan or international fuel supply guarantees.
1) Iran already accepted nuclear fuel bank plan, I have no idea what's going on there right now.
2) International fuel supply guarantee is a) a breach of sovereignity in regards to other nuclear-capable nations and b) was shot down by US pressuring Brazil to refuse the plan. It did not work out. Plus it would give Iran's energy independence out to other players to decide. Definitely not a good solution in the current athmosphere.
For some reason, they insist on developing their own processing capacity.
Again, energy independence to a certain degree. Any chain of supply where they would be relying on hostile forces' goodwill (USA) is a bad, bad idea.
Lastly, there's "why not?" If they have the plutonium, the centrifuges, and the missiles in hand, there is not a whole lot keeping them from developing nuclear capability fairly quickly.
1. They do not need plutonium, uranium is fine
2. The inspection program continues in every nuclear nation in the world to prevent that
3. "Why not" is a valid question, but that has more to do with Iran feeling threatened rather than capability.
There are many, many nations that are nuclear ready. Sweden had it's own program running until 1960s. Germany, Japan and Korea are definitely ready to have nuclear weapons in very, very short time - just attach the fuses and loan some bombs from USA. Any rich nation can scramble to have a nuclear weapon ready in less than two years if they have the capital.
Summa summarum: According to NPT - a treaty Iran voluntarily signed - they have every right of peaceful nuclear program, but no right to nuclear weapons. Forcing them to adopt additional protocols simply because while they are under embargo and regime change threats does nothing to defuse the situation and is in absolut breach of the spirit of the treaty.
There is right now no proof of Iranian nuclear program, but it was just announced, that because of Western embargo Iran cannot buy rice. Sure, in the end we have a couple tens of thousands of dead people and maybe no nuclear power plant in Iran, great job everyone. Iranian credit has been devastated, their country is under an embargo, they cannot buy food because their money is in shambles and yet there is no concrete evidence of them building a nuclear weapon and they are cooperating with IAEA right now. Right now the goal seems to be waiting for the sectarian violence erupt after everyone's starved during the upcoming elections.
The runup is absolutely similar to Iraq war runup and it's depressing to see.
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Iran might end up building 10-20 nukes. That's about what the arsenals of India and Pakistan were during the Kargil war. No particular grounds for saying that the three countries differ in capability. This is a tangent, though.
As a deterrent against a hostile nuclear-armed nation in the same region it is a completely viable strategy, though. It's is aimed as a countervalue tool against regional powers, also acting as a counterforce in the case of military attack. They only need a few warheads to form an effective deterrant against hostile neighbours. I think this is their game if they will pursue nukes.
10-20 is sufficient for the purposes of annihilating the ability of Pakistan or India to make war. India has major failure points in its power generation and agricultural system because it adopted the Soviet method of building huge hydroelectric dams, the destruction of which will crash the country's power grid in the short term and destroy its agriculture in the long term, causing deaths out of all proportion to actual use of weapons. Pakistan just isn't that big that you need more nukes. Both nations lack strong international friends who would choose to return a salvo in their stead.
Iran, by contrast, cannot launch at anyone without provoking response from a major nuclear-armed power. Israel will gladly return a salvo of nukes and probably get the US to send a second. Launching at anyone on the Arabian Peninsula will provoke a US response, unless it's Yemen, which will provoke a Russian response as well. If they fire their weapons north at former Soviet states, Russia will take an interest. If the fire them east, their list of targets includes many states too decentralized to make a significant impact with the number they'll have and will provoke a response from Pakistan, possibly China and India, probably the US as well.
It's not sufficient to think in terms of merely hostile neighbors, but of who will choose to reply in their stead once you've nuked them. A nuclear weapon is an incredibly polarizing thing. People will take sides very rapidly once one goes off.
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There are many, many nations that are nuclear ready. Sweden had it's own program running until 1960s. Germany, Japan and Korea are definitely ready to have nuclear weapons in very, very short time - just attach the fuses and loan some bombs from USA. Any rich nation can scramble to have a nuclear weapon ready in less than two years if they have the capital.
True, but none of those countries besides Korea has reason to try. Korea doesn't need nukes, and it shouldn't have to try. But as long as they don't arm Hamas or become politically unstable, it's not quite as bad as it could be. Iran also has enemies, which unlikely as it sounds, does create a small risk of its weapons actually being used.
They are absolutely under no obligation to (not?) use their strategic resources simply because it might irritate someone.
The world would be a safer place if they just agreed to stop enrichment and imported fuel. It's that simple; the EU would be behind them. They even funded Iran in the past before it broke its promises. The exporting country need not be a hostile foreign power; it could be Venezuela or Russia.
1) Iran already accepted nuclear fuel bank plan, I have no idea what's going on there right now.
An international fuel bank has been set up in Russia, but Iran never agreed to the objective of the program. Namely, to stop domestic enrichment programs and rely entirely on the fuel bank. Until they do this it's a pointless exercise. Likewise, even if there was a fuel supply guarantee, Iran doesn't seem to want to stop fuel processing, which is the whole point. The fuel supply guarantee Iran wants is not the guarantee the suppliers want. Again, though, if all they were interested in was mid-grade fuel for their reactors, and not weapons grade refining capability, they have Russia, Chavez, and probably a few other countries.
Summa summarum: According to NPT - a treaty Iran voluntarily signed - they have every right of peaceful nuclear program, but no right to nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, the NPT is a forty year old document with no limitations on refining uranium to weapons grade, as long as it isn't ostensibly being used for nuclear purposes. Iran could enrich 90% uranium and still claim no interest in weaponization. But that would be almost as implausible as Israel's claims. Already they're at 19% enrichment; that's not civilian fuel.
It's not sufficient to think in terms of merely hostile neighbors, but of who will choose to reply in their stead once you've nuked them. A nuclear weapon is an incredibly polarizing thing. People will take sides very rapidly once one goes off.
I believe in those kinds of cases, most countries would side against the one to first use nuclear weapons. It would be polarizing in that sense, and never a good reason to use nuclear weapons offensively.
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Do you believe George W. Bush and Mitchell Bachmann are intelligent men and women? It can happen. I'm not even kidding.
Contrary to popular belief, there are checks and balances in the US political system, and I'd be highly surprised if, given that Iraq and Afghanistan are fresh in the collective memory, anyone with a brain and military decision making has any inclination to strike Iran. Regardless, fear of attack from outside is not grounds for nuclear weapon development. The world has a chance to prevent another state from joining the nuclear-armed menace, and it should be taken.
Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Come on. They are worried about Iran invading them, if anything. The one regional power that can stand up to them is Iraq, but there's nothing we can do about that. It would involve another bloody chemical warfare slugfest regardless. I guess I can't really disagree with you though. Another Iran-Iraq war wouldn't make any sense, but it could still happen.
Iran is very worried about regional alliances that could finally remove their status as the bully on the block. This is (in part) the reason they fund insurgent and fundamentalist organizations across the region which oppose the existing state powers.
Not going to work. There's too much at stake for them to drop their nuclear program. Most likely things would end up like Iraq, where we were still dependent on inspections to prevent a nuclear program. The Iranians do not want inspections and sanctions at the same time.
I would have preferred the approach that Colin Powell suggested, where we're basically willing to accept reactor construction while making weaponization a little harder, discarding sanctions in exchange for inspections. This is an approach the Iranians had, earlier, been agreeable to. It would at least slow things down. But too late for that, probably.
I think you'd have a hard time finding more than or two (if any) historical examples of sanctions having effect in changing national policies. South Africa isn't the clearest one.
Japan fought a war they knew they would lose as a result of the equivalent of economic sanctions. Iran's entire system is predicated on their ability to produce and sell oil. Sanctions can cripple them economically, which will force them to clamp down harder on the population... and the Iranian population has historically shown that they have limited tolerance for clampdowns. The ultimate Western goal is regime change in Iran, and harsh continuous economic sanctions of the government with simultaneous funding of some of the pro-democracy internal groups are a pretty sound way of bringing it about from within.
Still, intervening in a country's politics could easily go wrong. We thought supporting the mujaheddin and Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets was a pretty morally unambiguous cause, but in the long run those kind of projects ended up creating problems and breeding resentment. So I'm not too excited about tweaking with the politics of other countries. The current government in Iran is pretty sane by middle eastern standards. It could be a lot worse and a lot more unstable.
I won't disagree with you, it just happens to be an active policy goal, for better or worse. Really, Iranians as a people are actually quite pro-democracy. The 1979 revolution was actually supposed to be a democratic one, until Khomeini and his cronies hijacked the process. There's a fair bit of historical evidence that indicates stable democratic emergence in Iran would be a likely result. Whether it's pro-Western or not really isn't the point.
Doesn't prove that "Iran" has no knowledge of the world anymore than Poles or the Russians must have no brains for allowing themselves to be invaded so many times. But whatever.
Even failing to call the Iran Iraq war is forgivable. They can't predict idiotic moves on other countries' part, especially when the US misled Saddam into expecting help.
Iran's geopolitical interest ends at the Middle East. Their government has displayed spectacular ignorance of the way other nations conduct foreign policy, which has made their situation worse, not better. I wasn't referring to the start of the Iran-Iraq war, I was referring to its continuation. Iran continued to press counterattack despite knowing full well that Saddam was actively receiving US intelligence support (and probably monetary as well, though the evidence for that is shakier). They threw away thousands of lives and an enormous chunk of money in a war they should have known they could not actually win.
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It's okay if you've blanked out Bush's term in office as a traumatic event. I sometimes wish I could.
But to claim that there is no reason for Iran to believe that someone in the US might try an invasion of their country is ridiculous in the extreme. Bush was still pushing for it even when it was obvious Iraq's invasion had turned to ****. While no one might plan one now, idiots have short memories, it's doubtful that in 10 years the lessons of Iraq will be as fully appreciated as they are now. I can't blame Iran one iota for not being willing to wait for the idiots in America to start sabre-rattling before they start working on nukes.
This entire debacle is, after all, the direct result of the previous American idiot president and his inability to keep his mouth shut.
Why do you think the US invaded Iraq and not Iran? It's not because Iraq was worse, or there was more popular support for war with Iraq, or there was more evidence that Iraq was funding insurgent or terrorist groups. It's because Iran is already a hard military target. Hilariously enough, Iran has already managed to deter US invasion through their regional strength and lack of overt posturing, but their continued desire to seek nuclear armament is MORE likely to generate interest in military strikes into Iran than less.
Bush was an idiot, but less of an idiot than most people give him credit for. US defence officials knew full well that simultaenous military action in Iran and Afghanistan would be an absolute disaster - for all their might in conventional war, the United States is no longer equipped to mount and sustain a controlling invasion of another country (I invite you all to look up the actual number of division deployed to Germany in WW2, versus those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan combined). Sandwiching Iran was stupid too, because it provided two options for the Iranians to strike at US interests in the region directly, but in 2003 a US military strike against Iran was really not an option. It still isn't. With the way the modern US military is equipped and trained, a sustained invasion of Iran would end in disaster just as much today as back then, and the defence infrastructure is showing no signs of reinvention in the near future. There's money for more equipment, but equipment doesn't win this type of war - and defence officials in the US know this fact all too well.
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Screw it, I'm done with line-by-line responses, particularly to Janos.
There is one, overarching reason that Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons: nuclear weapons are capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people with a single warhead, have long-term health and environmental consequences, and are capable of provoking nuclear response from other nuclear-armed nations. It boils down to the idea that really no one should have access to them (you don't see me advocating for Western nations to build more), but just because some people have them does not mean the world as a whole shouldn't be actively discouraging others, particularly isolated states in volatile parts of the world, from joining the club.
I don't have a problem with the Iranians developing a peaceful nuclear power program - but their on-again-off-again compliance with the IAEA is worrisome and points directly to a desire to actually produce their own nuclear weapons. Janos himself has pointed out the ease with which this could be accomplished.
Ideally, Iran's pre-Shah democratic government should never have been overthrown, and Western powers should never backed the Shah. Unfortunately, they did. The Revolutionary government that came in is hostile to the region as a whole on religious grounds, has a deep ingrained hatred of all things Western (whether this comes from a rational reason or not is irrelevant, it influences their foreign policy), has a poor understanding of global geopolitics to begin with, has few sociopolitical ties to their partner nations (history lesson: economic ties only influence foreign policy if they are both necessary and sufficient to sustain the nation; Iran's trade relationship with the Chinese and the Russians is neither), and whose grasp of the way Western nations conduct foreign policy is limited. All of those things point to MAD being madder than usual in the case of Iran (and let's be honest, MAD is a non-rational system to begin with).
Endgame: Why on Earth would any rational person be willing to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program, when it can be stopped well in advance? The risks are enormous, and the benefits of them having them are precisely zero.
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Japan fought a war they knew they would lose as a result of the equivalent of economic sanctions. Iran's entire system is predicated on their ability to produce and sell oil. Sanctions can cripple them economically, which will force them to clamp down harder on the population... and the Iranian population has historically shown that they have limited tolerance for clampdowns. The ultimate Western goal is regime change in Iran, and harsh continuous economic sanctions of the government with simultaneous funding of some of the pro-democracy internal groups are a pretty sound way of bringing it about from within.
I'll skip the rest and dive right to the beefjerky of the matter. I'm not feeling like making many more predictions or statements about Iranian intelligence, democracy, or American presidential candidate sanity this morning. The farthest I'll go is to say that Iranian public opinion, as well as public opinion everywhere else in the mideast, is overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the program. The nuclear program, in fact, is a major source of popular support and legitimacy for the regime. Things might change with sanctions, but really, that would be a first. You're free to disregard the historical evidence of the ineffectiveness of nearly every sanction ever instated. Just don't forget Poland.
The options don't work, and carry costs. That's why I'd let Iran build nukes and not worry too much about it.
Why do you think the US invaded Iraq and not Iran? It's not because Iraq was worse, or there was more popular support for war with Iraq, or there was more evidence that Iraq was funding insurgent or terrorist groups. It's because Iran is already a hard military target.
No it wasn't. Not compared to Iraq. In troop strength, Iran has a whopping 500,000 soldiers to the 400,000 Iraq had. There wasn't much to pick from between Iran and Iraq in military professionalism either. Iran had better morale, and would at least fight back. But really, few conventional armies are a concern for the US.
Bush entered the office from day one discussing with his advisers plans to invade Iraq. It was a daddy complex thing. One had tried to "kill my dad", the other one hadn't. Saying that Iraq was invaded mainly because it was an easy target is an argument that could be used to prove or disprove any other war that may have started. Why not North Korea/Libya/Zimbabwe/Myanmar/Syria/Somalia/some other even more Beyond the Axis of Evil impoverished outpost of tyranny?
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Endgame: Why on Earth would any rational person be willing to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program, when it can be stopped well in advance? The risks are enormous, and the benefits of them having them are precisely zero.
Simple answer? They don't, they merely oppose the hypocrisy of people with big sticks telling others that they shouldn't have big sticks too.
If you could ask people in a completely politically neutral context whether they want any more countries to develop nukes, then pretty much everyone would say that no, they don't. But the setting in this case simply is that the standoff is largely between countries with nukes and a country without nukes possibly wanting to develop them, and that's a huge pile of hypocrisy right there no matter what.
Also, there's the matter of evidence. We know for a fact that governments and intelligence agencies cannot be trusted to provide reliable information about things like this. Does it seem likely that Iran is pursuing nuclear capability? Yes, surely there's plenty of evidence for that based on how everyone seems so sure of it. Did it seem likely that Iraq had WMD's? Yes, surely there's plenty of... oh, wait. So, UN-led inspections are the way to go. If Iran has a problem with that, then make the obvious offer: if Iran gives inspectors full access, Israel will do the exact same thing. That's only fair, and I'd be surprised if they'd refuse.
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Simple answer? They don't, they merely oppose the hypocrisy of people with big sticks telling others that they shouldn't have big sticks too.
If you could ask people in a completely politically neutral context whether they want any more countries to develop nukes, then pretty much everyone would say that no, they don't. But the setting in this case simply is that the standoff is largely between countries with nukes and a country without nukes possibly wanting to develop them, and that's a huge pile of hypocrisy right there no matter what.
There's some Latin term for that. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, I think. The risk is a lot different when it's a country that has funded suicide bombing in the past, at least claims to have genocidal intentions, and isn't all that politically stable.
Israel doesn't really care about the rest of the region. It just wants to survive and occupy Palestine. Iran on the other hand has made a lot of comments along the lines of wiping Israel off the map. They're not going to do it, but it's a risk.
Also, there's the matter of evidence. We know for a fact that governments and intelligence agencies cannot be trusted to provide reliable information about things like this. Does it seem likely that Iran is pursuing nuclear capability? Yes, surely there's plenty of evidence for that based on how everyone seems so sure of it. Did it seem likely that Iraq had WMD's? Yes, surely there's plenty of... oh, wait. So, UN-led inspections are the way to go. If Iran has a problem with that, then make the obvious offer: if Iran gives inspectors full access, Israel will do the exact same thing. That's only fair, and I'd be surprised if they'd refuse.
Sure, but what would they find in Israel that they don't already know of?
As for Iran, we can't know what is going on in Ahmadinejad's head. It wouldn't matter if we could. Iran already has the materials to build bombs in short order if it wanted to. That is not good for world peace, regardless of what anyone suspects their intentions are.
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The options don't work, and carry costs. That's why I'd let Iran build nukes and not worry too much about it.
You're entitled to your opinion, so I'll just agree to disagree on this one. I believe that, if applied appropriately, there are a number of options that have worked throughout the 20th century to influence a nation's internal policies short of military intervention. UN sanctions get a bad rap, but they can be surprisingly effective if used creatively.
No it wasn't. Not compared to Iraq. In troop strength, Iran has a whopping 500,000 soldiers to the 400,000 Iraq had. There wasn't much to pick from between Iran and Iraq in military professionalism either. Iran had better morale, and would at least fight back. But really, few conventional armies are a concern for the US.
Bush entered the office from day one discussing with his advisers plans to invade Iraq. It was a daddy complex thing. One had tried to "kill my dad", the other one hadn't. Saying that Iraq was invaded mainly because it was an easy target is an argument that could be used to prove or disprove any other war that may have started. Why not North Korea/Libya/Zimbabwe/Myanmar/Syria/Somalia/some other even more Beyond the Axis of Evil impoverished outpost of tyranny?
That's the conventional wisdom which disregards history before the Gulf War.
Militarily, you are quite correct - both the Iraqi and Iranian armies could not fight a conventional war against American forces and win. I doubt any nation on Earth could, truthfully. Maybe China through attrition, but even that is doubtful.
There is where the similarities end, though. Iran had a democratic government in the 50s, ousted by the US-backed Shah. Why? Iran is the major power in the Middle East. Control Iran, you control most of the region. Keep in mind that the other states surrounding Israel at the time were not exactly friendly to anything Western. The Shah was, and the Iranian government was weak and ripe for takeover. Fast forward to 1979. US influence in Iran has skyrocketed, American corporations are making a fair bit of money there, but the Shah's popularity is gone (if he ever had any, truthfully) and the Islamist movement is gaining backing with promises of an Islamic republic that ends American influence. Not very good for the US, but due to the situation with the Soviets actual intervention is now impossible. When the Shah was ousted, Iran was supposed to become a democracy. A very anti-US democracy mind you, but democracy nonetheless. That didn't happen. Instead, a small cadre of religious dictators took power. Thus ended any hope of Western influence in Iran. Doesn't mean anyone wanted to stop trying though, which is why the US provided support to the Iraqis in the Iran-Iraq war. It's also why Iran has remained hostile (and rightly) to the United States.
This, in turn, led to what we know as the Gulf War. Saddam believed (wrongly) that the limited support he received from the US was in essence authorization to turn Iraq into the regional superpower and topple Iran's status, and for that he needed deepwater ports. It seems he genuinely believed that Kuwait wouldn't raise problems in the US (and thus the UN). Oops. Suddenly the American puppet had gotten out of hand, a situation that was quickly (in military terms, anyway) handled.
And yet still the problem of Iran persisted. After the events of the previous few years, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and increasing tensions along with increasing surveillance in the Middle East, nobody was contemplating forceful regime changes, despite the fact that Iran was increasingly gaining in power, and expanding their trade relationship with China. China has a major thirst for oil which Iran has happily provided. The Iranians don't truthfully need the Chinese, but (especially now) it's becoming more apparent that the Chinese need Iranian oil. None of this is good news for the United States, but after 1979 it has become patently clear that direct US intervention into Iran is not going to work.
2001 - Al-Qaeda launches a major attack on US soil, which still baffles me because it was a huge miscalculation as far as mid-east geopolitics go. I do wonder if they (Al-Qaeda) expected military strikes instead of outright invasion. Regardless, NATO arrives in Afghanistan, beginning what will become a debacle of epic proportions, though it appears that the US DOD forgot to read the intelligence briefs on the region. Whatever the cause, the [relatively limited, as far as invasions go] deployment to Afghanistan has been trundling along since.
NATO is now sitting in Afghanistan, mere spitting distance from Iran, the one major power in the whole region, the one power with a major trade relationship with China, the one power that is really the only major threat to regional stability if they ever do anything more than sabre-rattling. There's a choice: try direct intervention in Iran, try it elsewhere and hope it influences Iran, or ignore the fact that China, a strategic enemy of NATO (though not really declared as such openly), is benefitting immensely from the region. Military intervention in Iran is out - there is at least one lesson learned already in Afghanistan, and it says that you might win a conventional war, but if you're faced with a population that hates you you have no hope of winning. But next to Iran is Iraq.
Iraq was and is a non-nation, truthfully. It's a country that was carved out of chunks of other countries through colonial efforts. It had no overarching religion, no common ethnicity, large autonomous regions that opposed centralized governance, and a great deal of internal strife with an immensely unpopular dictator, both home and abroad. And if we could toss the dictator there, what are the chances this could influence the very large pro-democracy-but-anti-US movement in neighboring Iran? At the very least, Chinese access to Iraq's oil is now dependent on NATO's goodwill (and to be clear, cutting off Chinese oil is not a Western strategic goal; controlling it is).
It was a VERY shortsighted policy decision, but the invasion of Iraq was predicated on strategic goals and not regime change in just Iraq, nor bringing democracy to the Iraqis, nor American access to Iraqi oil, nor WMDs. It was based on strategic regional goals which could not and still cannot be accomplished by a military invasion of Iran. It is a hard target because it has a hardened populace to overt US influence.
Iran doesn't need nukes to keep the US and its allies out. Developing them is a good way to open the door to inviting them in. Iran's best hope of preserving their autonomy would be to give their populace a broad voice and eliminate their human rights violations, while pursuing a transparent nuclear power program. Taking those measures would eliminate any appearance of legitimacy in Western military action. The current situation is simply more likely to provoke it - and this time Western powers won't attempt an invasion, they'll just hit with tactical and destructive strikes.
Letting the Iranians develop a nuclear weapons program won't increase regional stability, it will decrease it. Iran's best defense against Western military intervention is not military development, it's social development.
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I should also say that the fact that the Iranian government doesn't appear to realize that their best hope of avoiding military action is to suspend any nuclear weapons development and open the country directly to inspectors is quite worrying.
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2001 - Al-Qaeda launches a major attack on US soil, which still baffles me because it was a huge miscalculation as far as mid-east geopolitics go. I do wonder if they (Al-Qaeda) expected military strikes instead of outright invasion. Regardless, NATO arrives in Afghanistan, beginning what will become a debacle of epic proportions, though it appears that the US DOD forgot to read the intelligence briefs on the region. Whatever the cause, the [relatively limited, as far as invasions go] deployment to Afghanistan has been trundling along since.
From internal documents, it appears to have been mainly an attention whore type tactic. The Islamist movement was in such a rut at the turn of the century that any publicity would be good publicity. I believe that Al Qaeda has been successful in that respect in buying another decade or so for their obsolete ideology before it croaks.
Iraq was and is a non-nation, truthfully. It's a country that was carved out of chunks of other countries through colonial efforts. It had no overarching religion, no common ethnicity, large autonomous regions that opposed centralized governance, and a great deal of internal strife with an immensely unpopular dictator, both home and abroad. And if we could toss the dictator there, what are the chances this could influence the very large pro-democracy-but-anti-US movement in neighboring Iran? At the very least, Chinese access to Iraq's oil is now dependent on NATO's goodwill (and to be clear, cutting off Chinese oil is not a Western strategic goal; controlling it is).
Very good theory, but it's a rationalization. I doubt those kinds of complex thought processes were going through W's head. A lot of time there is no geostrategic reason for an American president to start or maintain a war. Kennedy knew Vietnam was a waste. From secondhand accounts, he seems to have admitted that. He didn't want to withdraw for fear of losing a second term. Thousands of people died to give him a shot at winning the presidency again. Years later, the same thing may have happened when the US essentially gave Iraq the green light to invade Kuwait. And Bush I got away with a victorious and popular, but unnecessary, war. He still lost in 92. But there were other reasons for that.
It's easy to get people excited about the war, and it always wins you votes in the short term. The war was popular enough in 2004 to help Bush win a close election. That's an equally valid, and I'd say more simple, explanation for the Iraq war. And oil is not a very good argument. Iraq was willing to allow access to its oil fields on very generous terms to the United States before the final ultimatum. By the way, I don't think there were ever any particular trade restrictions between Iraq and China, or signs of that the US wanted one.
It was a VERY shortsighted policy decision, but the invasion of Iraq was predicated on strategic goals and not regime change in just Iraq, nor bringing democracy to the Iraqis, nor American access to Iraqi oil, nor WMDs. It was based on strategic regional goals which could not and still cannot be accomplished by a military invasion of Iran. It is a hard target because it has a hardened populace to overt US influence.
I would have to agree with you there, since Iraq has more in the way of different factions that can be played against each other, especially the Kurds. But this is a somewhat silly discussion over weak justifications for the war.
Iran doesn't need nukes to keep the US and its allies out. Developing them is a good way to open the door to inviting them in. Iran's best hope of preserving their autonomy would be to give their populace a broad voice and eliminate their human rights violations, while pursuing a transparent nuclear power program. Taking those measures would eliminate any appearance of legitimacy in Western military action. The current situation is simply more likely to provoke it - and this time Western powers won't attempt an invasion, they'll just hit with tactical and destructive strikes.
We might never get the chance to see. Iran has a free ride for now since the US isn't willing to invade. If a buildup began, it would either be too late, or it would be a chance to see just how set Iran is on its program. If America elects a semi-sane candidate in 2012, like Romney or Gingrich, then they will likely have enough bombs by 2016 to make their national survival relatively secure. Not many countries can say that.
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It's easy to get people excited about the war, and it always wins you votes in the short term. The war was popular enough in 2004 to help Bush win a close election. That's an equally valid, and I'd say more simple, explanation for the Iraq war. And oil is not a very good argument. Iraq was willing to allow access to its oil fields on very generous terms to the United States before the final ultimatum. By the way, I don't think there were ever any particular trade restrictions between Iraq and China, or signs of that the US wanted one.
Oh, I'm not discounting the old adage of "Economy not performing and unpopular at home? Start a war." I'm just saying there were a lot more compelling strategic reasons for invading Iraq than anything as simplistic as an old daddy-complex grudge or the need to win the election. Bush wasn't the final decision maker, and it would take a lot more than those factors to propel the entire DOD establishment to a war recommendation.
And I wasn't saying Iraq was invaded to give the US access to Iraqi oil (hell, the US has access to both Saudi and Canadian oil which will meet its strategic needs for a long while to come), I'm saying that it gave the US control of Iraqi oil and leverage when it comes to China. Once again, the West is happy to sell resources to the Chinese, but they want to control how and when.
We might never get the chance to see. Iran has a free ride for now since the US isn't willing to invade. If a buildup began, it would either be too late, or it would be a chance to see just how set Iran is on its program. If America elects a semi-sane candidate in 2012, like Romney or Gingrich, then they will likely have enough bombs by 2016 to make their national survival relatively secure. Not many countries can say that.
Whereas I would argue that Iran's development of nuclear weapons makes their national survival (or at least, their government's) less secure. Keep in mind that the Mossad is undoubtedly keeping a very close eye on the program. I'm willing to bet that any prototypes are quickly and decisively destroyed long before the Iranians have deployment capability. Missile and/or jet flight time from Isarel or the Persian Gulf is quite short, and modern bombs can make pretty deep holes. It really won't matter who the US President is.
Which makes me curious - you don't think Obama will survive the election or is capable of rational foreign policy?
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Oh, I'm not discounting the old adage of "Economy not performing and unpopular at home? Start a war." I'm just saying there were a lot more compelling strategic reasons for invading Iraq than anything as simplistic as an old daddy-complex grudge or the need to win the election.
You really should read one of his biographies. I am not ****ing kidding about the daddy issues, I'll say it again. Herzkowitz's biography is a good one, and it's intended as pro-Bush propaganda to boot. Bush had been talking about his disappointment with his father's failure to finish the job since at least as far back as 1999. And he was quite the final decision maker. For what it's worth, there's Cheney, who had opposed occupation in 1991, yet fell in line behind Bush like everyone else.
Whereas I would argue that Iran's development of nuclear weapons makes their national survival (or at least, their government's) less secure. Keep in mind that the Mossad is undoubtedly keeping a very close eye on the program. I'm willing to bet that any prototypes are quickly and decisively destroyed long before the Iranians have deployment capability. Missile and/or jet flight time from Isarel or the Persian Gulf is quite short, and modern bombs can make pretty deep holes. It really won't matter who the US President is.
They've gotten this far, I bet they can make it. Time is not on Israel's side.
It will hopefully not matter who the US president is. But neoconservativism is still very much alive, in the electorate and primaries, if not in the current government. Hopefully there won't be a Bush round III. Hopefully.
I think you read too much biology. You really need to just listen to a speech, or a soundbite at least, from McCain, Bachmann or Palin on the Iran issue. I don't think you grasp how bat**** insane the potential next presidents of the United States are and have been.
Which makes me curious - you don't think Obama will survive the election or is capable of rational foreign policy?
I never said that. Obama is one of the more intelligent presidents IMO. On foreign policy, he's doing fine besides not withdrawing fast enough. On Iran, I think he has the wrong idea, but what he's doing isn't totally off the wall.
As for the election, I think the economy hurts Obama's chances, but it will be close and a Republican win would be just a worst case for foreign policy.
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You really should read one of his biographies. I am not ****ing kidding about the daddy issues, I'll say it again. Herzkowitz's biography is a good one, and it's intended as pro-Bush propaganda to boot. Bush had been talking about his disappointment with his father's failure to finish the job since at least as far back as 1999. And he was quite the final decision maker. For what it's worth, there's Cheney, who had opposed occupation in 1991, yet fell in line behind Bush like everyone else.
Not disputing any of that - just saying it wasn't the primary reason. Really, do you think all of cabinet, and majorities in Congress and the Senate were swayed because Bush wanted to finish what his daddy started? Even I'm not that cynical :P
They've gotten this far, I bet they can make it. Time is not on Israel's side.
It will hopefully not matter who the US president is. But neoconservativism is still very much alive, in the electorate and primaries, if not in the current government. Hopefully there won't be a Bush round III. Hopefully.
I think you read too much biology. You really need to just listen to a speech, or a soundbite at least, from McCain, Bachmann or Palin on the Iran issue. I don't think you grasp how bat**** insane the potential next presidents of the United States are and have been.
I follow US politics even more closely than I follow politics in my own country. I'm quite well aware of how insane most of the Republican bunch is these days.
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Not disputing any of that - just saying it wasn't the primary reason. Really, do you think all of cabinet, and majorities in Congress and the Senate were swayed because Bush wanted to finish what his daddy started? Even I'm not that cynical :P
You haven't seen me cynical. If the boss of the Executive Branch of the United States wants fabricated evidence of Iraqi WMD trailer parks, it will end up on his desk next Monday. And the rest of the country will probably believe it.
I follow US politics even more closely than I follow politics in my own country. I'm quite well aware of how insane most of the Republican bunch is these days.
The weirdest part is when you take a six month trip to Vietnam and realize in your conversations with the locals that many of them follow the American republican primary even more closely than Americans do.
Well, it's been fun. Later.
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It's cause the American public hasn't gotten bombed by the US government yet.
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I should also say that the fact that the Iranian government doesn't appear to realize that their best hope of avoiding military action is to suspend any nuclear weapons development and open the country directly to inspectors is quite worrying.
What, like they did between 2003 and 2010? They are even discussing with IAEA in February, following the talks in late January this year.
Back in 2010 they agreed with Brazil and Turkey to cease their own enrichment program - again, completely legal by NPT standard - to ship the fuel over to Brazil and Turkey. US approved of this. Then US immediatelly called for more sanctions - like three days later. Now Iran is under crushing economic sanctions.
You fail to grasp a very simple point: Iran feels threated and is already in a covert war. They see that cooperation gives them absolutely nothing but more sanctions on top of sanctions. They are surrounded by a hostile power. They are being denied a nuclear power generation just because they ousted the Shah back in 1979.
Now, you seem to keep touting the line that Iran's best chance is social developement. Very well. What is the objective tool and timeline for that? Is there a certain level of social developement that will stop warlike rhetorics from their neighbours - maybe something like a secularized nation? What is the acceptable timeline and transition scheme? How can any kind of social change bring forth any kind of short-term security?
See:
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons someday, but is not yet building a bomb and called for continued diplomatic and economic pressure to persuade Tehran not to take that step.
1. Iran is not breaking any treaty they are obliged to
2. They are completely justified in a peaceful nuclear POWER program
3. This is acknowledged by USA, which
4. ... pushes for more sanctions.
5. Everything rest in this post.
And you claim that Iran should adopt a policy of "social change"? Damn, using these criteria the entire mainland Europe should be under food embargo.
edit: No peace missiles here 1980s 8)
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2. They are completely justified in a peaceful nuclear weapons program
:wtf:
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2. They are completely justified in a peaceful nuclear weapons program
:wtf:
whoops
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Nuclear peace theory, silly!
;7
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Nuclear peace theory, silly!
;7
No such thing exists.
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Of course it does exist. Once everything bigger than cockroaches dies in a nuclear fire, we will finally achieve world peace.
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Of course it does exist. Once everything bigger than cockroaches dies in a nuclear fire, we will finally achieve world peace.
But what about the struggle of life?
Seriously, though, nuclear peace relies on the following facts.
1. USA and USSR did not shoot each other to pieces
2. Ergo, nuclear peace
3. You are not supposed to pay attention to all the situations where incomplete information, false analysis of the perceived enemy and inbalance of force almost caused them to shoot each other to pieces
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Of course it does exist. Once everything bigger than cockroaches dies in a nuclear fire, we will finally achieve world peace.
Ants wage war. We'll have to kill the ants too.
Have to work down to microbes, it appears.
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Which ants do we kill though, the red ants or black ants?
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Which ants do we kill though, the red ants or black ants?
All of them. Even the really tiny ones are actually one of the few species to ever practice slavery.
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-snip-
Iran feels threatened as part of a covert war because they are funding a covert war, and everyone else knows it. This is not grounds for them to develop a nuclear weapons program. They keep getting hammered with sanctions because they keep making progress on their nuclear weapons program, and they keep funding lovely people like Hezebollah, Al-Qaeda, and Assad. They are being denied nuclear power generation because all of their actions and rhetoric show that they will never be content to limit themselves to NOT develop a weapons program.
If Iran:
1. Quit funding terrorist groups against nearby nations states;
2. Quit supporting dictators busily murdering civilians by the hundreds or thousands;
3. Quit trying to develop a nuclear weapons program;
4. Quit torturing and murdering their own citizenry for nothing more than simple journalism or democratic protest;
5. Allowed meaningful democratic processes;
6. Quit using fundamentalist arguments to suppress half their population and torture or kill them when they break fundamentalist Islamic principles (that would be women)
7. Quit doing their damndest to subvert and destabilize their neighbours.
then maybe, just maybe, the states legitimately criticizing them for all of the above would no longer have a leg to stand on.
How you can be an apologist for all of this nonsense and think Iran is being picked on and all they want to do is develop nuclear power is beyond me. Given that all of the above abuses are documented facts, the idea that we can take the Iranian government at its word that it won't seek to develop nuclear weapons is absolutely laughable.
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1. Quit funding terrorist groups against nearby nations states;
2. Quit supporting dictators busily murdering civilians by the hundreds or thousands;
3. Quit trying to develop a nuclear weapons program;
4. Quit torturing and murdering their own citizenry for nothing more than simple journalism or democratic protest;
5. Allowed meaningful democratic processes;
6. Quit using fundamentalist arguments to suppress half their population and torture or kill them when they break fundamentalist Islamic principles (that would be women)
7. Quit doing their damndest to subvert and destabilize their neighbours.
I get the nagging feeling that all the states that are critizing them are actually guilty of most of the things on that list (except mabye 4 or 5...). Which kinda makes things more difficult.
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You can include 5., actually. :P
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Iran feels threatened as part of a covert war because they are funding a covert war, and everyone else knows it.
... and they are also a target in a such war?
This is not grounds for them to develop a nuclear weapons program. They keep getting hammered with sanctions because they keep making progress on their nuclear weapons program
prove this
...and they keep funding lovely people like Hezebollah, Al-Qaeda, and Assad.
Al Quaeda? You mean the latest news in Britain?
They are being denied nuclear power generation because all of their actions and rhetoric show that they will never be content to limit themselves to NOT develop a weapons program.
They have been cooperating with IAEA since 2003 and have consistently communicated with the West to try to defuse the situation. They have even approached EU/BRIC/US in terms of external refining and fuel processing. If the stated goal is to prevent Iran to ever become a nation that can develop nuclear weapons, the goal is practically "keep them from becoming a developed and normal nation in European standards - forever".
1. Quit funding terrorist groups against nearby nations states;
2. Quit supporting dictators busily murdering civilians by the hundreds or thousands;
3. Quit trying to develop a nuclear weapons program;
4. Quit torturing and murdering their own citizenry for nothing more than simple journalism or democratic protest;
5. Allowed meaningful democratic processes;
6. Quit using fundamentalist arguments to suppress half their population and torture or kill them when they break fundamentalist Islamic principles (that would be women)
7. Quit doing their damndest to subvert and destabilize their neighbours.
This is getting ridiculous. You do realize that you are essentially stating that Iran is OK if the regime voluntarily steps down, they stop peaceful nuclear power program and they do not even respond to foreign-funded assasinations on their own soil - THEN they are ok? Your criteria is not unique. You have came up with this sort of arbitrary list which is essentially "IRAN IS BAD" and you then dare to tell me that I am an apologist?
How you can be an apologist for all of this nonsense and think Iran is being picked on and all they want to do is develop nuclear power is beyond me. Given that all of the above abuses are documented facts, the idea that we can take the Iranian government at its word that it won't seek to develop nuclear weapons is absolutely laughable.
No they are not. The first problem, the one that your entire assumption and argument lies on, is the fact that there is no concrete proof of Iranian nuclear weapons program and acting as such a thing was a certainity is naive and completely similar to run-up to Iraq War in 2003. Your failure to grasp the meaning of your rhetorics and your obviously highly biased solutions for peace - which amount to pretty much "Iran should roll over because someone suspects them of something" - are completely similar to pundit talk before Iraq was invaded.
If you fail to see the similarities in here I feel that I really cannot help you.
edit: I hate to sound angry, but I think you 1. take the rhetoric about Iran on face value and 2. are unable to consider their situation. Therefor, your analysis has parallels to neocon school of thought and is ill-informed. I do not think this is what you really want to think.
For example, 1. You state that Iran should stop co-operating with Al-Quaeda. This is funny. Iran offered USA help in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2009, had almost went to war with Taliban in 1990s and has good relations and lots of influence with Karzai government. Iran is a Shia state and as such will obviously have huge ideological differences with Saudi-funded (Saudi and Iran are hostile to each other) nebulous terrorist network. Even Saddam was blamed for AQ connections - that ultimately proved to be false, by the way - in a completely similar way.
Even if Iran DOES have connections and cooperation with AQ, consider why this could be? I mean, they have been quite hostile to them for almost two decades. What might possibly prompt cooperation in 2012? Is the cooperation even real?
We can continue this as long as we want, but you are oversimplifying the conflict and approaching it from a highly suspect direction.
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-snip-
You might want to actually read what the IAEA keeps saying about Iran:
The diplomats' recent comments came as International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are scheduled to visit Tehran on Sunday. Their trip — the second this month — is another attempt to break more than three years of Iranian stonewalling about allegations that Tehran has — or is — secretly working on nuclear weapons that would be armed with uranium enriched to 90 percent or more.
Diplomats accredited to the IAEA expect little from that visit. They told the AP that — as before — Iran was refusing to allow the agency experts to visit Parchin, the suspected site of explosives testing for a nuclear weapon and had turned down other key requests made by the experts.
Iranian officials deny nuclear weapons aspirations, saying the claims are based on bogus intelligence from the U.S. and Israel.
But IAEA chief Yukiya Amano has said there are increasing indications of such activity. His concerns were outlined in 13-page summary late last year listing clandestine activities that either can be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons.”
Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high explosives testing and detonator development to set off a nuclear charge, as well as computer modeling of a core of a nuclear warhead. The report also cited preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran's Shahab 3 intermediate range missile — a weapon that could reach Israel.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/iran-boosting-equipment-could-quicken-nuke-production-diplomats/article2343186/
So no, Iran is not cooperating with the IAEA, and there are indications that they are actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
This is getting ridiculous. You do realize that you are essentially stating that Iran is OK if the regime voluntarily steps down, they stop peaceful nuclear power program and they do not even respond to foreign-funded assasinations on their own soil - THEN they are ok? Your criteria is not unique. You have came up with this sort of arbitrary list which is essentially "IRAN IS BAD" and you then dare to tell me that I am an apologist?
Absolutely your stance is apologist. How is there a single thing on that list that is not a desirable outcome? The list isn't an arbitrary invention, it's a list of the things that are generally considered bad when it comes to human rights and international diplomacy that Iran has been documented as doing.
No they are not. The first problem, the one that your entire assumption and argument lies on, is the fact that there is no concrete proof of Iranian nuclear weapons program and acting as such a thing was a certainity is naive and completely similar to run-up to Iraq War in 2003. Your failure to grasp the meaning of your rhetorics and your obviously highly biased solutions for peace - which amount to pretty much "Iran should roll over because someone suspects them of something" - are completely similar to pundit talk before Iraq was invaded.
My "highly-biased solutions" are a list for Iran to cease human rights violations, allow their own citizenry a voice in governance, and cessation of covert hostilities against its neighbours. That's not exactly a biased list. I'm quite able to consider their situation - religious fundamentalists subverted a democracy-oriented revolution to impose a fundamentalist rights-violating theocracy that routinely tortures and kills their own citizenry while fostering unrest among neighbouring states in order to retain their own status among their neighbours and keep their population from actually achieving the republic they sought in 1979. Everything the Iranian government has done since has been designed to keep them in power and the population in line - including support for the insurgent forces (like Al-Qaeda) that have been actively combating NATO in Afghanistan. The Iranian government does not want a NATO-friendly neighbour, particularly after the Iran-Iraq War. As you mentioned, the Karzai regime and the Iranian government now have enough similarities that the support for hostile forces in Afghanistan from Iran has dropped because their objectives are being achieved by the political structures that NATO is supporting.
You can disagree with me all you like, but the history is a matter of record. Iran has repeatedly shown that their nuclear aspirations may include weaponry, and given the geopolitical situation in the Middle East they absolutely should be prevented from gaining them. Nobody - here - is advocating for military invasion like the joint debacle's of Afghanistan and Iraq, but there are a number of other effective measures that can be taken.
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1. Quit funding terrorist groups against nearby nations states;
2. Quit supporting dictators busily murdering civilians by the hundreds or thousands;
3. Quit trying to develop a nuclear weapons program;
4. Quit torturing and murdering their own citizenry for nothing more than simple journalism or democratic protest;
5. Allowed meaningful democratic processes;
6. Quit using fundamentalist arguments to suppress half their population and torture or kill them when they break fundamentalist Islamic principles (that would be women)
7. Quit doing their damndest to subvert and destabilize their neighbours.
I get the nagging feeling that all the states that are critizing them are actually guilty of most of the things on that list (except mabye 4 or 5...). Which kinda makes things more difficult.
While there's an argument that some NATO members are guilty by association of a few things on that list (1-3, 7), it doesn't mean that criticism of other nation states for doing these things is any more difficult, it just means those states should also put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.
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In case anyone actually wants to read about the IAEA and Iran, the main page is here: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iaeairan/index.shtml
The most recent board report (Nov 2011) is here: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2011/gov2011-65.pdf
The board report is relatively short (total document size is 25 pages) and details Iran's current status with regard to the various UN resolutions regarding their nuclear activities. The short version is that they're in violation of many of them.
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Oh, I'm not discounting the old adage of "Economy not performing and unpopular at home? Start a war." I'm just saying there were a lot more compelling strategic reasons for invading Iraq than anything as simplistic as an old daddy-complex grudge or the need to win the election.
I still can't believe you think there has to have been compelling geostrategic reasons to invade Iraq. There never were. Bush had to forge evidence to come up with reasons to invade Iraq. Why are you so opposed to the idea that special interests and personalities run politics? I mean, if Nero wants to burn down Rome or sacrifice virgins, there's not always the national interest involved.
are a number of other effective measures that can be taken.
Sanctions went on for a decade in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of children died for lack of imported medicine. And it accomplished nothing. That's a terrible option.
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I still can't believe you think there has to have been compelling geostrategic reasons to invade Iraq. There never were. Bush had to forge evidence to come up with reasons to invade Iraq. Why are you so opposed to the idea that special interests and personalities run politics? I mean, if Nero wants to burn down Rome or sacrifice virgins, there's not always the national interest involved.
No doubt personalities played a role, but "we want to meddle in the regional politics to our strategic benefit" doesn't work as a legitimate excuse, so of course that reason is buried in the dozens of other arguments. (I particularly love the people who claim Iraq was invaded because the US wants Iraqi oil... ha). I don't think its a coincidence that the country that Bush Jr. got hung up on due to his daddy complex was also believed to be the ideal domino for the region at the same time. Maybe I'm giving US strategists more credit than is due, but the argument for geostrategic policy is a compelling one.
Sanctions went on for a decade in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of children died for lack of imported medicine. And it accomplished nothing. That's a terrible option.
I think you'd best find a source for that statistic. Iraq's population in 2009 was ~31 000 000 people, and I don't see a large downward spike that would indicate a few hundred thousand dead kids in the 1960-2009 data.
Sanctions are also not the [only] measure I'd advocate for in Iran's case.
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Maybe I'm giving US strategists more credit than is due, but the argument for geostrategic policy is a compelling one.
Nobody in 1991 thought occupying Iraq was a good idea, and besides WMDs that didn't suddenly change. There is just about zero evidence for any kind of geostrategic discussions at high levels of government like what you're implying. It's not a compelling explanation at all in the first place when 1)Saddam was already groveling at his knees for whatever we asked him for and 2) the cost of the initial invasion alone probably cost around the entire GDP of Iraq, anyway.
I think you'd best find a source for that statistic. Iraq's population in 2009 was ~31 000 000 people, and I don't see a large downward spike that would indicate a few hundred thousand dead kids in the 1960-2009 data.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22159382
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10866440
Infant mortality doubled after sanctions and fell greatly when they were lifted. About fifty thousand infants died per year from 91 to 03. Yes, it was very clearly visible in the statistics. Sanctions kill a lot of people.
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Nobody in 1991 thought occupying Iraq was a good idea, and besides WMDs that didn't suddenly change. There is just about zero evidence for any kind of geostrategic discussions at high levels of government like what you're implying. It's not a compelling explanation at all in the first place when 1)Saddam was already groveling at his knees for whatever we asked him for and 2) the cost of the initial invasion alone probably cost around the entire GDP of Iraq, anyway.
I think you'd better go read my posts on page 4 again. It's pretty clear from the historical record and geopolitical situation in the Middle East that invasion of Iraq was conducted in part out of strategic interest concerning Western policy toward Iran and Iraq's trade relationships, and in order to exercise greater consolidation of controls on strategic energy resources (seeing China's lucrative arrangements with the Iranians). Not to give the US in particular access to resources, but to enable control of them. I've touched on this in threads before your HLP debut, but Iran really is a nation whose populace wants a democratic form of government (although not necessarily pro-US). Intervention to topple totalitarian and/or fundamentalist structures on either side of them is a tactic straight out of the Cold War revolution-generating playbook - the simplistic thinking is/was to generate democratic states on either side of Iran, and let the Iranian people topple their own government. Endgame is that you no longer have dictators in that part of their world happily selling their souls (and oil) to the Chinese and other potential threats to Western political supremacy. It's also pretty clear that the scenario was badly misread by strategists who didn't realize exactly what a mess they were dropping into. Cost doesn't really factor into this - net benefit does not and would not have been planned to come from development of Iraqi resources, it comes from control of whom they sell too. Which, going back to an earlier point - Western nations are happy to sell all kinds of resources, not excluding oil, to China, but only if they control the process (and when and how it could be cut off). Changing the regime in Iran is one step along that road (if you think about it, Iran is the only major oil producer in the Middle East that Western nations don't have their fingers in manipulation of their energy sector).
Calling Iraq a daddy-complex mess that resulted from the actions of a single misguided President fails to give credit to the spectacular egocentricity in the strategists of the US State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and Pentagon. There's this notion that Reagan-era diplomacy and foreign policy used to work and still does, which is absolute garbage. Unfortunately, Bush Jr comes from the GOP school that Reagan had godlike foreign policy planning.
Infant mortality doubled after sanctions and fell greatly when they were lifted. About fifty thousand infants died per year from 91 to 03. Yes, it was very clearly visible in the statistics. Sanctions kill a lot of people.
Ordinarily I'd place discussion of increased infant mortality rates and "hundreds of thousands of dead kids" in two separate and distinct categories based on message tone alone, but technically speaking I guess I can't argue with your reasoning there.
I will point out that sanctions are actually designed to cause social and political unrest in order to pressure governments. It's just misguided to use them in a way that doesn't produce that result. In Iran, sanctions on oil could economically cripple the country, and as we've already discussed, the Iranian population is not exactly happy with their government to begin with. This is a case where sanctions could actually be an effective foreign policy tool (though as you've noted, they are going to kill people as a result).
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I think you'd better go read my posts on page 4 again. It's pretty clear from the historical record and geopolitical situation in the Middle East that invasion of Iraq was conducted in part out of strategic interest concerning Western policy toward Iran and Iraq's trade relationships, and in order to exercise greater consolidation of controls on strategic energy resources (seeing China's lucrative arrangements with the Iranians).
Saddam was offering America oil concessions practically for free. Invading would give only a marginally greater degree of control to the US. As it happens, China has been able to import huge amounts of oil from Iraq since sanctions were lifted, and this has helped them a lot more than hurt them. How is giving your opponent more options and resources supposed to cripple them?
Even if that's so, if America was properly mercantilist, it would be doing a lot more to avoid cutting tariffs while taking China to task about its currency policies. But the US rarely acts that way. If the US was into economic realpolitik there are far, far more actions that it could be taking that are far, far more cheaper and effective than a highly expensive invasion that weakened the country economically while doing nothing to harm China. But it hasn't done anything of the sort, and there's a powerful importer lobby that has blocked most attempts to push trade policy legislation through Congress to check China (like the currency bill last year).
Finally, I really want to see transcripts of some kind of strategy discussion regarding this. Because I haven't seen anything to corroborate this kind of strategizing. At this point it's kind of like a conspiracy theory, except one that is probably not at all in the interests of the conspirators. What you're saying is slightly plausible if not a single one of those transcripts ever leaked, and having a slightly increased ability to deny Iraqi oil to others was perceived as hurting China more than opening up a whole new oil supplier for them. But it's not compelling at all when everyone, including the administration in 1991, knew that an invasion would result in shooting oneself in the foot. Apart from the WMD rationale, of course.
Not to give the US in particular access to resources, but to enable control of them. I've touched on this in threads before your HLP debut, but Iran really is a nation whose populace wants a democratic form of government (although not necessarily pro-US). Intervention to topple totalitarian and/or fundamentalist structures on either side of them is a tactic straight out of the Cold War revolution-generating playbook - the simplistic thinking is/was to generate democratic states on either side of Iran, and let the Iranian people topple their own government. Endgame is that you no longer have dictators in that part of their world happily selling their souls (and oil) to the Chinese and other potential threats to Western political supremacy.
The US has done nothing at all to prevent China from importing oil; you know that. The least it could do is place the slightest taxes or restrictions on selling vast amounts of American to oil and biofuels to China; that would at least be start, I think. Economic embargoes on China were mostly lifted after 1979 and haven't been put back up since. I don't get where you're coming from. China, with its low technology level and heavy industry dependence, is even more dependent on oil for its industrialization than the US is.
It's also pretty clear that the scenario was badly misread by strategists who didn't realize exactly what a mess they were dropping into. Cost doesn't really factor into this - net benefit does not and would not have been planned to come from development of Iraqi resources, it comes from control of whom they sell too.
Cost certainly does factor into this when you pay far more to secure oil fields (which Saddam is already willing to hand you for free, practically) and the cost to the US just to invade the country is greater than whatever damage we could hypothetically do to China by offering them access to oil. China's state oil company has been pretty happy to sign contracts with the Iraqi government, for what that's worth, so I don't think much was expected to be accomplished there.
Which, going back to an earlier point - Western nations are happy to sell all kinds of resources, not excluding oil, to China, but only if they control the process (and when and how it could be cut off). Changing the regime in Iran is one step along that road (if you think about it, Iran is the only major oil producer in the Middle East that Western nations don't have their fingers in manipulation of their energy sector).
The scandals, the Plame thing, and a whole slew of Bush biographies shed light on what was going on during the planning for the invasion. Very little of what you're talking about is mentioned. If it was a primary consideration, it certainly would have been talked about. The CIA in particular was strongly skeptical of the evidence for the invasion- it was presidential pressure, not the other way around, that got them on board. Relevant (although very long) article (http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168/37699.html).
Calling Iraq a daddy-complex mess that resulted from the actions of a single misguided President fails to give credit to the spectacular egocentricity in the strategists of the US State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and Pentagon. There's this notion that Reagan-era diplomacy and foreign policy used to work and still does, which is absolute garbage. Unfortunately, Bush Jr comes from the GOP school that Reagan had godlike foreign policy planning.
There's two different tracks in that paragraph; the Republicans are responsible for these strategies, and the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department are. If you have specific evidence of the formation of any of these strategies, do please present it.
Greenspan (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/16/AR2007091601287.html) did believe that oil was a good reason to invade Iraq. But only because, in his opinion, it would secure world oil supplies rather than somehow restrain China.
Ordinarily I'd place discussion of increased infant mortality rates and "hundreds of thousands of dead kids" in two separate and distinct categories based on message tone alone, but technically speaking I guess I can't argue with your reasoning there.
I've made my case. You haven't proved that sanctions are likely to force the Iranians to change course, let alone completely overhaul their government. It is probable, though, that a humanitarian disaster would result from sanctions. I'm glad for your sake that this is all an internet debate and neither of us will be responsible for the consequences.
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You're missing my point. Cutting China's oil supply off is in no one's strategic interest. It would in fact be in NATO's strategic interest to increase Chinese use of resources from loosely-controlled states (as China has indeed done) and deepen their reliance on foreign resource reserves. The point is to allow China unfettered access to economic growth while simultaneously retaining strategic control over the resources that enable that growth. This is a really old foreign policy principle, and an effective one. There's nothing wrong with allowing other potential competitors to prosper, just make sure they can only continue to do so if they play nice with you.
As for the current status of Iraq, I've pointed out from the outset that if this indeed was the strategy it has failed quite spectacularly in some regards/
Lastly - I'm not aware of any publicly released outlines of the strategic interests at play in these decisions. Usually that sort of information is only released well after it is no longer sensitive. My informed conjecture is based on a reading of the history in the region, known public strategic goals of NATO and the US in particular, and current reporting. The only thing keeping my point out of the abysmal depths of poorly-conceived conspiracy theory is the fact that it is grounded solidly in both history and long-term strategic planning. In order for NATO countries to retain their status in global politics, they must have the strategic key to China. That, at present, is being able to control Chinese energy access if ever it became necessary, for which intervention in the Middle East is necessary (although the US does not itself need Middle Eastern hydrocarbons). With the Afghan regime ousted and Iraq's leader weaker than ever, Iraq probably looked like a pretty ripe target by which to go sideways at Iran as well, and what's more, the justification could be easily fabricated from multiple angles.
Take that for what you will. I think there's a lot of information available that points at long-term strategic goals behind the ultimate invasion of Iraq that go well beyond the stated short-term reasoning. Maybe history will bear me out, maybe it won't =)
There's two different tracks in that paragraph; the Republicans are responsible for these strategies, and the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department are.
None of the agencies in question operate purely independently of the executive arm of government. Reaganesque thinking has been an influence in all US foreign policy basically until Obama, but more predominantly among Republicans. Regardless, when you take policy planners that firmly believe in proxy or direct interventionist policy oriented at resolving strategic goals, where the players are defined in two polarized categories, with simultaneous use of the freedom-paradigm propaganda justification and throw in a President that believes the same bull****, you get a recipe for disaster - i.e. a war for the freedom of the people of Iraq because their leader is using WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!!!111SHIFTONE! on them.
Alas, I have no documents to point you to, other than a read over the history of US foreign policy, 1979-2008.
Greenspan (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/16/AR2007091601287.html) did believe that oil was a good reason to invade Iraq. But only because, in his opinion, it would secure world oil supplies rather than somehow restrain China.
It's not that securing world oil supplies does restrain China, it's that it could restrain China if necessary. Important distinction.
You haven't proved that sanctions are likely to force the Iranians to change course, let alone completely overhaul their government.
Pretty tough to prove any foreign policy result is going to happen before it does - to be fair, I can't ask you to prove that imposing sactions would not force Iran to change course either. :P Your point is taken, however.
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You might want to actually read what the IAEA keeps saying about Iran:
So no, Iran is not cooperating with the IAEA, and there are indications that they are actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
I have read the report. It is tough language. It essentially says that Iran has not had an active nuclear weapons program since 2008 I think, but they are heavily into dual-use technology and IAEA has problems with that.
Absolutely your stance is apologist. How is there a single thing on that list that is not a desirable outcome? The list isn't an arbitrary invention, it's a list of the things that are generally considered bad when it comes to human rights and international diplomacy that Iran has been documented as doing.
Human rights are a really bad reason to enact sanctions and beat the wardrums for.
My "highly-biased solutions" are a list for Iran to cease human rights violations, allow their own citizenry a voice in governance, and cessation of covert hostilities against its neighbours.
So it's not about nuclear weapons or nuclear latency, it's about human rights? Why wouldn't you say so! After all, human rights interventions have worked wonders - you can just look at Bahrain, Libya, Kosovo, Abkhazia, Chechnya and Syria to see just what a grand box of worms it is.
How, mind you, would you propose Iran reacted if a terrorist organization would assasinate Iranian scientists - while lead by a hostile intelligence organization? Or are you referring to Hizbollah?
That's not exactly a biased list. I'm quite able to consider their situation - religious fundamentalists subverted a democracy-oriented revolution to impose a fundamentalist rights-violating theocracy that routinely tortures and kills their own citizenry while fostering unrest among neighbouring states in order to retain their own status among their neighbours and keep their population from actually achieving the republic they sought in 1979.
Come on. That's the most simplistic point of view imaginable. If you are unable to even consider the Iranian POW then I find it pretty laughable that you talk about history that speaks for itself.
Everything the Iranian government has done since has been designed to keep them in power and the population in line - including support for the insurgent forces (like Al-Qaeda) that have been actively combating NATO in Afghanistan. The Iranian government does not want a NATO-friendly neighbour, particularly after the Iran-Iraq War. As you mentioned, the Karzai regime and the Iranian government now have enough similarities that the support for hostile forces in Afghanistan from Iran has dropped because their objectives are being achieved by the political structures that NATO is supporting.
The last part is weird. You stated that Iran supports AQ. When? The recent bout of talking points came out just days ago. Iran had a hostile relationship with them for years and the current narrative is that "Iran is desperate and clinging to AQ". So was Iran allied with AQ in the past or right now? You state that Iran's support for hostile forces in Afghanistan has dropped now because their objectives are being achieved by NATO but when did they change to adversary, sometimes between 2003 and 2008 and then back again...
This is frustrating. Nothing in the previous chapter makes any sense, since it ignores what actually happened.
You state that Iranian regime is bad. Does that warrant a athmosphere of threats that vindicates the current regime? Is "a bad regime that neglects human rights" sufficient grounds for intervention in general or just in this case?
You can disagree with me all you like, but the history is a matter of record. Iran has repeatedly shown that their nuclear aspirations may include weaponry, and given the geopolitical situation in the Middle East they absolutely should be prevented from gaining them.
So it's a question of nuclear latency, then?
I am confused! Is it about nuclear weapons - that they may or may not be pursuing, and apparently aren't, since there's absolutely no concrete proof? Or is it about nuclear latency - capability to become a nation that can put up a nuclear bomb in a short time period? Is it maybe about human rights?
Nobody - here - is advocating for military invasion like the joint debacle's of Afghanistan and Iraq, but there are a number of other effective measures that can be taken.
Effective measures? Which are..? Sanctions? Intervention? A "pre-emptive" strike on their facilities? Or maybe even talks!
And by the way. You:
1. state that Iran is developing nuclear weaponry while there is no concrete proof, only dual-use technology and an inert program from 2003
2. state, that Iranian regime is unstable and unable to be trusted, and unable to learn from history (lol)
3. state that Iranian regime is unpopular and dangerous to it's own citizens,
4. throw out the "human rights" line
5. ...while completely ignoring facts such as Stuxnet, Iranian compliance in foreign refining, last 10 years of IAEA reports, MEK and the general geopolitical situation. People have mentioned these in the thread.
This is kinda familiar, you know! It's almost as if I had seen this before.
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Let's back up a moment.
The list of wonderful qualities of the Iranian government that I tossed out above was a list of things that Iran is involved in, which they repeatedly claim they are not involved in, which goes to show just what the word of the Iranian government is worth. That is relevant to Iran's claims that they are not after nuclear weapons. I do not claim that a discussion about justification about keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran is due to their human rights record.
A couple quick responses to get it over with before I move on:
-The Iranian revolution was designed to produce a republic. This was the primary, stated goal of Khomeini himself in public, right up until they didn't do it and the religious bunch took over. Those facts really aren't in dispute, so I'm not sure what you're on about in terms of simplistic readings. Iran's government fears its citizenry as a result.
- In terms of Iran and Al-Qaeda's relationship, here's a timely piece on that very subject (no, my name is not Daniel Byman and I'm not a Georgetown professor): http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/21/the_odd_couple_iran_al_qaeda
You're veering off course (partly my fault) in a thread that is already muddling about in the wrong hemisphere, so let's venture back toward some semblance of the original discussion I got involved in: Iran + nuclear weapons = bad.
I did not say Iran is developing nuclear weapons, I said they should stop trying to do so. The IAEA's report provides ample information that Iran may yet have or be seeking the ability to develop them (big question mark, considering they still haven't been given access to all the sites they want to see, if the news is to believed - see previous link posted). The regime is unstable (protests, active dissident groups, large internal security/military force), can't be trusted (frequently lies about everything from nuclear sites to human rights abuses), and is a subject of considerable concern at the IAEA. The report is a substantial list of things Iran is doing contrary to various UN resolutions regarding their nuclear sites. Do you not see this as a problem?
I'm not sure where you're going with all of this anymore. Have you conjured up some belief that I'm advocating war or invasion with/of Iran? If so, I assure you that is all in your head. Here's my position.
If the IAEA substantiates that Iran is both capable of and actively conducting development of nuclear weapons, then the UN or (if vetoed by Russia and/or China) NATO/Israel should take active measures ranging from economic sanctions to limited military and/or intelligence agency strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure and personnel used for that purpose in order to prevent their development.
Agree or disagree with me, I don't particularly care in this instance since its nothing more than opinion.
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You're missing my point. Cutting China's oil supply off is in no one's strategic interest. It would in fact be in NATO's strategic interest to increase Chinese use of resources from loosely-controlled states (as China has indeed done) and deepen their reliance on foreign resource reserves. The point is to allow China unfettered access to economic growth while simultaneously retaining strategic control over the resources that enable that growth. This is a really old foreign policy principle, and an effective one. There's nothing wrong with allowing other potential competitors to prosper, just make sure they can only continue to do so if they play nice with you.
Okay. Well, that is an interesting perspective. But generally, helping your enemies grow is the opposite of geostrategy. Back in the nineteenth century, you didn't let your colonies trade with the enemy. I still appreciate that you've just developed the first liberal internationalist justification for the Iraq War I've ever seen.
Otherwise, going to war with Iraq to slightly reduce the chance of going to war with China is still a stretch. I think that trying to prevent Iraq from denominating oil trade in euros was a slightly more defensible reason to invade.
Alas, I have no documents to point you to, other than a read over the history of US foreign policy, 1979-2008.
It all seems balls. But that's just me.
It's not that securing world oil supplies does restrain China, it's that it could restrain China if necessary. Important distinction.
Not what Greenspan was apparently talking about, not in that sense of the term. But that's irrelevant.
Pretty tough to prove any foreign policy result is going to happen before it does - to be fair, I can't ask you to prove that imposing sactions would not force Iran to change course either. :P Your point is taken, however.
The sanctions are kind of a joke, anyway. They will make it harder to buy food or medicine, but India has made it clear that it's still going to keep buying Iranian oil.
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Okay. Well, that is an interesting perspective. But generally, helping your enemies grow is the opposite of geostrategy. Back in the nineteenth century, you didn't let your colonies trade with the enemy.
The West has a complicated relationship with China, though. It is in our collective interest for China to grow and advance, so long as that growth and advancement is done peacefully. Think of it as broad application of the carrot-and-stick principle: unfettered access to resources if you play nice, but we'll cut you off if you don't. In that sense, controlling the resource market while still letting your potential adversaries access it (at an even greater rate than before) is a very strategic move.
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The West has a complicated relationship with China, though. It is in our collective interest for China to grow and advance, so long as that growth and advancement is done peacefully. Think of it as broad application of the carrot-and-stick principle: unfettered access to resources if you play nice, but we'll cut you off if you don't. In that sense, controlling the resource market while still letting your potential adversaries access it (at an even greater rate than before) is a very strategic move.
Not strategic when it requires the particular means you're talking about, but otherwise, sure. Geostrategy is no longer like it once was though. The chance of war between any major powers is very small given how dependent everyone is on trade. I wouldn't say geostrategy is totally irrelevant, and it's no longer as zero sum, like you said, but there's never any need to go around invading basket cases just to prevent world wars, not that those countries' resources are possible or affordable to control either.