Iran Super Thread- Merged
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Moi Aussi.cupper said:Here's hoping you are right.
"Haha.. you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: Never get involved in a land war in Asia."
edit to remove link - computer security systems are reporting embedded trojan horse activity from within the linked site.
Armada of British naval power massing in the Gulf as Israel prepares an Iran strike
Article Link
An armada of US and British naval power is massing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s covert nuclear weapons programme.
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent 15 Sep 2012
Battleships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.
Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which passes around 18 million barrels of oil every day, approximately 35 per cent of the world’s petroleum traded by sea.
A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most congested international waterways. It is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point and is bordered by the Iranian coast to the north and the United Arab Emirates to the south.
In preparation for any pre-emptive or retaliatory action by Iran, warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, will today begin an annual 12-day exercise.
More on link
Article Link
An armada of US and British naval power is massing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s covert nuclear weapons programme.
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent 15 Sep 2012
Battleships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.
Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which passes around 18 million barrels of oil every day, approximately 35 per cent of the world’s petroleum traded by sea.
A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most congested international waterways. It is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point and is bordered by the Iranian coast to the north and the United Arab Emirates to the south.
In preparation for any pre-emptive or retaliatory action by Iran, warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, will today begin an annual 12-day exercise.
More on link
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While there arent any battleships ,there is a significant naval presence. Remember you dont need bunker busters to takeout the centrifuges. Recently the Iranians complained about sabotage of power line running to the centrifuge facility at Natanz.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-18/iran-claims-sabotage-at-nuclear-plant/4266792
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-18/iran-claims-sabotage-at-nuclear-plant/4266792
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A little show of force in the Gulf. An attempt to calm down Israel and remind Iran of the consequences of trying to close shipping lanes. Unfortunately accusations and threats are increasing between Israel and Iran.
The U.S. does not want anything happening in the Gulf until after the election. Because of this the U.S. cannot be seen as a big ally to Israel or too hardline with Iran. I personally believe that U.S. / Israel relations are better than what is being reported.
The strategic plans are most definitely already made. A timeline is in place but won't be revealed to us. Diplomacy is running out of time and the clock is ticking.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/09/u-s-beefs-up-presence-closer-to-irans-shores/
The U.S. does not want anything happening in the Gulf until after the election. Because of this the U.S. cannot be seen as a big ally to Israel or too hardline with Iran. I personally believe that U.S. / Israel relations are better than what is being reported.
The strategic plans are most definitely already made. A timeline is in place but won't be revealed to us. Diplomacy is running out of time and the clock is ticking.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/09/u-s-beefs-up-presence-closer-to-irans-shores/
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Great coverage by the New York Post:
GK .Dundas
Army.ca Veteran
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................in their usual subtle manner! :E.R. Campbell said:Great coverage by the New York Post:
M
MikeL
Guest
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/iran-warns-its-citizens-that-canada-is-a-dangerous-place-to-travel/article4569769/
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I keep hearing about how fragile the situation between Israel and Iran is, and it makes me question how much more each side can take before all-out war is waged.
Granted, diplomacy may prevail, but as of yet, this does not seem to be the case.
I recall reading some articles about Canada's role in all of this, but has Canada committed to anything in the event that war breaks out, or is it remaining relatively dormant?
Granted, diplomacy may prevail, but as of yet, this does not seem to be the case.
I recall reading some articles about Canada's role in all of this, but has Canada committed to anything in the event that war breaks out, or is it remaining relatively dormant?
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dannyboy41 said:I keep hearing about how fragile the situation between Israel and Iran is, and it makes me question how much more each side can take before all-out war is waged.
Well if you go by this photo, not much longer.
Full story here:
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2012/09/20120927-165046.html
Photo credit: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
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That's in Netanyahu's dreams, and he hardly has support in Israel, never mind from the US for an attack. Interesting piece from the New York Times arguing that an attack would actually hasten Iran getting a bomb.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/sunday-review/how-to-help-iran-build-a-bomb.html
Shared under the usual provisions of Fair Use etc.
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: September 28, 2012
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ADVOCATES of airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have long held that the attacks would delay an atom bomb for years and perhaps even buy Israel enough time to topple the Iranian government. In public statements, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, has said that an attack would leave Iran’s nuclear program reeling, if not destroyed. The blow, he declared recently, would set back the Iranian effort “for a long time.”
Quite the opposite, say a surprising number of scholars and military and arms-control experts. In reports, talks, articles and interviews, they argue that a strike could actually lead to Iran’s speeding up its efforts, ensuring the realization of a bomb and hastening its arrival.
“An attack would increase the likelihood,” Scott D. Sagan, a political scientist at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said of an Iranian weapon.
The George W. Bush administration, it turns out, reached an even stronger conclusion in secret and rejected bombing as counterproductive.
The view among Mr. Bush’s top advisers, recalled Michael V. Hayden, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was that a strike “would drive them to do what we were trying to prevent.”
Those who warn against attacking Iran say that such a move would free officials in Tehran of many constraints. An attack, for instance, would all but certainly lead to the expulsion of international inspectors, which, in turn, would allow the government to undo hundreds of monitoring devices and safeguards, including seals on underground storage units. Further, an Iran permitted to present itself to the world as the victim of an attack would receive sympathy and perhaps vital imports from nations that once backed trade bans. The thinking also goes that a strike would allow Iran to further direct its economy to military ends.
Perhaps most notably, an attack could unite what is now a fractious state, these analysts say, and build an atmosphere of mobilizing rage. As the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland wrote earlier this year, “It’s difficult to see a single action more likely to drive Iran into taking the final decision.”
History, the analysts say, demonstrates that airstrikes and military threats often result in unbending resolve among the beleaguered to do whatever it takes to acquire nuclear arms.
“People always assume the bad guys want nukes,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation specialist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “But I think there’s usually a hesitation about the balance of risk. My sense is that the threat of military action makes bad guys feel like they need the bomb.”
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, seemed to have embodied that kind of determination when he said famously in 1965, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.”
Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior nonproliferation official at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a prominent arms analysis group in London, said in an e-mail interview that it was “almost certain” that a military strike on Iran would result in “a Manhattan-style rush to produce nuclear weapons as fast as possible.”
These analysts maintain that the history of nuclear proliferation shows that attempting to thwart a nuclear program through an attack can have consequences opposite of those intended. Mr. Lewis of the Monterey Institute and other experts often cite Iraq. Israel’s attack on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981, they argue, hardened the resolve of Saddam Hussein and gave his nuclear ambitions new life.
“All of the historical evidence that I have seen,” Mr. Lewis wrote recently, “suggests Saddam had yet to decide to seek nuclear weapons until the humiliation of the strike.”
Top Israelis disagree. Amos Yadlin, one of the pilots who attacked the Iraqi reactor and a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, argued early this year that Iraq’s nuclear program “never fully resumed” and cited the bombing episode as a compelling rationale for military action against Iran.
But a number of former Israeli officials have echoed those who think the attack emboldened Mr. Hussein and worry that an attack on Iran could do the same there.
Yuval Diskin, who retired last year as director of Israel’s internal security agency, told a gathering in April that “many experts” cite the acceleration risk. “What the Iranians prefer to do today slowly and quietly,” he said, “they would have the legitimacy to do quickly and in a much shorter time."
Nuclear historians say intimidation alone can spur an atomic response, as when American hostility prompted China to seek nuclear arms. Beijing succeeded in 1964 with a thunderous blast.
In “China Builds the Bomb,” John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai wrote that Washington’s threats provoked “defiant anger and the decision to undertake the costly nuclear weapons program.”
The question of what prompts the speedups would seem to go far beyond the Iranian crisis and atomic history because the number of latent nuclear states (ones that could make bombs but choose not to, like Japan and Germany) has risen around the globe in recent decades. The estimated number now stands at around 40.
Scholars have long debated the social factors that keep countries from crossing the line.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told his colleagues before they won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 that the bomb decision often turned on nothing more complex than a “sense of security or insecurity.”
In a turbulent world, he added, that kind of evaluation could change rapidly. “Thin,” he called the margin of safety, “and worrisome.”
A New York Times reporter who has written extensively about weaponry.
A version of this news analysis appeared in print on September 30, 2012, on page SR9 of the National edition with the headline: How to Help Iran Build A Bomb
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/sunday-review/how-to-help-iran-build-a-bomb.html
Shared under the usual provisions of Fair Use etc.
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: September 28, 2012
GOOGLE+
SHARE
REPRINTS
ADVOCATES of airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have long held that the attacks would delay an atom bomb for years and perhaps even buy Israel enough time to topple the Iranian government. In public statements, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, has said that an attack would leave Iran’s nuclear program reeling, if not destroyed. The blow, he declared recently, would set back the Iranian effort “for a long time.”
Quite the opposite, say a surprising number of scholars and military and arms-control experts. In reports, talks, articles and interviews, they argue that a strike could actually lead to Iran’s speeding up its efforts, ensuring the realization of a bomb and hastening its arrival.
“An attack would increase the likelihood,” Scott D. Sagan, a political scientist at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said of an Iranian weapon.
The George W. Bush administration, it turns out, reached an even stronger conclusion in secret and rejected bombing as counterproductive.
The view among Mr. Bush’s top advisers, recalled Michael V. Hayden, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was that a strike “would drive them to do what we were trying to prevent.”
Those who warn against attacking Iran say that such a move would free officials in Tehran of many constraints. An attack, for instance, would all but certainly lead to the expulsion of international inspectors, which, in turn, would allow the government to undo hundreds of monitoring devices and safeguards, including seals on underground storage units. Further, an Iran permitted to present itself to the world as the victim of an attack would receive sympathy and perhaps vital imports from nations that once backed trade bans. The thinking also goes that a strike would allow Iran to further direct its economy to military ends.
Perhaps most notably, an attack could unite what is now a fractious state, these analysts say, and build an atmosphere of mobilizing rage. As the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland wrote earlier this year, “It’s difficult to see a single action more likely to drive Iran into taking the final decision.”
History, the analysts say, demonstrates that airstrikes and military threats often result in unbending resolve among the beleaguered to do whatever it takes to acquire nuclear arms.
“People always assume the bad guys want nukes,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation specialist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “But I think there’s usually a hesitation about the balance of risk. My sense is that the threat of military action makes bad guys feel like they need the bomb.”
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, seemed to have embodied that kind of determination when he said famously in 1965, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.”
Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior nonproliferation official at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a prominent arms analysis group in London, said in an e-mail interview that it was “almost certain” that a military strike on Iran would result in “a Manhattan-style rush to produce nuclear weapons as fast as possible.”
These analysts maintain that the history of nuclear proliferation shows that attempting to thwart a nuclear program through an attack can have consequences opposite of those intended. Mr. Lewis of the Monterey Institute and other experts often cite Iraq. Israel’s attack on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981, they argue, hardened the resolve of Saddam Hussein and gave his nuclear ambitions new life.
“All of the historical evidence that I have seen,” Mr. Lewis wrote recently, “suggests Saddam had yet to decide to seek nuclear weapons until the humiliation of the strike.”
Top Israelis disagree. Amos Yadlin, one of the pilots who attacked the Iraqi reactor and a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, argued early this year that Iraq’s nuclear program “never fully resumed” and cited the bombing episode as a compelling rationale for military action against Iran.
But a number of former Israeli officials have echoed those who think the attack emboldened Mr. Hussein and worry that an attack on Iran could do the same there.
Yuval Diskin, who retired last year as director of Israel’s internal security agency, told a gathering in April that “many experts” cite the acceleration risk. “What the Iranians prefer to do today slowly and quietly,” he said, “they would have the legitimacy to do quickly and in a much shorter time."
Nuclear historians say intimidation alone can spur an atomic response, as when American hostility prompted China to seek nuclear arms. Beijing succeeded in 1964 with a thunderous blast.
In “China Builds the Bomb,” John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai wrote that Washington’s threats provoked “defiant anger and the decision to undertake the costly nuclear weapons program.”
The question of what prompts the speedups would seem to go far beyond the Iranian crisis and atomic history because the number of latent nuclear states (ones that could make bombs but choose not to, like Japan and Germany) has risen around the globe in recent decades. The estimated number now stands at around 40.
Scholars have long debated the social factors that keep countries from crossing the line.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told his colleagues before they won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 that the bomb decision often turned on nothing more complex than a “sense of security or insecurity.”
In a turbulent world, he added, that kind of evaluation could change rapidly. “Thin,” he called the margin of safety, “and worrisome.”
A New York Times reporter who has written extensively about weaponry.
A version of this news analysis appeared in print on September 30, 2012, on page SR9 of the National edition with the headline: How to Help Iran Build A Bomb
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I'm following the global financial press: the Iranian economy is in free fall.
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Iranian economic implosion. Let's hope the sanctions (and maybe a few helpful nudges) can finish the job. The potential upside is enough economic misery could lead to a widespread revolt against the theocracy and the Green Revolution will finally achieve victory:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/01/irans-economy-on-the-verge-of-collapse-as-currency-loses-14-of-its-value-in-seven-days/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/01/irans-economy-on-the-verge-of-collapse-as-currency-loses-14-of-its-value-in-seven-days/
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A couple of pretty recent reports from the U.S. Congressional Research Service (courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy Blog)....
- "Iran’s Nuclear Program: Status" (54 page PDF), Paul K. Kerr, Analyst in Nonproliferation, September 26, 2012
- "Israel: Possible Military Strike Against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities" (61 page PDF), Jim Zanotti, Coordinator, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs; Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs; Jeremiah Gertler, Specialist in Military Aviation; Steven A. Hildreth, Specialist in Missile Defense, September 28, 2012
Thucydides said:
Helpfull nudges come in all different forms and are especially potent when they cause internal strife and most importantly when they are internally created.
According to this article from Al Aribya News and shared with provisions of The Copyright Act
Tehrans financial support to Damascus has caused a "rift" to root itself in the Iranian regime.
Tehran split over billions spent to support Assad’s regime: report
Monday, 01 October 2012
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/10/01/241150.html
Tehran spends billions of dollars in the form of military and financial support to Damascus, causing a rift in the Iranian regime, a report published by The Times on Monday said, as fighting resumed across the war-torn country, leaving more deaths.
Citing Western intelligence reports, The Times said that the support provided by Tehran to the Syrian regime of President Bashat al-Assad has caused a split between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country’s spymaster Qassem Suleimani, due to the failure of the latter to end the Syrian conflict in favor of Assad.
Iran has paid the salaries of the Syrian regime troops for months, in addition to providing Assad with weapons and logistic support, The Times reported citing members of the Syrian opposition.
The Syrian opposition has often accused Tehran of supporting the Syrian regime with weapons. The last few weeks have witnessed several statements by Iranian officials regarding means of Iranian interference in Syria.
Western members of the U.N. Security Council had blasted Iran for providing Assad with weapons to help him crush an 18-month-long uprising by rebels determined to topple his government.
“Iran’s arms exports to the murderous Assad regime in Syria are of particular concern,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice had told the 15-nation council during a meeting on the world body’s Iran sanctions regime.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Sunday vowed his country would stop and search any flights from Iran over its territory suspected of carrying weapons to Syria, as requested by the United States.
Iraq plans to randomly inspect Iranian airplanes flying to Syria, the Iraqi foreign minister, Zebari told the London-based al-Hayat newspaper in an interview.
“We have informed the Iranian officials to stop these flights and to stop arming the Syrian regime or fund any side in this crisis, we have affirmed that Iraq doesn’t accept to be a path for this, or its lands, skies and water to be used for arming or funding.”
International efforts to end the 18-month conflict in Syria have failed to stop the violence as rebels continue the fight, which began in March 2011, to overthrow President Assad. The conflict has killed 30,000 people, according to estimates by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group.
Fighting has been deadlocked in Aleppo since rebels pushed into the city in July. Government forces have resorted to heavy weaponry, including attack aircraft, helicopter gunships and artillery, to dislodge rebels from their positions.
The army, for its part, shelled several other districts of Aleppo and battled rebels in Aleppo’s northern district of Jandul, the Observatory said.
In Damascus province, rebels killed nine soldiers when they attacked a military checkpoint on the road linking the capital with Qatana to the southwest, the Observatory reported.
A Kurdish activist, Raad Basho, was gunned down outside his home in the Kurdish city of Hasakeh in the northeast, the Observatory said.
The northern province of Deir Ezzor, Hama in central Syria and Deraa in the south came under heavy shelling by regime forces, the Observatory said.
It reported a total of at least 114 people killed in violence across the country on Sunday, including 57 who died in Damascus province and 39 in Deir Ezzor.
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