Iran Super Thread- Merged

[Nemo888]

So what happens after you nuke their electrical grid?  Iran magically becomes a western friendly democracy?  Destroying infrastructure went so well next door let's double down on that strategy. They have support from half the world  and huge amounts of natural resources to sell. They would rebuild and become an even worse enemy.  Antagonizing Iran again is not the way forward unless the plan includes genocide. There will be no popular revolt if it is clear that it is just another ploy  by western powers to subjugate the nation.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>120 countries, roughly two thirds of UN members, over 50% of the world's population still publicly support Iran.

120 countries, roughly two thirds of UN members, containing over 50% of the world's population still publicly support Iran.

I don't think anyone can infer support for Iran among people based on the posture of their governments.

An EMP attack is wrong because it is an attack using WMD.  What a lot of sh!tty little tyrannies think about Iran or the countries Iran doesn't like is beside the point.

 

[Journeyman]

Getting back to my apparently tired old hobby-horse that informed opinions are of greater value than mere opinions.....

Why Iran Should Get the Bomb:
Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability
By Kenneth N. Waltz
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2012

Obviously this article (or summary if you're not a subscriber) provides a contentious argument; it also links to several relevant articles presenting varied views on the topic, all of which make for interesting reading before jumping directly to deciding here what megatonage a US/Israeli coalition needs to lead with against Iran.

Now, for clarity, I'm not arguing one way or the other against Iran. I believe it as a regional problem, with the greatest risk for expansion beyond the Middle East being closing the Straits of Hormuz. Seeing such an act as both economic suicide and a credible tipping point for outside intervention (nuclear or otherwise), my belief in rational actors raises doubts that this will occur.

 

[Edward Campbell]

To my knowledge, which I admit is highly imperfect, there is no treaty that forbids the use of weapons of mass destruction ~ they are not illegal under the laws and usages of war, not, at least, so long as the intent of their use is to attack a military/strategic target and the "mass destruction" of civilians, buildings, etc is collateral.

I'm not sure that I see a real difference between e.g. a nuclear weapon and, say, napalm.

People survive both.

The choices of size and type of detonation mean that nuclear 'targeters' can 'tailor' a strike so that it does the most possible damage to the military target and the least possible to nearby civilians.

I guess there are some good acceptable alternatives to a nuclear attack, but I do not know what they are.

Nuclear war is not unthinkable ....

I have visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki ~ they are thriving, modern cities filled with happy, productive people.

 

[observor 69]

IMHO an excellent segment from last nights "The National."  Always great to hear Janice Stein, the lady appears to have some great contacts.

The National | Sep 9, 2012 | 10:16

Why cut ties with Iran?

Munk School of Global Affairs director Janice Stein, Wilson Center scholar Aaron David Miller and author Hooman Majd discuss Ottawa's decision to cut diplomatic ties with Iran

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/ID/2277382969/

 

[Vanguard48]

I have read more into the situation and have found another great link with a few more facts than my last post. This is from the Globe and Mail.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadians-in-iran-faced-very-real-threat-officials-warn/article4531983/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I didn't know before hand were the following details. Was anyone else surprised?

"Iran has blasted the government of Stephen Harper as extremist following the embassy closing and the expulsion of Iran’s diplomats. It has also threatened retaliation." 

"The expulsion in 2007 came after Canada rejected the two people Iran had successively nominated to be ambassador to Ottawa – both had apparently been involved in seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and taking its diplomats hostage."

Cant wait to go see the film "Argo". Very nice video by the way Baden Guy

 

[brihard]

Crime against humanity ? Hardly. Its not at all like vaporizing a city. Few if any casualties because the explosion is in space essentially. It is simply an overload of the electric grid and anything that requires electricity stops working. Its the best way to stop the nuclear program without massive loss of life.Should the Iranians gain nuclear weapons their version of an EMP wont be far away.They would love to bring the US to its knees and an EMP would do it.

I don't know what you're smoking, but I probably wouldn't pass my next piss test if you shared.

Think- seriously THINK - about what would be the ramifications if a power grid just shut down and most electrical backups were destroyed by a weaponized EMP.

You just killed pretty much anyone who was on any form of medical life support. Good luck running dialysis machines, or any number of other medically critical systems. Then there are all those folks living in an extremely hot climate who in a particularly hot week could die if there's no AC available.

Water treatment, I'm quite sure, uses electricity these days. Even elsewhere in the world. Most fuel pumps I suspect you'll find are electrically powered- have fun refueling emergency vehicles. Most of the telecommunications system would be gone. Any plane currently in the air would probably thunder in.

All refrigeration for food and medicine is now gone. Yes, there are some non-technological alternatives, but that won't make do across the board by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm sure you could think of many more.

To my knowledge, which I admit is highly imperfect, there is no treaty that forbids the use of weapons of mass destruction ~ they are not illegal under the laws and usages of war, not, at least, so long as the intent of their use is to attack a military/strategic target and the "mass destruction" of civilians, buildings, etc is collateral.

I'm not sure that I see a real difference between e.g. a nuclear weapon and, say, napalm.

The highest legal decision on nukes came form the ICJ in 1996- the 'advisory opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons'. In brief, it was found that nukes are a wholly distinct class of weapons, the use or threatened use of which is wholly contrary to international law, with the sole remaining ambiguity of the case of clear self defense against a threat to the very existence of the state. Nuking a country tha thasn't even exceeded 20% Uranium enrichment certainly wouldn't suffice.

Napalm, incidentally, is held to be illegal in certain circumstances under customary international law, and specifically under the 3rd protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. The circumstances are when incendiary weapons are used near concentrations of civilians even where other weapons would be held to be 'proportional', because of the particular degree of suffering incendiaries cause. Obviously not every country has signed this protocol, and it has not achieved the status of being a 'peremptory norm' of international law. But it's quite compelling nonetheless.

 

[a_majoor]

Yes, a lot of people will die in an EMP strike, but a lot of people will die in a nuclear attack or conventional strike as well. Israel first and foremost will need do decide if Iran iis an existential threat, and ifthe answer turns out to be "yes", then the Israeli government needs to determine how to deal with the threat in the most effective maner possible.

The second factor that hasn't been mentioned much is Iran is flexing some old "imperial" muscles, and having a nuclear arsenal would provide a means of regaining control of areas that were under "Persian" dominance in the past.

The third factor is that Turkey is also seeming to consider an "Imperial" resurgence (of the Ottoman Empire), and wold not take very kindly to a nuclear armed "Persian" empire taking over a large portion of the ME. Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a decades long plan to spread Whabbi islam throughout the ME and the world, so would also have a great deal to loose if the Iranian Theocracy were to succeed in their aims.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
The highest legal decision on nukes came form the ICJ in 1996- the 'advisory opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons'. In brief, it was found that nukes are a wholly distinct class of weapons, the use or threatened use of which is wholly contrary to international law, with the sole remaining ambiguity of the case of clear self defense against a threat to the very existence of the state. Nuking a country tha thasn't even exceeded 20% Uranium enrichment certainly wouldn't suffice.
...

Thanks for that citation; perhaps that why Benjamin Natanyahu and some very senior US officials refer to Iran as an existential threat to Israel. I don't think anyone would be able to adjudicate Iranian progress towards a nuc, so sufficiency is unlikely to matter much to most Israelis; global popular opinion would be wholly against Israel, but global popular opinion is, by and large, wholly against Israel on almost every issue, even existential ones, anyway so that isn't likely to bother Israel either.

 

[hagan_91]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19274866

Does Isreal really believe that war with Iran will go that smooth? I see hundreds of thousands of casualties, on both sides if war begins.

 

[hagan_91]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/11/iranian-people-believe-government-will-go-to-war-to-stay-in-power/

 

[cupper]

My only question is: Why now?  :dunno:

Brian Stewart is asking the same question, and has an interesting take on a possible answer.

Did intelligence fears prompt Canada to cut Iran ties?
Brian Stewart on the real reason behind the diplomatic rift

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/09/10/f-vp-stewart-iran-canada.html

As a general principle, serious nations don’t embrace surprise and bafflement as elements of their foreign policy. Canada’s overnight liquidation of all relations with Iran on Friday would suggest an astonishing exception.

It’s not just the speed of that decision but the cluster of official explanations that set off so much head-scratching at home and abroad.

Predictably, the Harper government’s actions won immediate praise from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called it “bold leadership… a clear message to Iran and the entire world.”

But elsewhere, the reaction was more a mystified “What’s up? Why now?”

Why did Canada seemingly break away from the general line of allied and friendly nations supporting tough, U.S.- led sanctions on Iran to elbow its way into a position of all-out diplomatic confrontation?

I believe there’s another story yet to emerge, which I’ll come to shortly.

Old complaints

The only relatively new complaint cited by foreign affairs minister John Baird involved Iran’s support for Syria’s oppressive Assad regime. The other grievances have been around for years, including threats against Israel, anti-Semitism in general, Iran’s nuclear program, its funding of terrorist organizations and notorious disregard for diplomatic rules.

A nasty package, for sure, and a nasty regime.

Yet does this not suggest Canada should remain firm alongside other nations in trying to keep as many diplomatic eyes and ears as possible functioning inside Iran?

That’s a point made by Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, John Mundy, who called the recent severing of diplomatic ties a “grave step” not easily repaired.

Canada no longer has any dialogue with Iran, Mundy told the Globe and Mail, and is unable to provide consular services to Canadians in distress or even gather analysis of what’s happening there.

“I really can’t see the rationale of this move,” said Kenneth Taylor, the former ambassador famed for his role in helping U.S. officials escape a hostile Iran in the famous “Canadian Caper” in 1980. “It’s a very bold stroke to sever diplomatic relations and close the embassy within five days.”

After all, Canada didn’t bail out of Moscow even during the most dangerous era of the cold war, and prided itself on its China mission while human rights abuses were monstrous in the 70’s and ‘80’s. The Harper government even maintained relations with Libya’s gruesome Gadhafi dictatorship right up to the point we decided to bomb it (alongside our NATO allies).

Inevitably, Canada’s abrupt move with Iran stoked fears that something very dangerous was afoot in the Middle East. Hasty diplomatic departures will do that.

Theory about Israeli attack

One theory is that Ottawa has intelligence that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites, with or without U.S. help, is imminent – dangerous news given our close ties with Israel. Many analysts, however, doubt such an attack is likely in this U.S. election year.

There were even suggestions in some foreign media that Canada bailed out of Tehran because Iranian security suspected our mission there had been collecting intelligence for the U.S., Britain and perhaps Israel — and that we were on the verge of expulsion, or even worse.

However, there seem to be no grounds to believe Canadian officials did more than collect and trade the normal open-source intel and street chatter all embassies pick up.

So we’re still puzzled. Perhaps because we’re looking in the wrong direction.

I believe Harper acted on new intelligence. But the warnings were likely more about the Iranian embassy activities in Canada than they were about the safety of our personnel abroad.

Indeed, the sheer number of reasons given for the diplomatic break may mask the true one: Iran’s aggressive use of diplomatic cover to prepare guerrilla cells to attack in the west should Iran itself be attacked.

Western intelligence has been ringing top-secret alarm bells for governments for over a year, warning of an extraordinary build-up of Iranian personnel in Europe, Africa and particularly in Latin America, many of them believed to be linked to Iran’s notorious Quds Force. That’s the elite arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, tasked with “extraterritorial operations.”

Iran has powered up its diplomatic arm in the Americas, from a handful of embassies a dozen years ago to 10 today, along with 17 “cultural centres” in various countries. Most posts are staffed with far more officials than required for normal duties – 150 in Nicaragua alone.

Iran's 'extraterritorial operations'

In January, America’s top intelligence official, James Clapper, publicly stated that Iranian diplomats abroad were setting up sleeper cells designed to attack U.S. and allied interests around the world in the event of war.

Tehran has made no secret of the fact it has elaborate plans to wreak as much havoc as possible among nations supporting the U.S. and Israel should it come under attack.

In fact, just days before Canada hastily broke off relations, the head of the Iranian army’s joint chiefs of staff boasted to the Fars News Agency that if Iran was attacked, America and its allies should expect major terror attacks in their homeland. The deputy chief commander of the Revolutionary Guard echoed this, vowing “Any aggression against Iran will expand the war into the borders of the enemies. They know our power…”

Intelligence officials give credence to these threats because it makes grim strategic sense for Iran to hit back in this way, as its conventional forces are no match for Israel and the U.S. It also has ruthless allies to call on for joint operations, including Hezbollah, which is deemed a terrorist organization by Canada.

Canada’s intelligence service believes Canada’s increasing identification with Israel inevitably leave us a target for bombings, kidnappings or assassinations in an armed conflict. For years it has warned of the Iranian embassy’s efforts to threaten and blackmail some of the more than 100,000 Iranians living here into “cooperation.” That’s why Canada has refused Iran’s repeated requests for consuls outside Ottawa.

Some type of new intelligence seems to have seriously shaken Harper’s government. Former CSIS assistant director Ray Boisvert told CBC such an unprecedented move “usually only happens in very serious conditions.”

Boisvert insisted the Iranian embassy was “running some kind of threatening operation aimed at the Iranian community in Canada that absolutely poses a security threat in Canada.”

Expect more of this story to come out in the next few weeks, when MPs return to Parliament, anxious to move beyond the current state of surprise and bafflement.

 

[brihard]

Thanks for that citation; perhaps that why Benjamin Natanyahu and some very senior US officials refer to Iran as an existential threat to Israel. I don't think anyone would be able to adjudicate Iranian progress towards a nuc, so sufficiency is unlikely to matter much to most Israelis; global popular opinion would be wholly against Israel, but global popular opinion is, by and large, wholly against Israel on almost every issue, even existential ones, anyway so that isn't likely to bother Israel either.

I've no doubt that's why they use the term. I don't personally buy it.

What's being done so far seems to be working. Cybersabotage has set their program back by a good bit. I have no real issue with killing off their weapons scientists. The sanctions are having a tremendous impact on their economy. I genuinely believe that the Iranian population will have a finite tolerance for the considerable negative impact on their way of life that the regime is causing. They are no less intelligent or sophisticated than you or I, and they are certainly capable of understanding what is making their country a pariah- this isn't North Korea, with the civilian population cut off from the outside world.

We still have time- plenty of it. Undue haste will only halt the inertia of things that are already happening that will be beneficial to our side of this. The Iranian population needs to be given time to continue to rise. Remember, this is the same people who got shot down in the streets in 2009. There are tremendous political undercurrents that work to our advantage in precluding the need for a war if we only let them.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The TV News is reporting that the White House rejects Netanyahu meeting. Apparently Prime Minister Netanyahu asked for a meeting with President Obama when he (Netanyahu) come to America later this month to address the UN. The news report I saw said that President Obama declined on the grounds that he and the Israeli PM would, not be in New York at the same time.

But I think Obama's reaction is more understandable on two grounds:

1. Politically, Netanyahu is very, very unpopular with Obama's core supporters - meeting with him would not do Obama any good in the lead up to an election; and

2. I think there is a consensus in the USA ~ in the White House, State and the Pentagon and amongst people in the think tanks and universities who will be in the White House, State and the Pentagon IF the GOP wins the November election ~ about the need to stay away from the Muslim world.

There is an interesting article in Foreign Affairs by Melvyn P. Leffler; some extracts follow:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68201/melvyn-p-leffler/september-11-in-retrospect

September 11 in Retrospect
George W. Bush’s Grand Strategy, Reconsidered

By Melvyn P. Leffler

September/October 2011

Ten years after 9/11, we can begin to gain some perspective on the impact of that day's terrorist attacks on U.S. foreign policy. There was, and there remains, a natural tendency to say that the attacks changed everything. But a decade on, such conclusions seem unjustified. September 11 did alter the focus and foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. But the administration's new approach, one that garnered so much praise and so much criticism, was less transformative than contemporaries thought. Much of it was consistent with long-term trends in U.S. foreign policy, and much has been continued by President Barack Obama. Some aspects merit the scorn often heaped on them; other aspects merit praise that was only grudging in the moment. Wherever one positions oneself, it is time to place the era in context and assess it as judiciously as possible.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Before 9/11, the Bush administration had focused its foreign policy attention on China and Russia; on determining whether a Middle East peace settlement was in the cards; on building a ballistic missile defense system; and on contemplating how to deal with "rogue" states such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. At many meetings of the National Security Council, officials debated the pros and cons of a new sanctions regime against Saddam Hussein's dictatorial government in Baghdad; they also discussed what would be done if U.S. planes enforcing the no-fly zones over Iraq were shot down. Little was agreed on.

Top officials did not consider terrorism or radical Islamism a high priority. Richard Clarke, the chief counterterrorism expert on the National Security Council staff, might hector them relentlessly about the imminence of the threat, and CIA Director George Tenet might say the lights were blinking red. But Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were not convinced. Nor was Bush. In August 2001, he went to his ranch for a long vacation. Osama bin Laden was not his overriding concern.

Bush's foreign policy and defense advisers were trying to define a strategic framework and adapt U.S. armed forces to the so-called revolution in military affairs. The president himself was beginning to speak more about free trade and remaking U.S. foreign aid. During the presidential campaign, he had talked about both a humbler foreign policy and a reinvigorated defense establishment; how he was going to reconcile those goals was still unclear. But in truth, the president's focus was elsewhere, on the domestic arena -- tax cuts, education reform, faith-based voluntarism, energy policy. And then, suddenly, disaster struck.

...

Alongside its security policies, the administration embraced free markets, trade liberalization, and economic development. It reconfigured and hugely augmented the United States' foreign aid commitments, increasing economic assistance, for example, from about $13 billion in 2000 to about $34 billion in 2008. The administration fought disease, becoming the largest donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It negotiated a deal reducing strategic warheads with Russia, reconfigured the United States' relationship with India, and smoothed over its rocky start with China. And it continued to try to thwart the proliferation of WMD while forging ahead with its work on a ballistic missile defense system. These efforts complemented each other, as the administration was intent on not allowing the proliferation of WMD to stymie its freedom of action in regions deemed important. Nor did it wish to risk the possibility that rogue states might give or sell WMD to terrorists.

Most of these policies -- preemption (really prevention), unilateralism, military supremacy, democratization, free trade, economic growth, alliance cohesion, and great-power partnerships -- were outlined in the administration's 2002 National Security Strategy, a document composed not in the Office of the Vice President or the Pentagon by neoconservatives but in the office of then National Security Adviser Rice, largely by Philip Zelikow, an outside consultant, and revised by Rice and her aides before being edited by Bush himself.

September 11, in short, galvanized the Bush administration and prompted it to shift its focus. Fear inspired action, as did a sense of U.S. power, a pride in national institutions and values, a feeling of responsibility for the safety of the public, and a sense of guilt over having allowed the country to be struck. As the White House adviser Karl Rove would write, "We worked to numb ourselves to the fact of an attack on American soil that involved the death of thousands." Reshaping U.S. policy after 9/11 meant resolving the ambiguities and shattering the paralysis that had marked the first nine months of the administration. Before 9/11, the United States' primacy and security had been taken for granted; after 9/11, Washington had to make clear that it could protect the U.S. homeland, defend its allies, oversee an open world economy, and propagate its institutions.

AMERICA'S QUEST FOR PRIMACY

Some observers have compared the impact of 9/11 on U.S. policy to the impact on U.S. policy of North Korea's attack on South Korea in June 1950. Back then, the Truman administration had also been stunned. It had been pondering new initiatives, but the president was still waffling. He had approved the National Security Council report known as NSC-68 but was not quite ready to implement it. The dimensions of a coming U.S. military buildup were uncertain; the global nature of the Cold War still unclear; the ideological crusade still somewhat inchoate. But Dean Acheson, the secretary of state, and Paul Nitze, the director of policy planning at the State Department, knew they had to reconfirm the United States' preponderance of power, recently shattered by the Soviets' first nuclear test. They knew they had to increase the United States' military capabilities, regain the country's self-confidence, and avoid being self-deterred. They knew they had to take responsibility for the operation of global free trade and the reconstruction of the West German and Japanese economies (their successful resuscitation was still uncertain). They knew the United States' supremacy was being contested by a brutal and formidable rival with an ideology that had considerable appeal to impoverished peoples beginning to yearn for autonomy, equality, independence, and nationhood. In this context, the North Korean attack not only led to the Korean War but also unleashed a major expansion of U.S. global policy more generally.

Whether or not one thinks that such analogies are appropriate, it is incontestable that Bush and his advisers saw themselves as being locked in a similar struggle. And they, too, sought to preserve and reassert the primacy of the United States while they struggled to thwart any follow-up attacks on U.S. citizens or U.S. territory. Like Acheson and Nitze, they were certain that they were protecting a way of life, that the configuration of power in the international arena and the mitigation of threats abroad were vital to the preservation of freedom at home.

More than Acheson and Nitze, Bush's advisers had trouble weaving the elements of their policy into a coherent strategy that could address the challenges they considered most urgent. It seems clear now that many of their foreign policy initiatives, along with their tax cuts and unwillingness to call for domestic sacrifices, undercut the very goals they were designed to achieve.

Thus, U.S. primacy was ultimately damaged by the failure to execute the occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq effectively and by the anti-Americanism that these flawed enterprises helped magnify. U.S. officials might declare the universal appeal of freedom and proclaim that history has demonstrated the viability of only one form of political economy, but opinion polls throughout the Muslim world have shown that the United States' actions in Iraq and support of Israel were a toxic combination. As liberation turned into occupation and counterinsurgency, the United States and its power were thrown into disrepute.

Rather than preventing peer competitors from rising, the United States' interventions abroad and budgetary and economic woes at home put Washington at a growing disadvantage vis-à-vis its rivals, most notably Beijing ...

Rather than preserving regional balances, U.S. actions upset the balance in the region that U.S. officials cared most about, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East more generally. The United States' credibility in the region withered ...

Rather than thwarting proliferation, U.S. interventions on behalf of regime change provided additional incentives for rogue nations to pursue WMD. Iranian and North Korean leaders seem to have calculated that, more than ever before, their countries' survival depended on possessing a WMD deterrent ...

Rather than promoting free markets, U.S. economic woes spurred protectionist impulses at home and complicated trade negotiations abroad ...

Rather than promoting liberty, the war on terror coexisted with democratic backsliding globally (at least until the recent Arab Spring). U.S. war fighting and counterterrorism nurtured Washington's unsavory relationships with some of the world's most illiberal regimes ...

And rather than thwarting terrorism and radical Islamism, U.S. actions encouraged them. During the war on terror, the number of terrorist incidents rose, and possibly so did the number of jihadists ...

...

Conventional wisdom says that Democratic officials might have acted differently after 9/11, and it seems likely that they would have worked more diligently to cooperate with allies in Europe. But the Bush administration's use of force to bring about regime change in countries perceived to be threatening in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks comported with what most Americans believed to be desirable at the time. The administration's military buildup, meanwhile, was neither especially bold nor unprecedented. Its quest to avoid peer competitors resembled the U.S. effort to preserve an atomic monopoly after World War II, achieve military preponderance in the wake of the Korean War, preserve military superiority during the Kennedy years, regain superiority during the Reagan years, and nurture unipolarity after the Soviet Union's collapse. Clinton's Joint Chiefs of Staff embraced the term "full-spectrum superiority" to describe the country's strategic intentions. It was during the Clinton years, not the Bush years, that the United States started spending more money on defense than virtually all other nations combined.

...

The long-term significance of 9/11 for U.S. foreign policy, therefore, should not be overestimated. The attacks that day were a terrible tragedy, an unwarranted assault on innocent civilians, and a provocation of monumental proportions. But they did not change the world or transform the long-term trajectory of U.S. grand strategy. The United States' quest for primacy, its desire to lead the world, its preference for an open door and free markets, its concern with military supremacy, its readiness to act unilaterally when deemed necessary, its eclectic merger of interests and values, its sense of indispensability -- all these remained, and remain, unchanged.

What the attacks did do was alter the United States' threat perception and highlight the global significance of nonstate actors and radical Islamism. They alerted the country to the fragility of its security and the anger, bitterness, and resentment toward the United States residing elsewhere, particularly in parts of the Islamic world. But if 9/11 highlighted vulnerabilities, its aftermath illustrated how the mobilization of U.S. power, unless disciplined, calibrated, and done in conjunction with allies, has the potential to undermine the global commons as well as to protect them.

Rather than heaping blame or casting praise on the Bush administration, ten years after 9/11 it is time for Americans to reflect more deeply about their history and their values. Americans can affirm their core values yet recognize the hubris that inheres in them. They can identify the wanton brutality of others yet acknowledge that they themselves are the source of rage in many parts of the Arab world. Americans can agree that terrorism is a threat that must be addressed but realize that it is not an existential menace akin to the military and ideological challenges posed by German Nazism and Soviet communism. They can acknowledge that the practice of projecting solutions to their problems onto the outside world means that they seek to avoid difficult choices at home, such as paying higher taxes, accepting universal conscription, or implementing a realistic energy policy. Americans can recognize that there is evil in the world, as Obama reminded his Nobel audience in December 2009, and they can admit, as he did, that force has a vital role to play in the affairs of humankind. But they can also recognize that the exercise of power can grievously injure those whom they wish to help and can undercut the very goals they seek to achieve. Americans can acknowledge the continuities in their interests and values yet wrestle with the judgments and tradeoffs that are required to design a strategy that works in a post-Cold War era, where the threats are more varied, the enemies more elusive, and power more fungible.

And I think that's the consensus: Americans are beginning to "acknowledge that they themselves are the source of rage in many parts of the Arab world. Americans can agree that terrorism is a threat that must be addressed but realize that it is not an existential menace akin to the military and ideological challenges posed by German Nazism and Soviet communism ... acknowledge that the practice of projecting solutions to their problems onto the outside world means that they seek to avoid difficult choices at home, such as paying higher taxes, accepting universal conscription, or implementing a realistic energy policy ... [and] recognize that there is evil in the world ... and ... admit ... that force has a vital role to play in the affairs of humankind ... but .... also recognize that the exercise of power can grievously injure those whom they wish to help and can undercut the very goals they seek to achieve."

That emerging consensus leads, I believe to a bipartisan goal of staying out of Iran.

Iran is, in other words, Israel's problem.

Israel has some tools for dealing with Iran but they will not earn a Nobel Peace Prize for Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

[Nemo888]

Iran's intelligence forces being active here is nothing new.  They have been threatening ex pats literally for decades. So it has been since people remembered Ken Taylor. (That was the 80's BTW). There are Iranian cultural centres in most major Canadian cities chock full of operatives. They are not embassy personnel.  This will have little effect on their network. It's a symbolic gesture, not a practical one.

+1 I really wonder why now?

 

[Rifleman62]

ERC:

The news report I saw said that President Obama declined on the grounds that he and the Israeli PM would, not be in New York at the same time.

Pres Obama does not want to meet him. There was a supposedly 24 + hour envelope for travel/meeting.

Excerpt from FOX News:

Sources said Netanyahu, though he plans to be in New York City during his brief stay, was offering to travel to D.C. to make the meeting happen. However, the White House apparently said Obama’s tight schedule – the president is in the middle of a feverish campaign run -- would make a meeting difficult.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor later confirmed to Fox News that Obama is not expected to meet with Netanyahu, though insisted it was just a scheduling problem. He said Obama will be at the United Nations on Sept. 24 and leave the following day, while Netanyahu won’t be in the city until later in the week.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/11/early-frost-white-house-gives-chilly-response-to-proposed-obama-netanyahu-talk/#ixzz26CpaR5jx

 

[cupper]

ERC

The news here is saying the same thing, but they also made a point of bringing up Hillary's comments that the US will not set a Red Line with respect to Iran's nuke process. Apparently Netanyahu made a statement that any country which refuses to set a Red Line does not stand in support of Israel (I'm paraphrasing  here).

So it could be a tit for tat situation.

But then again, the meeting with Romney last month probably didn't help matters much either.

Oh well. :boring:

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
Pres Obama does not want to meet him ...

And my belief is that if Mitt Romney was President he would not want to meet Netanyahu either.

 

[cupper]

And my belief is that if Mitt Romney was President he would not want to meet Netanyahu either.

But you are overlooking the fact that they are really close friends from their financial days in Boston. That's why they had a meeting during Romney's world foreign policy gaffe fest.

 

[Edward Campbell]

But you are overlooking the fact that they are really close friends from their financial days in Boston. That's why they had a meeting during Romney's world foreign policy gaffe fest.

No, I'm going with my (assumed) consensus - which I believe is, very largely, bipartisan - that dictates the main policy assumptions without reference to the president's inclinations or even wishes.