“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ while reaching for a stick.”
Tom and Joe have (respectively) blogged the case for immediately and unilaterally invading or bombing Iran in response to their obvious intention and capability to build nuclear weapons: The Case for Invading Iran and Our Darkening Sky: Iran and the War.
I’m unconvinced, and I think that they are overlooking several critical points which need to be considered in making a decision of this import.I want to get something up quickly, and will beg forgiveness for not writing at greater length of with more cites. I have a feeling this will develop in the comments and next few days.
First, let me put two issues aside.
I think that the moral justification for preemptive war in Iran is not as great as that for Iraq, but certainly exists. It’s on thing – as Israel has done – to build nuclear weapons and to use them to deter others from attacking you. It’s another to build them and in parallel threaten the existence of neighboring countries. One key difference between 9/10/01 and 9/12/01 is that on the 12th, we came to realize that people who made insane threats and had some history of acting on them could no longer be ignored as colorful.
I have no doubt that our army – even limited in capabilities as they are today – could demolish the Iranian army in short order.
Given that I believe that invading Iran wouldn’t be wrong, and that it’s arguable possible, why cavil? The problem with invading or bombing, of course, is what then?
What then in Iran, what then in the face of a world order that will be implacably hostile to us, and what then in the face of a more-united Islamic world.
And while we’ll push back the hands on the proliferation clock, let’s not mistake that for stopping it.
Because, simply, once you’ve built a bomb, building another one is just busywork. And while we might destroy the infrastructure Iran is building to create a bomb, as long as we face a movement that means to do us harm, there will always be a place and a way to rebuild infrastructure.
That’s one of the reasons I supported the invasion of Iraq; because our task is to push back a movement, not defeat an army. We need time in Iraq to keep moving it toward stability to show the rest of the Islamic world that there are options other than kleptocracy and a Caliphate. Does invading Iran now advance that cause?
We’ve made a series of errors that have gotten us to this place; for convenience’s sake, I’ll start with Carter’s ineffective nonresponse to the taking of our embassy in Iran – which in my mind marks the real beginning of the modern Islamist war against the West. Since then, we’ve done nothing to lessen our dependence on imported oil, across three Presidents. Most recently, I’ll lay blame at the feet of President Bush, who missed two clear opportunities: to build the strength of the military over the last four years – which would have required sacrificing domestic programs plus a real effort to spend political capital building support for the war, and to engage the Iranian regime and reach out to the non-insane citizens and politicians that make up a large part of the Iranian polity.
But we’re here, now, and no where else.
Could we smash the Iranian oil infrastructure, depriving them of cash and Europe and China of fuel? Of course. Child’s play. Could we drop the Iranian electricity grid, possibly slowing the centrifuges to a halt? Sure. Could we destroy the Iranian army, and do a smash-and-grab raid on the suspected weapons development sites? Probably.
Then what?
Do we really think that the moderate, pro-Western forces within Iran would survive – I mean physically, not politically – much less be able to take over the country in the face of one of these acts? Do we think that an Iran which had been bombed or invaded would be more or less pro-Western?
What do you think the impact would be on the balance of the Islamic world? How long before someone else starts buying the tools to make a bomb, or buys a completed bomb?
We need to do four things in parallel as regards Iran, starting pretty much right now.
First, we need a national energy policy. It’s not a matter of saving trees, it’s a matter of national defense. We should have done it a decade ago, but tomorrow’s the soonest we can start. Doing this not only has real impacts, but sends clear signals about our intentions and capabilities as well.
Next, we need to build up our invasion-ready forces, by planning with allies, expanding the Army, and rebuilding some of the capability that has been used up in Iraq. We should have been doing this since 2002, but starting today is better than starting tomorrow. See above re signalling capabilities.
Next, we need to sit down and start talking. We need to talk to the Iranian regime, to their opponents, to Russia and China most of all. What are we talking about?
* To the regime, our unwillingness to allow Iran to become a state locus for a worldwide Islamist movement – we may not be perfectly happy for them to be an Islamic state, but we’ll be tolerant of it.
* To their opponents, we need to be giving whatever encouragement and tools we possibly can.
* To Russia and China, we need to make it clear that we’re not planning on taking their oil away.
Why are we talking in the face of a ticking bomb?
Well, because to quote someone smarter than me, “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ while reaching for a stick.”
While we’re doing that, a few things may happen. The dog may stop growling. We may get a stick.
Or we may get bitten.
I don’t want to get bitten by a dog. But my willingness to risk a dog bite goes up when I’m carrying a gun.
Because I can say with a lot of confidence that the dog will only get one bite.
Chirac just “flashed wood” (showed the butt of his gun) as the New York gang kids used to say. I’d say we need to be even clearer about it, and suggest that a variant on MAD, or what I’ve called “the Godfather defense” (note that commenter “Boyd”: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007986.php#c32 suggested a variant in the comments to Joe’s piece) – “if anything happens to my children – if they should be struck by a car, or catch the flu…” We make it clear that while we are discussing this issue, a nuclear attack on Israel or the US will be met with an immediate potentially-nuclear attack aimed at all the Iranian nuke-producing facilities, their conventional forces (esp. the domestic security forces), their C3, and regime leadership. We need to publicly put the assets in place to enforce that threat. It would be nice if some of those assets has other flags on them, and I’m guessing that given the state of things, they just might.
The Iranian leadership may have been infected with a memetic virus that makes them suicidal and insane. But I somehow doubt the entire country has.
Let’s remember that Iran is 30 minutes away from becoming a sheet of glass at our command. That power is real, and gives us both the space to maneuver and the responsibility to use it wisely.
One question. What about Cuba?
A.L,
You plan is to let the Terror Master’s death cult get the bomb and hope that they love their children more than they hate us. That plan has not worked for the Israelis and it will not work for us. There is no deturring an irrational religious fanatic who believes he goes to paradise if he dies killing his enemy.
That is who is in charge of the Iranian bomb.
America can live with being an international pariah after conquering Iran. It will mean Americans at home are all still alive.
“Getting bitten” in this context means taking a nuke, or Israel taking a nuke, and watching the resulting fireworks of nuclear retaliation.
You plan amounts to waiting for the Death Cult to strike America and/or Israel at home with nukes at a time and place of its choosing. Then either committing genocide on Iran and many more innocent Muslims besides or watching “the Sampson option” happen.
If you really are interested in suicide, A.L., please do it on your own time and don’t include anyone else.
You want us to live in a world I want no part of.
A.L.,
This is the Terror Master you would let have the A-bomb:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060120/wl_mideast_afp/iransyriapalestinianisrael
bq. DAMASCUS (AFP) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met in Damascus with the leaders of 10 radical Palestinian movements including Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
bq. Ahmadinejad said he “strongly supports the Palestinian people’s struggle” during the meeting, according to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) official Maher Taher Friday. Taher said the militant chiefs pledged to Ahmadinejad that the “Palestinian resistance and struggle would continue” against Israel.
bq. “We expressed our solidarity with Syria, which is under pressure due to its national positions, *as well as with Iran which has the right to possess nuclear technology for peaceful purposes,”* he added.
bq. Islamic Jihad chief Abdullah Ramadan Shala, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril were among those at the meeting, Taher said.
Trent, what makes you think he’s the last Terror Master who’s going to show up?
The problem has to be solved for the class, not the individual.
A.L.
If we wait long enough, we won’t have to invade Iran.
But if we wait that long, it won’t matter.
We’ll have a ruthless national security domestic apparatus to protect us from terrorist nukes that could come from anywhere and
we won’t be Americans anymore.
Armed Liberal,
You ask the right question of what next. Two additional points:
1. Maintaining a nonproliferation regime in the long run will either require the development cost of mass-casualty weapons (nuclear, biological) never to fall, or the cost to the United States of unilaterally preventing their public and private use never to rise. If either of these conditions are unlikely to hold, then not only will proliferation continue but it will get much worse.
2. The real need is to rethink the foundations of world order. The way to do so may be to look back from the future. If there is a confrontation of the magnitude that Joe forecasts, the survivors will be ready for a world order that is not a restoration of the present one. We could imagine the change right now to clarify what the planet needs to prevent repeated disasters of this kind.
_What then in Iran, what then in the face of a world order that will be implacably hostile to us, and what then in the face of a more-united Islamic world._
It seems your entire argument rests on this point being true. What makes you think the world will be “implacably hostile?” There are already far more countries taking a belligerent stance against Iran than we ever had for Iraq. In fact, France just outpaced even us. Most countries would laud the end and damn the means, as is their way, but that doesn’t sound to me like implacable hostility.
And as for the Islamic world uniting, I am also unconvinced. That was supposed to happen in Iraq, too, and polls since then show a massive decline in support for terrorism and Al’Qaeda, and a unprecedented increase in cultural cross-pollination. It is no accident that a wide swath of Islam is now talking about human rights and democracy, now that these Western concepts are no longer outside looking in, but walking among them.
No, I think there would be an initial opposition by Arab and Muslim leaders, followed by the usual anti-climax in the Arab and Muslim street. In fact, the Arab penchant to be long-suffering and fatalistic works to our favor, here. It will be over and done with before they know it, and then they will go back to scheming against each other.
Russia and China will test the rhetorical waters to see if they can churn up opposition to the US, but the US can make the UN-relevancy argument, and, uh, continue being the US. Everybody knows in private that the US is a better global hegemon than China or Russia would be. Their efforts at turning global opinion won’t go far. Months, maybe.
A small price to pay, it seems to me, to be _sure_.
Tom Holsinger,
I don’t think that to raise the question of what to do next is necessarily in conflict with the need to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. One can fully agree with you about this and still ask what will follow.
If there is a raid into Iran that goes as well as you say it will, we would still need to have a policy afterwards to reduce the likelihood that we would have to act again a decade or two later against some other country under the conditions of relative power that may exist at that time.
This is not a question we need to answer before deciding what to do about Iran. But I don’t think we can deal with the WMD future in an ad hoc way, and the more clearly we can articulate a longer-range future, the stronger will be our position in the near-term.
_How long before someone else starts buying the tools to make a bomb, or buys a completed bomb?_
This is, of course, an argument for more preventative action, not less.
The solution is to invade Iran with a small footprint in the populated areas, remove the regime and its nuclear capabilities, leave the country in the hands of whoever steps up to the plate.
Repeat, as necessary. If we make the costs of nuclear intransigence large and inevitable, you will see the number of regimes who try it dwindle to almost zero. That is where we want to be.
Assuming your two choices were a more united Muslim world and a more united Muslim world with nuclear weapons to loan, which would you choose?
And another thing you do not address in your “implacable hostility” argument is the _utility_ of blaming Bush and the neocons.
To the rest of the world, it is Bush, not America, that is the problem. And his “reign” is over in three years. After that, we can go back to being “normal.” We can stop making history, and restart managing it (I’m talking, of course, about perception).
Nobody is going to take on America’s power if they think her behavior will moderate in three years. It is during this time we should do what’s necessary.
And another thing you do not address in your “implacable hostility” argument is the _utility_ of blaming Bush and the neocons.
To the rest of the world, it is Bush, not America, that is the problem. And his “reign” is over in three years. After that, we can go back to being “normal.” We can stop making history, and restart managing it (I’m talking, of course, about perception).
Nobody rational is going to take on America’s power if they think her behavior will moderate in three years. It is during this time we should do what’s necessary.
Double posts. I apologize.
Dave – No. 8:
Fortunately the targets identify themselves. They can’t help it. And they are always shaky. If they had the support of their own people, they wouldn’t want or need WMD.
The problem is not target identification. It’s our own will to do something about it.
I personally favor a policy of promoting freedom. When some idjit volunteers as a target, we help his people obtain their freedom.
AL writes:
“And while we might destroy the infrastructure Iran is building to create a bomb, as long as we face a movement that means to do us harm, there will always be a place and a way to rebuild infrastructure.”
Therefore, you seem to conclude, we should allow them to build a bomb while we work up a “broader solution” for the entire problem of Islamofascism.
That strikes me as irrational. “We can’t solve every problem now, so we won’t solve any” is no way to do… anything, really.
Among other things, because the others of this class (a) are already interested in such weapons, and (b) would have a clear signal that they can do so unopposed; hence (c ) would therefore face AL with several nuclear problems before he ever got out of first gear.
Doesn’t make any sense to me.
AL also asks:
“Do we really think that the moderate, pro-Western forces within Iran would survive – I mean physically, not politically – much less be able to take over the country in the face of one of these acts? Do we think that an Iran which had been bombed or invaded would be more or less pro-Western?”
This is like asking whether the moderate Germans would survive if Germany was attacked because of the Nazis’ clear threats and military buildup.
You know what? It. Doesn’t. Matter.
Iran’s leaders have made their choices, and those choices are very clear. The only question now is whether the Iranian people can overthrow these guys. If we believe the answer to be no, they’re out of the equation. We can, and should, back them to the max and use all other means, just in case we’re wrong and it turns out that they win after all. But eventually comes decision time, and when it comes one must be ready to go immediately with Plan B.
If Iran’s people cannot solve this problem, they will bear the brunt of the consequences as their leadership pursues its war. Consequences that could include their annihilation. You’d be happy to let them court that because… you’re afraid of pissing them off?
WTF?!?
Indulging the mullahs in their mad quest because you can reduce their society to glass whenever you like, makes it far more likely that in the end you will have to do exactly that. And count your dead. Or kiss the world and standard of living you’ve known entirely goodbye. All because you didn’t want the Iranians to be angry with you.
I’m sorry, Marc, but that borders on nuts.
I mean, it’s like the environmental groups that fought levee programs around New Orleans in the 1970s, on environmental grounds. As they survey the toxic witch’s brew that has spread all over the city in the wake of Katrina, one wonders – how do they like the environment NOW?
And actually, I think that’s EXACTLY the kind of situation we’re heading for here. That within 10-15 years, we’ll be looking at the destruction of vast swathes of the mideast and most of its oil capacity, with little prospect of bringing it back online quickly. Not to mention millions dead. And when that day comes, wondering whether the Iranians might be mad at us will seem like the ludicrous concern it is (though the surviving ones might be pissed – and in my books, they’d have a right to be).
They need WMD because their own people want them and will kill those in power if they don’t get them. The Iranian state also made to much propaganda that nuclear energy is a wonderfull thing to back down
Let me refine what I said in #15. The things AL notes here are not bad ideas in themselves. Go ahead and talk to China, Russia, et. al. Support internal resistance in a strong way. Absolutely put the pedal to the metal on alternative energy – given that fact that since I believe Iran will be allowed to get the A-bomb, and so the day will come when every last bit will count.
But don’t take anything off the table, and while we’re doing the diplomacy we’d better be [a] reaching for the stick and [b] planning a near “standing start” option just in case we find our selves out of time.
Do I believe those things will happen? No. “Hence my article.”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007986.php
It seems to me that there are five questions, and each of you is coming at them with very different assumptions.
The first question is whether Iran is in fact trying to obtain nuclear weapons instead of just peaceful nuclear power. I believe, and everyone here seems to assume (heck, even France seems to assume) that Iran is trying to get a nuclear weapon.
The second question is how long will it take for Iran, unimpeded, to get a nuclear weapon. Tom and Trent seem to think that Iran will have a weapon in months. Joe seems to me to be looking at a one year horizon. Marc seems to me to be looking at a three-plus year horizon.
The third question is what to do in the meantime. For Tom and Trent, there is no “mean time”, and I believe that explains both their harsh rhetorical approach and their unwillingness to even look at other responses. And the thing is, that if Iran really is only months away from weapons capability, they are absolutely correct both in their concerns and in their proposed remedy, and also necessarily in the urgency of their rhetoric. Joe, because of his longer horizon, seems willing to look at other solutions, but not for long and not in lieu of war preparations. Marc, with his quite long horizon, seems willing to put off war preparations (though likely not planning) while attempting to bring other methods into play that would result in the same end, but with less cost.
The fourth question is whether Israel will solve the problem for us, and whether we want them to. If you believe that it is OK for Israel to obliterate Iran (and maybe Syria, Hezbollah and perhaps Saudi Arabia: since Israel may only get one shot, they may feel it necessary to be in a world where their only enemies are European), then there is no need for the US to act.
The fifth question is how the US should act if the matter comes to war. Marc seems not to have thought this through yet: it’s too far out on his horizon. Joe, Tom and Trent all seem to have concluded that some military scenario between sustained aerial destruction of all Iranian infrastructure, and invasion and occupation is the way to go.
The unconsidered, and really irrelevant, question (and thus not included in my count) is whether Iran would provide nuclear weapons to terrorists. This is irrelevant because even if they do not do so, the threat is still too much to accept.
From my point of view, the answers are (without elaboration, but I’d be glad to elaborate if you’re interested):
Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons.
Iran is 1-3 years away from nuclear weapons capability, and six months after that capability would be in a position to make a nuclear attack. One year after that, Iran would be in a position to attack Israel with confidence that they could obliterate Israel.
We should be aggressively using every means at our disposal, including threatening and cajoling and bribing Russia and China, to find a way to isolate and impoverish and if possible deter the Iranian regime. We should be aggressively supporting revolutionary movements in Iran.
We don’t want Israel to solve the problem for us, because the whole point of the exercise is to avoid a nuclear war. We could have one of those any time we want. We don’t want.
If the matter comes to war, we should invade and occupy key strategic terrain (SW oil fields and the area around the straight of Hormuz); bomb to utter destruction the Iranian military, civilian and nuclear infrastructure; stay until the nuclear program is gone and the theocrats overthrown or killed; then leave and let Iran rebuild itself.
Good piece AL. I find this more persuasive than Joe & Tom’s pieces earlier this week.
Containment and deterrence is a nasty business – it means, after all, that we’re holding 80 million Iranian civilians hostage to their leaders’ good behavior – but probably better than the alternatives. It also means that we’ll be extending the US nuclear shield (and maybe missile defence tech) to some dubious regimes to prevent further proliferation.
Moreover, we need to be quite public about the “Godfather option”. Much like Chirac did this week, we’ll have to make public statements about the consequences to Iran should they attack any of their neighbors. And convince them that US forensics is good enough to find the Iranian fingerprints on any terrorist-delivered nukes.
On the other hand, we basically have Iran surrounded with bases & troops, so we’re well positioned for containment. We also have a very strong diplomatic coalition at the moment – more like the anti-Saddam coalition in 1992 than in 2003.
So deterrence is not an ideal policy, but probably has less downside than immediate military action. And the end of the day, it all hinges on the question of whether the Iranian leadership is deterrable. There’s evidence both ways, but that’s the big bet you have to make.
ummm…Tom and Trent, i don’t think the goal of the theocracy is to demonstrate capability via a nuke test. unless it is a nuke they have built themselves. and i think they already have purchased and stolen nukes.
i think Ahmadinejad and the mullahs want to have the capability to build a countably infinite number of nukes. i think Ahmadinejad is promising nukes to palestine and syria even now, in return for their support. that is what breaking the seals is about.
so, we have some time.
and maybe some of Armed’s strategies could work.
AL — you are missing the big issues.
As of now, the big nuclear powers (US, China, Russia) hold a qualitative edge over everyone else, in wars where central issues of national existence are at stake they cannot lose. Because they have nukes and plenty of them and others don’t. THAT is what separates a major power from an also ran.
Iran possessing even moderate amounts of nukes is a signal for Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and other countries to develop nuclear weapons. Perhaps also Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela.
Point being there is a deal to be made, to protect the value of the nuclear club (it becomes less valuable the more nations are in it). The political plus of crushing Iran and keeping the NPT regime in place by brutal force by the united political efforts of China, Russia, and the US outweighs other costs. Because it deters nations from challenging that Troika. The Muslim world will be outraged, but they already are anyway, so what. Burn a few flags, trash a few (closed) embassies, no big deal.
Otherwise we are at a point where not just Iran but Egypt, Saudi, Kuwait, Turkey, Algeria, and perhaps Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, and other vulnerable Mediterranean nations get nukes to achieve deterrence from neighboring Muslim nations. Once Iran gets nukes EVERYONE will want them too. Which means they will get used.
China can be brought on board because Iran’s nukes will only provoke Indonesia and Malaysia and Thailand and Vietnam to get them also and push back against China on territorial and political issues with a nuclear shield. The same works for Russia. Imagine Castro with nukes making claims on US territory. Say southern Florida. Or Morocco suddenly demanding most of Spain fall to it’s rule?
Jim, the second the Russian and Chinese troop carriers start warming up their engines, the equation changes completely.
Right now the only ones gassed to go have stars and stripes on the wings; that’s a different solution than the one you present.
A.L.
There is no “then what?” The reasons for invading Iran and destroying the theocracy there are to destroy the immediate threat and to dishearten Islamic ambitions for world dominance in the foreseeable future.
The likes and dislikes or the Islamic world should be irrelevant. We need to impart the message of what it means to kill us strongly enough. What would be more prudent: destroying those parts of the Islamic world that hate us, or saying “nice doggie” while brandishing a stick the canine knows we are not going to use? What message will that send to those parts of the Islamic world that hate us? I would say that the dog would conclude (actually already has concluded) that it’s master is a scared master. Would killing off the bad parts of the Islamic world send a message of hope to the rare good parts of the Islamic world, as a secondary consequence? Contrary to popular belief, there is a breaking point for all ideologies, but it requires crushing the ideological center, in this case, Iran. The dedicated Nazis where as fanatical as they come, but when its spirit was broken, i.e., they had a direct perceptual experience of what their ideology meant to them on a personal level, they melted away. No amount of clever air strikes or special operations would have accomplished this. Massive use of force did. This is what is necessary to solve the wider problem of the Islamic threat.
The Iranian opposition to the mullahs is considerable and more civilized than its counterpart in Iraq. But they have not acted yet and we cannot wait for them to act on our behalf. They could surely be part of what comes after the mullahs, but they should be not our main focus, nor our main hope. Nor can we allow their presence in the target country affect our tactics or strategy (see below).
This is war, a war already declared by Iran, and war is collateral damage. War is killing innocents. War is defeating the enemy in the most unambigous terms. Remember the lessons of WWI. The Germans were allowed to walk away with the sense that “maybe, next time.” The result was WWII. War is not, repeat not, about imparting democracy to others. Instead the choices are on the primal level: their innocents or ours, our lives or theirs. If we can’t make those primal choices, the Iranian mullahs will be happy to choose for us, sooner or later, in some form or another. They have since 1979 actually, only now, they will soon be able to enforce their desires on a global scale.
On June 6, 1944, about 10,000 French civilians died due to Allied bombings. On that day alone. By today’s standards (shared by virtually everyone), such an amount of collateral damage would have precluded that component of the operation, thereby resulting in incalculaby more allied deaths. The ferocious beach battle in Saving Private Ryan was a result of almost all the preparatory bombing missing its targets. I’m not talking technology. I’m talking about the will to win, or rather, the will to do what is necessary to win. Again, war involves making a couple of (most often unstated) primal choices. In “13 Days”, the drama-documentary about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the then-former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, said about the situation, “Sometimes there is only one choice and you thank God when it so clear.” To which I in principle, as an atheist say with the greatest of fervour: Amen. Let’s roll!
I have opinions on what _should_ be done, but at this stage, it likely isn’t worth the bits. What interests me right now is what _will_ happen, not what _should_.
The UN/IAEA diplomatic escalation is set to inevitably humiliate someone. Who will it be?
Any determined action against Iran which has even a hope or prayer of influencing any of the players in that regime will inevitably take 4 million barrels of oil a day off the world market for some substantial period of time. Given that spare capacity in the world right now is only 1.5 million barrels, the price of oil will spike and I’ve seen numbers in excess of $100 a barrel. The truth is nobody knows what will happen when demand well and truly exceeds production capacity for any length of time. This will inevitably cause a worldwide recession – every industrial economy will be affected, regardless of which nations are more or less dependent on imported oil – this is due to the highly coupled nature of the world economy.
There is no political will in the industrial nations to take any actions along these lines right now. The United States, if it were to implement any variant of Joe’s Operation Desert Locust, would be an international pariah – not due to the ascendance of Transi moonbatism, but simply due to the fact that we cratered the world economy. Ditto for UNSC sanctions which successfully effected an embargo against Iranian oil. I doubt this would happen and Ahmedinajad might take his oil off the market for a few days just to give us a taste of things to come.
While I agree with Marc that America is risibly overdue for a policy of energy independence, I would suggest that the possibility of true independence lies in the past, not the future. As I mentioned above, the global nature of the economy is such that _every_ nation would have to be independent of foreign oil (at least to the point of world demand being substantially lower, such that “friendly” regimes such as the Saudis (?!) could take up the slack in case of crisis, as they had done in past crisis.)
In agree with the basic Stratfor premise that Ahmedinajad ‘s game is intra-Islamic prestige. As such anything that causes him to lose face might cripple him, and anything he could portray as a victory will solidify his power. This is why the current diplomatic game may be a bad strategy – since the industrial world has no collective will to deprive Iran of its oil weapon, the diplomatic path will eventually lead to a climbdown by the West and a victory for Ahmedinajad . At that point any hope of removing him will be gone.
It gets worse. Any threat to use sanctions or destroy oil facilities will need to be credible if they are to be effective. If they are credible to Ahmedinajad , they will be credible to the markets. You will know when the US, France, Israel et al really mean business when there is a worldwide market crash. Anyone who argues that Iranian oil will be coming off the market any time soon, I have one question for: you’ve sold all your equities, right?
It’s not just the Democratic party or the CIA that has “gone Tharn”. It’s the entire industrialized world. Don’t believe me? Stay up and watch “Worldwide Exchange” on CNBC next week. We are all caught short and screwed, and we know it.
Of course, it’s late and I’m likely missing something. What?
A.L. wrote:
bq. To the regime, our unwillingness to allow Iran to become a state locus for a worldwide Islamist movement…
Elegant words can sometimes obstruct clear thinking, and this is an example. Unwillingness> means… what? A nuclear Iran is going to pursue its foreign policy, and with increased vigor. More shaped charges and agents across the border to Iraq. More support for Hezbollah, and boatloads of plastique to Gaza. Sanctuary for al-Qaeda leaders. Marine barracks exploded. Oil revenues devoted to Islamist subversion. Etc.
Finish this phrase: “Because the U.S. is unwilling to allow the Iranians to take these foreign policy initiatives, we are going to ______ .” Since this sentence has no ending, A.L.’s original sentence cannot have the meaning that A.L. thinks it has.
#24 lew14y:
> Of course, it’s late and I’m likely missing something. What?
The obvious point. What *will* happen will be shaped by our choices and actions. Or the choices and actions of the Iranian madmen. What do *we* want to happen? What we *want* to happen is another way of saying what we consider *should* happen. I see no split between those in terms of setting or goals and actions.
There’s no gainsaying that the economy will be very much affected by an attack on Iran. But precisely how will the economy be affected by a nuclear attack?
1) The direct destruction and losses in terms of human lives, material, infrastructure, etc.
2) The incalculable loss once the realization sinks in that we have failed in defending ourselves against a danger we saw coming. Try to compute the long-term economic consequences once that sinks in with the market, increased costs due to security concerns as mentioned in Thomas Holsinger’s article. If it happened once it can happen twice. And again. Long-range economic planning will not be the same as before. There’d be the x-factor of seeing all your efforts being vaporized in a microsecond to consider.
3) The effects on US policy, domestic and foreign. What will be the reaction? Introverted regression a la Leftist defeatism? Calls for a strongman to ride the US through the storm and punish the evil-doers? Something in between? Again, as mentioned above, what will the effects inside the US be? Will the widespread demands for security measures be such that they will mean a de facto death blow to the uniquely American freedoms?
I can’t see how “the economy will be very severely hit” outweighs even the possibility of any of the enumerated effects above? Tell me I’m wrong.
#24 lew14y:
> Of course, it’s late and I’m likely missing something. What?
What *will* happen will be shaped by our choices and actions. Or the choices and actions of the Iranian madmen. What do *we* want to happen? What we *want* to happen is another way of saying what we consider *should* happen. I see no split between those in terms of setting or goals and actions. Now, I agree with many here that Bush will not do the right thing, invading Iran. But people nevertheless have to be convinced of what is necessary.
There’s no gainsaying that the economy will be very much affected by an attack on Iran. But precisely how will the economy and the rest be affected by a nuclear attack?
1) The enormous direct destruction and losses in terms of human lives, material, infrastructure, etc.
2) The incalculable loss once the realization sinks in that we have failed in defending ourselves against a danger we saw coming. Try to compute the long-term economic consequences once that sinks in with the market, for instance in increased costs due to security concerns as mentioned in Thomas Holsinger’s article. If it happened once it can happen twice. And again. Long-range economic planning will not be the same as before. There’d be the x-factor of seeing all your efforts being vaporized in a microsecond to consider. What will happen to places like NYC? I mean they are primary targets but let’s say NYC is not the first city to be hit? If it happened once it can happen twice. The Big Apple won’t be the same is my guess.
3) The effects on US policy, domestic and foreign. What will be the reaction? Introverted regression a la Leftist defeatism? Calls for a strongman to ride the US through the storm and punish the evil-doers? Something in between? Again, as mentioned above, what will the effects inside the US be? Will the widespread demands for security measures be such that they will mean a de facto death blow to the uniquely American freedoms?
I can’t see how “the economy will be very severely hit” outweighs even the possibility of any of the enumerated effects above? The economy will be severly hit regardless. Tough. Do we want to stay on top of this or do we hand the ball to “hey I have a halo around my head” Ahmajinedad?
Here’s what I don’t get: How can people argue, so seemingly blithely, that “if it happens we will deal with it then.”?
1: If in 1979 the soviet embassy had been taken hostage instead of the US embassy, Tehran would have been glass …. paraphrase of a senior Soviet of that time interviewed recently AFAICR Defence Minister or equivalent.
2: The Islamic armageddon-seekers do not respect us or our willingness to fight or die and their worst-case-scenario is paradise and 72 virgins multiplied over millions vaporized by our nukes. THEY DO NOT CONSIDER THAT TO BE A NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCE. (you cannot usefully threated or scare someone who honestly believes that the worst you can do is send him to paradise. Worse, you encourage Amadinijad because he believes armageddon is a necessary precondition for the return of the Mahdi(Messiah) and he personally wants to be the agent-of-change to bring the Mahdi back)
3: Look up the concept of “taqiyyah” = “religiously _mandated_ strategic deception” … Muslims (especially Shia) cannot be trusted regarding truthfulness when speaking to unbelievers / infidels (us).
4: When even France is prepping themselves for nuclear strikes (and making sure the CdG’s propellor is firmly on this time) I think it is safe to say that the world has an agreen consensus that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. What do we do … take the above time frames and extrapolate:
a: 3 years … not too bad, they have nothing ready and are still far down even on basics, stopping them here is actually best … turn off their lights and shut down their oil economy (+ gasoline imports) and sit offshore repeating as needed while we pull a Serbia … irritate the population into an uprising.
b: 1 year … very bad … even if we delete every physical thing they have, they have the knowledge, designs and plans on CDs copied in thousands of places, and can rebuild hardware in relatively little time. Once soneone is at the one-year mark, getting back there from ZERO may take only a year or two and is trivially exportable (AQKhan).
c: 3 Months … too late … warm up the SSBNs … no matter what we demolish at this stage, they can have reserves of nuclear material to continue assembly when and where they choose.
d: pre-purchased from Pakistan or NK … Iran would start prepping for war, like clearing out their bank accounts in Europe, making a pre-emptive explanation of why they need to cleanse the world of filthy-israeli-sons-of-pigs, give a non-specific countdown warning the rest of the world to take the jews out of Palestine or they’ll let the Light-of-Allah out of its U-235 genie-bottle to remove the jews we should not have … etc etc etc
Tellingly, France is warming up the SSBNs.
Here is my solution that Just_Might_Work:
The US makes the following deal with the UNSC:
The USAF and USN will demolish Iranian military infrastructure and internal electrical capacity, theoretically stopping further reprocessing, in return, China sends in the PLA as “peacekeepers” and takes over all future responsibility for keeping Iran nuclear-free and in return may take ALL of Iran’s oil … forever. Russia gets the rebuilding contracts to clean up the internal infrastructure we knocked down and maybe build some new nuclear power stations, which we own’t worry about since China’s newest province will not be threatening anyone ever again, and nor will China be lacking for oil anytime soon. The US wil make arrangements for the Afghans and the ‘Stans to allow an oil pipeline from Iran to China.
… Everybody’s happy, especially the Russians who will now not have China breathing down their neck to steal Siberia’s oil reserves.
If we are just willing to “give” a little, everyone except the Iranian people will be happy. I think the West would prefer a deal with the Chinese PLA we know rather than the “Twelver” Amadinijehad we would rather we didn’t know quite so well. (I think we were far more comfortable before the recent several months of Amadinijehad’s suggesting “solutions” to the “Israel problem”)
Sorry for the double post.
I’ve seen a couple of suggestions that we let the Chinese occupy Iran and take their oil, as part of the price for getting the UNSC to let us knock down Iran without screeching. This has two problems, even assuming the Chinese aren’t inherently opposed to doing that.
The first is, there will still be lots of screeching. Anyone who believes that the only thing that made Iraq so noisy from the “anti-war” side and Europe was lack of UNSC backing simply …. Well, let’s just say I have a lovely bridge to sell you. Let’s talk. Just the fact that we let China in on it like that, well how could we be so low and cynical as to bribe a totalitarian dictatorship with oil like that? Clearly are motives are not pure! And why Iran and not North Korea? That’s the real threat!
Anyway, the second problem is that the Chinese don’t have the logistical capability to occupy Iran, if there is any existence at all, and there would be. In fact, only the US has the logistical ability to occupy a nation that size. France and England could work with smaller nations (like Ivory Coast) with their current militaries. China could occupy something close like Viet Nam (probably) or Taiwan, though there would still be major issues for them in doing either.
So it is not a very workable solution, really.
Sarnac (#28):
I think you might be on to something…
Iran’s oil fields could be enough of an offering to China to perhaps ask them to make changes we’ve been pushing on them in the last decades, most notably on human rights issues.
They (China) would offer the confirmation of security and the elimination of Iran as a problem on the world stage for good, making the Middle East situation a lot clearer (Syria and Palestinian movement would be significantly weakened by a non-supportive Iran).
We would request, very simply, a promise of basic human rights to Iranians and possibly all Chinese. China could be willing to agree to such a demand when such loot (Iran) on the table. Awarding the human rights increases their credibility on the world and economic stages, effectively breaking down the last wall holding back full industrial trade with China.
Worst case scenario, the Iranians revolt against the Chinese. A revolution couldn’t put anyone worse in power than Ahmadinejad anyway, and the enemies of the Iranian people are no longer West, but East…
Now, the Middle East is easier to solve, with Iran and Iraq out of the way.
North Korea, anyone?
Oh, and awarding China Iran’s oil isn’t Economic Superpower Suicide, because within 20 years, with an alternative fuel breakthrough, oil will be a less marketable fuel, like coal. So, hand in hand with the Iran-o-China policy would be an Manhattan project-style (without the secrecy) alternative fuel program buildup, with subsidies and research grants for anyone growing biodiesel or interested in building a hydrogen station.
This is a much better “ends justify the means” scenario than the others proposed. Glassifying Iran (or invading with Americans) because they could attack us just makes us a larger target to more Iranians who lost family members. Let China do our dirty work.
And who says we need to go through the UN? The US acted unilaterally, in what could be viewed as an Iraqi takeover “wolf” in regime change “sheep’s clothing”. Let China act unilaterally to protect their assets and secure the nuclear program. The international community doesn’t expect us to stop them, does it? 😉
Jeff’s opening paragraphs of his comments in #18 above are important to consider more fully (the “first” and “second” questions).
Apropos of these, what I’d like to know before considering military actions against Iran is, simply put:
What has changed between “August 2, 2005”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/01/AR2005080101453.html and now that makes Iran a more iminent threat to regional and national security?
This is when an NIE analysis came out that put Iran’s nuclear bomb capability at 10 years hence.
bq. America is risibly overdue for a policy of energy independence…
And Iran has a plan to help us out there. We won’t have much need for any foreign oil when our electric grid is gone and most of the vehicles in the country are disabled.
Iran Tests Suggest Possible EMP Trials
I would argue that this will be their first strike, not Israel. If you agree that _any civilization is just a few meals away from barbarism_, then you can easily imagine how our civilization would break down in a matter of days in this scenario. If you only have a bomb or two this is by far the most effective use.
Given that the range of the Shahab-3 is about 850 – 900 miles, launching from freighters off the east coast (and possibly the west coast simultaneously) is a given in this scenario. As opposed to the 30 minute warning we expect with an ICBM launched from the other side of the world, the warning time here would be a matter of minutes. There is very little chance of an interception. Assuming their missile and warhead perform, it’s a slam dunk.
How far the EMP is effective will likely remain a question until it happens. Could it affect the entire country? Doesn’t really matter as “75 percent of the total U.S. population of 290 million people and 75 percent of its military bases are within 200 miles of the coast”.
We would retain a nuclear response. Many silos are in the center of the country and they are built to survive a first strike anyway, including EMP effects. Besides, there are always the boomers.
But would we retaliate? If there was no direct loss of life due to the attack it might be a tough case to make.
Another alternative would be to launch on Israel at the same time. That would alleviate the need for the US to respond – as noted there would not be much of the ME left and any missiles we fired would likely be redundant.
AL – it’s a good thing the A stands for armed. Imagine this scenario: no power, no electronics, no transportation beyond the bicycle or a horse, roving gangs of people looting and burning what they want to stay warm. Katrina on a national level.
We have got to take preemptive action.
A lot of just plain silliness here.
Now we are taking over Iran, and divide up it’s resources to tweak other countries into doing what we want.
But what you arm chair Sec’s. of State are missing is pretty obvious to those who’ve actually travelled outside the county they were born in.
You think Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia and all the other major oil producers are just going to watch from the sidelines?
Do you think Great Britian, Turkey, Poland and Italy are going to go along with this idiotic folly?
I swear, I read these comments from what can only be described as a mouth breather circle jerk and I come to realize something.
I good deal of my fellow citizens really are bat shit crazy.
Davebo,
You don’t offer any other options. I hate that.
First, the China takeover would be acceptable to the security council nations because it is a non-nuclear solution to a seriously nuclear problem. You think France WANTS to fight??
And not that Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria’s opinion really matters, but they would applaud the move – you are taking Iran’s 4 million barrels off the table.
I’ve gotta get back to my circle jerk.
Signed,
Batshit Crazy Armchair Condi Rice
Hilarious. Another minor problem you haven’t considered is that such a move wouldn’t be acceptable to the US population, much less the Sec. Council.
There’s a trait among most Americans that upholds fairness and can conceive of empathy.
Their decision to fill the void left in Europe and elsewhere certainly does matter.
But hey, do keep “thinking this through”. It’s a fascinating thing to watch.
Andy (#33) – Was that anything like the 1962 NIE analysis that said there were no missiles in Cuba? Just curious.
As for Davebo, he never offers any options unless the discussion is focused on Republicans. That’s the only threat he knows, or is interested in discussing.
He’s right with his last sentence, though. Probably a lot more right than he knows.
Jeff Medcalf (#18), on the other hand, by noting the critical role time horizon views play into the way each of us sees this, has actually done something to substantially move the discussion forward. Thanks, Jeff.
I’m not sure I understand your points. Let me rephrase a few of mine:
What if China said tomorrow that they have decided to indefinetly invade Iran? Would we stop try to stop them?
SO – it doesn’t matter what the American people, however empathetic and fair (cough..bullshit…cough) we may be, think. The people wouldn’t support a head-on fight with China over Iran, especially when the pundits and papers explain that Iran-o-China serves our foreign interests anyway. It has a Cold War vibe, but we set it up from the beginning anyway! Now we can continue the Military/Industrial Complex with China starring in the role of USSR and go back to the way things were. I’m going to go find my Rubik’s Cube.
The human rights deal is wishful thinking. I’ll take the China solution with all deals off too.
Regarding Mexico and friends, I don’t understand your point above.
“Their decision to fill the void left in Europe and elsewhere certainly does matter.”
Yea, it means more money for them, as they can raise production (or prices). 4 dollars a gallon is a small price to pay for non-nuclear proliferation. It would propel the alternative fuel movement anyway.
Signed,
Batshit Crazy Armchair Colin Powell
Ah Joe, ever the complainer. You whine that I offer no alternative options.
So lets get this straight. You are looking for a constructive alternative to invading Iran and then turning it over to China.
That about sum it up feller?
Republicans arent the threat here Joe. Whacked out folks that suggest such actions are a problem however.
And even more of a problem are folks like you who, though you know these folks are crazy, play kissy with them for reasons I can’t fathom.
And the most precious part?
Suddenly Joe has questions about the veracity of US intel.
Check out the archives and see how that little trend emerged.
Out.
But Joe, if you seriously want to hear actual reasonable alternatives to some of the more ludicrous plans offered here by all means read “this”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ebadi19jan19,0,5662866.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions .
From actual Iranian exiles.
The real ones ya know, not those Iranian exiles who curiously have no problem going in and out of Iran as they please.
Or italians for that matter…
What do Italians have to do with this whole thing, Davebo?
I think the plan of offering Iran to China is ridiculous. Not impossible, mind, but definitely not feasible. Of course in the lefty eyes yellow-on-brown violence would we swept under the rug as long as no whiteys are involved, but this is not the point. If Iran and China shared a border, this would have some more chances of success.
Joe;
“Jeff Medcalf (#18), on the other hand, by noting the critical role time horizon views play into the way each of us sees this, has actually done something to substantially move the discussion forward. Thanks, Jeff”
I agree, which is why I posed my question.
But I’d have to say that your sincerity is called into serious question by the dismissive and wholly unsubstantial reply you gave to me.
Perhaps you don’t see your own role here as helping to move the discussion forward, but just patting others on the back for doing so. Good to know.
But just to keep it civil, I’ll do something you chose not to…answer your question directly:
“Was that anything like the 1962 NIE analysis that said there were no missiles in Cuba? Just curious.”
I don’t know. I am unfamiliar with any such NIE analysis of Cuban missiles. In the end, however, I do seem to remember that we didn’t invade Cuba (please correct me if I’m wrong here). At any rate, I fail to see what this has to do with Iran. I’d also appreciate an explanation of that as well, y’know, just to try to move the discussion forward and all…
bq. Just A Second – It’s Not That Dark Yet
I’ve read this through three times now, and I think I’m missing the bit where Armed Liberal explains why It’s Not That Dark Yet.
Here are things I’d have hoped A.L. might have countered:
* Unless prevented by force, Iran will get nuclear weapons.
* Those weapons will be in the control of the Iranian regime.
* This regime – president, mullahs, generals – has told us they are going to try and destroy us, and there is ample reason to take them at their word.
The above isn’t supposed to sound sarcastic – I would flat-out love to have reason to believe even one of these things is wrong.
While all of this may be academic, a range of long-term policies intended to convince other Muslims to refrain from nuking us – all the while risking the catastrophic attack we are being threatened with… Joe had it: ‘nuts’.
OK, back online. Let me answer questions in reverse order.
Colt asks why in the wide, wide world of sports I don’t answer his objections re the mullahs getting nukes.
Point #1 – Unless prevented by force, Iran will build working nuclear weapons.
Probably true. But they aren’t the last country who is likely to get them, so I’d like to solve that problem in a way that doesn’t leave us in worse shape re the next one. That doesn’t rule out military action, but it suggests that we need to meet some preconditions before we act (except in the face of an immanent act by Iran or in response to an act by Iran).
Point #2 – These weapons will be in the control of the Iranian regime.
See 1, above.
Point #3 – This regime – president, mullahs, generals – has told us they are going to try and destroy us, and there is ample reason to take them at their word.
Yes they have, and I’ve advocated taking the Islamist movement at its word for quite some time. but if we’re going to kill everyone who threatens us – even if we believe they may be serious – we’re going to need a lot of coffins. The goal is to do three things – a) minimize the negative consequences of action; b) minimize the negative consequences of _not_ acting; c) maximize the likelihood of a positive outcome.
My argument isn’t “Oh My God We Can’t Use Force” My argument is that there are three paths that lead to the use of force.
Path #1 is the snap reaction to satellite imagery of missiles being fueled. I presume smart people in the Pentagon have three-ring binders with plans for this mapped out, and I’d hope that the necessary assets are in place as we are typing. If not they need to be.
Path #2 is the considered reaction to a Bad Thing (Tel Aviv, Red Hook) happening. See #1.
Path #3 is a military intervention to prevent #1 or #2. I presume that’s what we’re talking about.
The problem with the two proposals made here at WoC (invade and bomb the hell out of them) is that I’m unconvinced that they pass the a) b) c) test above, as compared to other alternatives. And there are a lot of alternatives, I’d suggest.
A.L.
OCSteve paints a picture in which a single Iranian bomb – or two – puts the US back to the 1930’s because of the EMP.
Now I’m not a weapons engineer; I’d be happy to hear from some. But I’ll bet that the effects of EMP from any bomb the Iranians – or anyone except the US or USSR or possibly China – could build would be significant, but not terribly.
I’ve done magnetoforming of metal as a part of a science class; we didn’t wipe out the electrical equipment in Santa Cruz County. The 100 MEGAton explosions in the Pacific managed to knock out a couple streets of streetlights in Oahu, about 1000 miles away.
It’s possible that a multi-Kt weapon exploded directly over – say a Saudi oilfield – would knock out much of the electrical equipment in a couple-hundred mile radius. But I’m waiting to be shown by people who know more about what they are talking about than I do that it’s a risk at the level you present – and I’d suggest that you ought to as well.
A.L.
I agree with you, Joe. Jeff’s comment above (as usual) is a real material contribution to the discussion. I’ve responded to it here.
bq. Now I’m not a weapons engineer; I’d be happy to hear from some.
Me neither. I was a soldier in the cold war, I spent most of my time running around Fort Hungry Lizard or guarding Pershing Missiles in Germany – but even way back then we got training on EMP. Assume all electronics are gone, vehicles won’t start, etc. It has never been done so it is mostly theory. I’m saying imagine the worst case.
If you don’t believe a substantial atmospheric nuclear device would put us back to the 30’s – I hope you are right.
Meanwhile I will stock up on .45 ammunition.
Colt:
In #45, you say: “Unless prevented by force, Iran will get nuclear weapons.”
The declarative tone of this comment leads me to believe you’d be a good candidate for helping me answer the question I posed in #33, in bold.
I will like to leave aside for the moment you’re proposed “remedy” to this situation to explore the source of your information regarding Iran and nuclear weapons.
Iran has been building a relationship with Cuba. Is there any reason to believe that he may be trying to take advantage of Cuba’s strategic
location?
Andy:
First off, that’s not what the NIE report says. The NIE report is talking about native refining capacity. That’s not the only thing that’s of concern in Iran. For example, enrichment of materials already received from other countries would allow Iran to create multiple bombs from plans obtained from A. Q. Khan. Weapons-grade materials received from other countries could also make this possible.
Here are some highlights of things that have happened since August 2, 2005:
8 August 2005
Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, announces that the Esfahan Uranium Conversion Facility has resumed nuclear activities.
9 August 2005
Iran rejects European proposals to limit its program in return for economic incentives.
10 August 2005
Iran removes IAEA seals from the remaining parts of the process line at the Isfahan uranium conversion facility.
12 August 2005
Sirous Nasseri, head of the Iranian delegation to the IAEA, says his country will be a “nuclear fuel producer and supplier within a decade”.
16 August 2005
Israeli military chief General Aharon Zeevi says U.S. estimates that Iran is 10 years from producing a nuclear bomb are inaccurate. “Barring an unexpected delay, Iran is going to become nuclear capable in 2008 and not in 10 years,” General Zeevi adds.
19 August 2005
Two Iranian nationals are arrested in Kiev and charged with transporting radiation contaminated equipment from the Russian Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The drivers claim the cryogenic equipment was headed for Iran.
25 August 2005
The National Council of the Resistance of Iran alleges that the Arak nuclear site “will be ready in 2008 – seven years before Tehran’s official forecasts – to produce 14 kg of plutonium.”
That’s just August. Shall I go on?
#46 Armed Liberal
bq. My argument is that there are three paths that lead to the use of force.
Path 1 relies on us seeing the missiles being fuelled, despite us not knowing where all the missiles are kept, and despite the Iranians having developed solid fuels (ie, the missiles can be fuelled underground). Then we have to get our aircraft to those sites on extremely short notice, and hit every single missile. If we don’t, we get Path 2. Hell, we might get Path 2 anyway, if they take the Red Hook route.
We seem to be agreed the mullahs have the will, and will soon have the ability, to attack us with nukes. Given the stakes, and the limits on our chances of stopping them in the nick of time, I’m afraid I could care less about stopping the next potential nuclear assault. Everything needs to be about stopping the first one.
bq. How long before someone else starts buying the tools to make a bomb, or buys a completed bomb?
Other clients on AQ Khan’s list: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. An ally, a ‘moderate’ and an enemy. We got luck with Libya. The proliferation you are hoping to prevent by not attacking Iran is already happening.
#50 Andy
Read “this”:http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=26367 WRT the NIE.
Yes AL I agree, but it’s also my opinion that the Chinese and Russians can be brought around because their interests are aligned. They will have to sacrifice short-term gains in selling Iran stuff and China getting oil; but Russia certainly would like to see Iranian oil off the market (more for them). We might even help China’s neighbors get nukes to encourage them to “come to Jesus.”
Ahmadinejad might well indeed take his oil off the market. More money for Russia. I do think latest developments mean that UN action is going to be meaningless, so we in the US need to make Russia and China feel our pain. That means action to help their neighbors get nukes quickly at a minimum so they can overcome their short-term orientation on selling goodies to Iran.
I agree with Sarnac’s assessment of the situation, note that capital has fled stocks for bonds (flight to safety) and oil prices are at $70 a barrel. Once proliferation happens (Iran gets nukes EVERYONE will get them) it’s inevitable the nukes will be used. Most likely against a wealthy US city to demand money, arms, or both from some third world bandit-king/President. It looks like the assessment of the Market is that we WILL GET WAR, fairly soon.
I still believe a deal can be struck with the Russians and Chinese who have congruent long-term interests with ourselves (they will also be targets for bandit-kings).
Never mind.
“I’ve done magnetoforming of metal as a part of a science class; we didn’t wipe out the electrical equipment in Santa Cruz County. The 100 MEGAton explosions in the Pacific managed to knock out a couple streets of streetlights in Oahu, about 1000 miles away.”
I was skeptical as well, but the EMP threat is real. It’s not the yeild of the weapon that causes the problem, its the complicated interaction with the Earths atmosphere and magnetic field. Essentially, the pulse ionizes the Earths atmosphere when detonated at certain altitudes spreading the effect orders of magnitude farther than it normally would.
The test you are talking about was called Operation Starfish and it was _1.4_ megatons and turned out the lights, shut down the phones and radio stations in Hawaii, 1200 km away.
Peter writes,
That’s great rhetoric, and great rhetoric has its place, and if you want to engage, don’t let me stop you. But at the end of the day there is no political will to effect _any_ of the remedies contemplated.
What is happening now is that Israel and the US are engaged in some substantial sabre rattling (deployment of Air Force assets to the region), with the hope of creating some kind of climbdown by some Iranian factions resulting in Ahmedinajad getting the Khruschev treatment. This might kick the can down the road a few years, which is not a bad thing (if we spend those years productively). This kind of action will roil the markets considerably but it won’t result in complete worldwide recession. This scenario is the best that can be hoped for at this point.
Chirac’s much remarked on threat of nuclear retaliation is not made from a position of strength, but of weakness – a candid admission that Iran will get the bomb, that France will do nothing substantive to prevent it, and that “Sampson option” thinking is not limited to Israel.
Industrial-grade electronics and electrics are pretty sturdy – they have to. The effects of an EMP can very in wide rage, from momentary malfunction to permanent destruction, in a difficult to predict way. Of course the military trains for the worst-case scenario, but it doesn’t have to be like that.
Hmmm
As they say elsewhere, “If you think you’re too drunk to post, you are too drunk to post.”
Colt;
Thanks. The article you cite certainly makes a more pessimistic estimation:
“Thus, if Iran decides to withdraw from all existing agreements and obligations, it could arrive at its destination within 2-4 years, assuming that there is no outside interference with the program.”
Because of its format (unreferenced news analysis/opinion), it is hard to evaluate whether it is likely to be more accurate than the NIE from US intelligence sources.
Is this becoming a matter of believing what you want to?
Dave;
Thanks for the info but I’m curious why you didn’t link to the site where you pulled it from….it looks interesting, and I imagine it would be of some value to people here.
In reading through the entries, I discovered that you only reproduced portions of the information found there, which is fine because there’s too much to simply paste here and most, but not all, of the omitted info does tend to support a worsening threat.
“Here’s a link to the site”:http://www.nti.org and an excerpt of the organization that runs it:
“Concerned that the threat from nuclear weapons had fallen off most people’s radar screens after the end of the Cold War, CNN founder Ted Turner asked former Senator Sam Nunn in the spring of 2000 to help assess whether a private organization could make a difference. After months of discussions and consultations with some of the world’s most respected security experts, Mr. Turner and Senator Nunn founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in January 2001. Initially supported by a pledge from Mr. Turner and other private contributions, NTI is now classified as a 501 (c) 3 public charity.”
“And here’s the complete entry for 8/25/05:”:http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/1825_4968.html
25 August 2005
The National Council of the Resistance of Iran alleges that the Arak nuclear site “will be ready in 2008 – seven years before Tehran’s official forecasts – to produce 14 kg of plutonium.”
[Begin omitted portion] An International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman says the accusations are nothing new as the IAEA is familiar with the Arak plant and are able to control it. “We conduct our own investigations without taking as our basis reports published by the media,” adds the spokesman.
–“French Report: Exiled Opposition Claims Iran Closer to Nuclear Weapons Goal,” Pairs Le Figaro, 26 August 2005, in FBIS Document
Another thing that I found of interest at this site are repeated statements from Iranian officials to the effect that:
1. The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates its previously and repeatedly declared position that in accordance with our religious principles, pursuit of nuclear weapons is prohibited.
Not saying whether this is to be believed or not, just that I haven’t seen this in the mainstream media or here, for that matter.
The list ends at September 20, 2005, by the way.
lewy14,
Ahmedinajad is not the threat: he is the voice of the regime, not the decision maker. The decision makers are the Guardian Council, all ayatollahs, and in particular the Supreme Leader (or is it Supreme Guide? I forget now).
Andy,
Which statement do you prefer to believe is true from the Iranian government? They continually deny that they have any intent of acquiring nuclear weapons, and whenever pushed to, say, allow inspections of their facilities, or stop processing material, they virtually always turn immediately to threats to blow up the people pressuring them. Including threats to explode nuclear weapons in at least Israel and the United States, and IIRC there were some veiled threats towards Europe as well, recently.
Frankly, since 9/11 I’m inclined to believe that when someone says he intends to, say, “wipe Israel off the map”, he means it.
Now it could be that, like Saddam, the Iranians got nothin’ there, and every intelligence agency and media outlet in the world has been fooled, and there’s no threat. In which case, I suspect that the Iranians will, within a few years, learn the lesson Saddam should have taught them: if you act like you’re batshit insane and try to kill people, they’re likely to believe you and think, “you first.”
Sure, Andy. The reason I didn’t link to it in the comment is that I’d linked to it in my post which Joe was kind enough to link to several times in his post. Perhaps I should have.
Davebo (#42)… ah, a substantive contribution re: how to deal with end-timer religious fanatics who venerate suicide-murder, are trying to get the atomic bomb, and have threatened multiple times to use it when they do. Didn’t know you had it in you.
RE: “The LA Times Article…”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ebadi19jan19,0,5662866.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Shirin Ebadi is justly distrusted by many, many Iranians for having an (how shall we put this politely) ambiguous relationship with the Iranian regime. Having said that, let’s look at her stuff on the merits.
The suggestions of “things to do” that she advocates are all worthwhile in and of themselves. They fall short of being useful, even in the pure context of inciting democratic revolution, but none would be actively un-useful. So we ought to give them a try.
Her suggestions of what not to do (no sanctions, no strikes, really nothing that might seriously inconvenience the regime), however, lack credibility because they amount to a free pass. To give them credibility, she’d need to show a high-likelihood, supportable belief that the mullahs could be overthrown from within in the next 2-3 years, and that this free pass is very important to achieving that end.
That belief doesn’t exist with me – and Ms. Ebadi is a prime reason why not. Her statements re: the regime are very carefully calibrated, and she soft-pedals and seeks to accomodate rather than demanding change. Fine qualities in other situations, but not when you’re up against the group in charge of Iran who have zero intention of changing. She has also been happy to lend her voice to blaming others (article is an excellent case in point) in ways that suit the regime’s interests, rather than saying “gee, we seem to be run by madmen who are happily putting the lives of every Iranian at risk, what must we do?”
Spend some time in the Iranian exile community, and Ms. Ebadi is not exactly a trusted figure any more. But she is not at all alone in displaying the twin flaws of quasi-collaboration and refusal to take serious responsibility. She isn’t saying “give us time and we’ll finish the job,” she’s saying “give us time and maybe something will happen.”
Her level of non-commitment pretty clearly WON’T make it happen, and the prevalence of this “get along” approach is part of the reason why I do not believe the prospects for any kind of democratic revolution in Iran are good.
Exhibit B from the article – this is just meaningless double-talk:
bq. “…the West should permit Iran a limited uranium enrichment program (as allowed under the nonproliferation treaty) under strict safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency — but only when Tehran undertakes meaningful reforms, including freeing political prisoners and holding free and fair elections.”
How will the West “not permit” if this doesn’t happen? Having firmly come out against sanctions or strikes, one wonders just what, exactly, she believes will force Iran to take any of these meaningful reforms, including freeing political prisoners and holding free and fair elections?
The answer is nothing, of course. Nothing at all.
I’m willing to try and be proven wrong on the issue of pushing for a democratic revolution. It’s something I’ve supported for a long time, and which could be transformational if it worked. But the odds are looking poor, and so at this stage I’m not willing to give much of anything up in return for that option.
What might change my mind? One of 3 things:
[1] Evidence that the odds were getting a lot better for democratic revolution – despite the certainty that the regime’s Revolutionary Guards, Basij brownshirts, and al-Qaeda/Hezbollah mercenaries will fight and kill without mercy to prevent it. The possible benefits of a revolution would make me willing to take more chances to bring one about if I thought the odds were good, and that relentless, meaningful western support including weapons was part of the process (weapons because without that, no chance).
[2] Solid reason to believe that fomenting unrest plus military coup or revolt might be possible (this would remove the requirement for weapons support). I’d be suspicious of this, but under some circumstances it might be distateful but better than status quo. At least it doesn’t threaten to kill 10-50 million Iranians, and there is a good record of juntas becoming democratic – q.v. even Chile.
[3] Reason to believe, with about 90% certainty, that Iran’s hopes of setting up a cascading centrifuge , further enriching already enhanced materials, or acquiring a working bomb by whatever means was very unlikely within 3 years. This wouldn;t change my overall conclusions, but it would incline me to give other options more time. I’d still say “have a standaing start contingency plan ready.”
At the moment, I see none of these things, and have little hope that Iran can be stopped. “With the consequences described in my article.”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007986.php
#63 Jeff, I don’t view the regime as a monolith, it is factional, like every other government in the world. Some factions more rational than others, with Ahmedinajad’s faction quite rationality challenged. I see Ahmadinajad’s position as precarious, like that of any new leader. Hitler did not consolidate absolute power until he successfully humiliated Britain and France with the re militarization of the Rhineland, the Sudaten annexation, etc. Hindenburg dying helped matters along as well.
Ahmadinajad is one foreign policy triumph away from consolidation of greater power, and one humiliation away from a putsch. Of course he is not the whole of the problem, and I don’t mean to suggest that the is, but taking his faction down a peg or two would be helpful.
There is another Atlantic article which is relevant here, in which Robert Kaplan describes the Navy’s challenges in dealing with potential China scenarios. I found the descriptions of China’s attitude toward war very interesting, they think well outside the box set out by Clausewitz. The assertion is that military action may be precipitated by the desire to inflict humiliation, and not necessarily _defeat_… Perhaps we should borrow a page from the Chinese. If the other Atlantic article, cited by Tom Holsinger, is any indication, the Iranians should be easy to provoke, having set themselves on a hair trigger.
#61 Andy
It isn’t an unrefernced analysis/opinion. It is the opinion of an expert from the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, one of the top Israeli defence think-tanks. They’re a pretty left-wing bunch, for whatever that’s worth.
bq. Is this becoming a matter of believing what you want to?
It shouldn’t be. The Telegraph had the “basic steps”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/01/16/wiran16big.jpg for building a nuclear weapon. As it stands, the Iranians are somewhere between steps 3 and 4. If “this”:http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.254185624&par=0 is correct, they may be months away.
Also, read “this”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/22/wiran22.xml article on new construction at Natanz. The article cites a U.S. intelligence report that concludes that the Iranian and Pakistani programs are ‘exactly’ alike. The JCSS is right – it took Pakistan about 25 years to buy assembly line needed to create the bomb. Iran has built the assembly line already based on Pakistan’s experience, and has the knowledge to replicate their program. So what is going to take ten years?
#62
Thanks for the Link Andy,
I think that this quote from the link really demonstrates the mistake in thinking that many official intellegent people are making on this issue.
bq. Iran’s chemical weapons and ballistic missiles, and possibly its nuclear weapon program and biological warfare capabilities, are meant to deter opponents and to gain influence in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions. The acquisition and creation of these various weapon systems can also be seen as a response to Iran’s own experience as a victim of chemical and missile attacks during the Iran-Iraq War.
_на русском (in Russian)_
What I think they should have said was:
bq. _If we were in the same strategic position as Iran_ then any chemical or nuclear weapon program would be meant to deter opponents and to gain influence.
You can’t understand why somebody does something by Working out why you would do the same thing if that person doesn’t think like you.
So the first thing is to put oneself inside the mind of the leaders of Iran. Just imagine you knew God existed and you knew that God had already determined that a whole people were doomed to eternal torture in Hell – God has given you a chance to bring yourself and those you love into eternal paradise. Hard to put yourself in that position if you are and Atheist. Even if you are a Christian I would suspect that you wouldn’t think much of a God that condemed the newborn to eternal torture with no hope of salvation! But if you have managed to put yourself in this position – what are your motivations and how would you behave?
During the Cold War we knew well that Russia and China had the _capacity_ to attack us, as they still do. The question became one of _intent_ and significant resources were devoted to that determination.
In the current situation _intent_ is absolutely clear. The question thereby crystallises uniquely as that of _capacity_.
Given their intent, our *downside risk is immense* under the _status quo_, and the magnitude of that risk increases by the week. I see no potential uspside gain that even comes close (within orders of magnitude) of offsetting that potential (probable?) downside.
It is, I believe, far better to be _SAFE_ and wrong (as we were, in the event, re: Iraqi nukes) than to be _EXPOSED_ and wrong.
Denial of capacity is paramount, and probably urgent. Diplomacy for any purpose other than allowing time for preparations needed to ensure that Iran does not develop the capacity to act on its clearly stated intentions … is merely wishful inaction.
Bart # 69,
The situation between the US and the Reds during the Cold War is known as “Mutual Assured Destruction.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction/ I figured you’d like to know there’s a name for it.
I agree to a certain extent that it is better to be “safe and wrong” then “exposed and wrong”. The problem lies in the fact that by committing resources and manpower to a war in Iraq that is almost definetly wrong (or at least not of highest priority), we HAVE become exposed.
Because we committed such a large portion of our fighting force to Iraq, we no longer have as big of a hammer to threaten the real rogue states like Iran. I believe that Iran cutting the seals is very much based on the current situation, as admitting a move like this is more of a smoking gun than Iraq ever offered.
If offered the opportunity today to attack either Secular, weak Iraq of 2003 (with no confirmed Nuclear program in operation) or religious fundamentalist Iran of 2006 (With a nuclear program confirmed by their own leaders), which one would you choose? Unfortunately, the choice has already been made for us. By the time we have gathered the resources to act, it might be too late.
Lastly, attacking Iraq almost definetly does more harm than good in the War on Terrorism. Maybe not today, but in 10 years, family members of those killed by USA bombs, whose regular lives (although Saddam-ified) were interrupted by a war that had incorrect justifications from top to bottom, will be looking for revenge. If 100,000 able bodied Iraqis were affected by this war, and 1% of them desired revenge so much that they would do anything to get it, well you now have 1,000 Iraqis with one thing on their minds: revenge (and death) to Americans. In past wars, this desire existed on both sides (it’s human nature, no?), but the world at the time never supported the ability for individuals to act alone or in small groups to achieve their “revenge goals”. Now, the world is getting “smaller”, and the bombs available to these people are getting bigger.
Again, I’m all for acting to disarm a state when it is in our best interests. I also want the USA to more closely consider the after-effects of such an attack, and include them in the risk-benefit discussion.
Hudna?
It’s sort of whimsical to observe that if both parties are using such a strategy only one of them can actually be right. Over time the Mullahcracy might very well become strategically stronger than they are now, but given Chirac’s recent speech so might we. The question then becomes: “Who gets stronger at a faster rate?” The “strike now” argument (which I agree is morally justified, and would still allow us to win, though at a very high cost) is really only justified if one thinks that time is on their side rather than ours. That’s what’s implied.
Adopting the lesson of Tiananmen is critical here. We can assume that there’s some sort of power struggle going on that hasn’t yet been resolved in spite of the repression, and we can also assume that the idealism of the reformers will not be enough. So the issue becomes how we might use or abet force, or the threat of force, in order to make the reformers’ hand stronger. Becoming more energy independent is one way, because it broadens our set of options, including force. Bulding up our expeditionary forces also obviously helps, as do the policies of expanding support (even if it’s only symbolic) from our allies and conducting covert operations and training within Iran, with the help of our allies there (and in Iraq).
It’s risky, because the dog might actually be rabid… but even if that’s the case we might be able to put off an attack until the critter just dies of the disease.
It would be great if people would learn to use html to post links instead of messing up the formatting by posting uncoded links. There are several in this post (one by A.L. and one by Trent) but the one that has really messed up the formatting is comment #42 by Davebo. If someone could edit that and put it in code it would sure help the rest of us read the post and comments.
#42 is fixed…
Marc:
Thanks.
–D
OK, I’ve read through all of the posts. Some of the ideas are impractical but basically it all boils down to whether time is on our side or theirs. They act as though it’s on theirs, but less so over time. That is, they’re becoming more belligerent and less “trucial.” What that implies, I’m afraid, is that they have an objective and they’re getting closer to it. It also implies that they believe they’ve milked “hudna” for all it’s worth. They therefore think that time is on their side in the short term, but not in the long term.
Strategy Forecasting seems to believe that the short term goal is to reassume leadership of the Islamic Revolution, and that they don’t actually intend or expect to develop nuclear weapons. Actually I think they’re like one of those contestants in Survival who thinks their only chance of staying around is to win immunity, so they pull out all the stops and just don’t worry about the alliances too much. What they’re doing is what anyone would do as they see their options shrink down to one or two.
Again, I’d agree with Joe except that the above scenario suggest to me that they fear the reformers more than they’re letting on. They think they have the lid on for now, but are not too confident they can keep it on.
What we need, and what we do no have, to resolve the debate on this forum is the kind of intel that’s probably only available to our clandestine services. And again, everything boils down to where Iran is right now on the path to/from Tiananmen.
If our policy makers haven’t resolved that issue any further than we have then there’s too much uncertainty to wait, and well have to take our chances and go with some overtly aggressive strategy. If the behavior of the Mullahs reflects the kind of “immunity challenge” scenario that I think it does then we can afford to put more resources into clandestine services, and wait… The only reason they appear to be strong right now is that their backs are against the wall so their decision set is simpler.
Joe,
So now it’s a matter of which Iranian exiles one prefers to listen to?
By all accounts I’ve read she is extremely popular with reformists in Iran and is a key player in the reform movement.
Rather than impugn her reputation with unsupported allegations perhaps you could elaborate in more detail about these exiled Iranians (I’m assuming these are not those exiled Iranians who, again, don’t seem to stay exiled).
She represents just about everything I would think one would want to see in a reformer. A prominent history in pre-revolution Iraq. A strong supporter of democracy as well as women’s rights.
Excuse me in my ignorance for asking, but this enemy that threatens us seems only to go by the nebulous phrase ‘mullahs’. Does anyone have a link to a list of names, and some analysis of what each thinks?
Some people like to think of the GWoT as an overspill of a internal Saudi power struggle. Would it be a good idea to see all this as a power struggle of the 12ers and the old guard? Clearly we’ve got to try very hard to drive a wedge between these factions. What could we offer to pragmatic mullahs?
I still say we assassinate Ahmadinejad immediately. It can’t make things worse. There’s a reasonable chance we would end up with Rafsanjani again, and he’s much more rational.
lewy14 (#58):
Of course you are right. Bush will at most bomb a little. And hawks will call it a hard and good measure and the Left will shriek. Anything beyond that would be short of a miracle. Churchill remarked in the House of Commons about Chamberlain and his appeasement policy “Thou are weighed in the balance and found wanting.” The longer Bush’s second term progresses the more inclined I am to direct that statement towards him and his administration.
But you are mistaken if you take my platform oratory for mere stylish rhetoric. What outcome do we sincerely want out of this mess? Do we want to be able to walk out of it, relatively unscathed? Or with scars and deformities that will cripple and maim our society and the individuals within it for decades to come? What, in reality, is to prevent us from acting forcefully from a position of strength, rather than await a potentially devastating blow from an opponent, who, from the first, daily has prayed “Death to the USA!”? Weenie Europe? The Grandmaster of Hypocrisy, Kofi Annan? The seething but inept Islamic world? It is said that watching US foreign policy is like watching a man with Schwarzenegger’s body appease schoolyard bullies. There is a very tragic element of truth to that. You Americans: you’re just too nice for your own good.
Even if I cannot affect events in the now, maybe someone here will have acknowledged what has been said, and will be in a position to affect the future, when the next major attack comes (whatever form it takes).
Colin (#77): Rafsanjani once uttered that Israeli arrogance would end with an “Islamic bomb”, since the Islamic nation would survive a nuclear exchange, whereas Israel would be eradicated. Wouldn’t bet any money on him. Better wipe the Iranian theocracy off the map. All of it.
… and the quote by Churchill referred to the Western democracies in the context of the Munich treaty and Chamberlain’s appeasement.
Slightly off but still relevant, I think.
A very good article. It is unfortunate that no one understands the facts you laidout. Every commentator i’ve read here whom is against your idea is either a scared white boy or a scared and Israeeli well they should be. People think that you can keep f!@#$%^& w/ people indefinitely. It eventually reaches a point where you can’t. Israel has made it clear it has. The Iranians have made it clear they have. There would be no difference if the ayatollahs were not in power. Everyone is operating on Machiavelli’s dictate a man remembers the lose of their patrimony than their family. The Iranians understand this.
As a result we have come to this situation because no one is going to listen to the correct way to deal with a vicious dog the way you suggest.
To all the scaredity cats bellow and wail to your mothers. The situation you find yourself in is of your own making.
_the hope of creating some kind of climbdown by some Iranian factions resulting in Ahmedinajad getting the Khruschev treatment._
Ahmedinajad is essentially promising the return of the 12th Imam in the next couple of years. He is placing the credibility of the State and the mullahs on the line. It is easy to imagine a lot of people that share Ahmedinajad’s hard-line views that might be revolted by the positions he has taken or have their own timeline in mind.
It may not seem to be a terrible idea to have a Secretary of State, specialized in kremlinology at this juncture.
Joe,
You make a strong case as far as you go and your conclusion may be right if the choices available remain as they are. But I am troubled by the pessimism about the American people that I sense in this discussion.
It is probably true that, absent an Iranian first strike, popular support does not exist in the United States for a large-scale mobilization and war. An occupation of Iran would fail to subdue the country because it would have to rely on an insufficient number of American volunteers, and the bad guys might reasonably expect our commitment to waver in a few years. One can hope that a hit-and-run campaign in Iran would succeed instead and be followed by grateful Iranians who build a free and moderate nation. But what a desperate situation must exist for such a victory to be necessary even if it is feasible.
Our larger strategy in the world is consistent with this minimalism: to spread democracy with small amounts of troops and money in a series of non-binding commitments. Nobody is proposing to extend to any new or potential democracy the degree of commitment we made to Europe and Japan after 1945. If the stakes are thus so low, we really can’t be surprised that the American people have such a low tolerance for sacrifice.
To remove regimes whose acquisition of WMDs we cannot tolerate, two conditions must be sustained: the development cost of the weapons must not fall and the cost of ad hoc regime change must not rise. I do not think we can expect these conditions to hold indefinitely.
The question is whether we should set our aims even lower or instead try to set them higher. Can we imagine commitments to bring peace and stability to the world that might, by being set higher rather than lower, command the support of the American people necessary to achieve them? What it seems Americans will not do is sacrifice indefinitely for commitments that are hedged from the outset.
A.L. et.al.,
The what next question is always hard to answer. Because no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
As to playing whack a mole. It is what you do until you can make their tunnels uninhabitable.
Since the tunnels we are after are in the mind it is going to take time.
Until them we whack them when they raise their heads.
BTW it looks like America and the Iraqis are beginning to tie up loose ends prior to an American departure.
#72,
A helpful guide for those that need a crib sheet:
CE Design – HTML Cheats
David (#82): The Iraq model, if one can call it that, is definitely the most high cost option available for waging the current war. Basically, it involves the Japan/Germany model without the previous total war phase to completely break the will of the enemy populace for war.
For a variety of reasons that include factors internal to the US as well as external, it’s not a model that can be repeated very often.
Meanwhile, one must expect the WMD cost/access curve to continue to fall.
This must eventually produce a breaking point and the evolution/ resurgence of other “sctive” models (vs. “passive” models like Isolationsim/pacifism and continued minimalism). These range from Realpolitik, to Active Subversion/ Covert War, up further to Classic War/ Civilization Denial, and of course the Civilization Change model being tested in Iraq.
All are less costly than the Iraq model, but come with strengths, weaknesses, and constraints of their own.
Davebo (#76) – Feel free to do that research yourself. Then, if you’d like to come back and actually address the substantive critique of her position that formed the majority of my “comment in #65,”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007988.php#c65 I’ll be waiting.
I’m still very hesitant in making a decision on Iran (i tend toward an ultimate policy of a massive raid to destroy every nuke site we know about and then threatening Iran’s oil assets and ports if they reply). That being said, the Israeli situation is really a nasty wildcard here. We need to give serious consideration to a scenario in which Israel threatens Iran with a nuclear strike, knowing full well that Israel does not make idle threats and Iran may not be rational enough to deal with that. The scary thing is, from the Israeli point of view, that is the most logical move to make.
If a nuclear Iran is intolerable to Israel, and a conventional attack/war is questionable in effectiveness, the only real option is to threaten to use the nuclear arsenal while it remains a viable option- ie, before Iran gains its own. This is even more paramount considering Israel is undergoing a leadship vacuum, panic could easily way into this equation.
#22 A.L.,
You forget the French threat of nuke war.
Guess what? Iran was the only country to answer to the relatively non-specific threat.
I think the French plan is to sit at home and let America do the heavy lifting. i.e. they will nominally be “neutral” with a slight bias towards America – i.e. non-obstructionist.
Of course the French have a reputation as dishonest crooks – they don’t stay bought.
BTW Joe, I’m on board with #15. If you read the link I provided above and some of the others I sent you would see that my opinion is that the train is pulling out of the station. Possibility of taking Iran in the spring, full capability in the summer or fall.
I think the situation will be Iraqi in nature. The regular Army will fight half heartedly or dissolve and the Republican Guard (or what ever they call it) will be fanatical.
BTW I do love the proliferation of the “tied down” meme. If the Iraians are doing a Bayesian analysis of Americans on line they will be possibly encouraged to do something stupid.
My guess is that they have already done something stupid.
#32 Chris,
We already have a vigorous alternate fuel project going on in America.
The Manhattan project was limited in what it needed to accomplish. It cost about 1% of war time GDP.
What you want is a project that would cost 10 to 100 times our current GDP. And we haven’t even decided which of 100 possible technologies we ought to pursue.
The Manhattan Project needed to follow two tracks Uranium and Plutonium.
We have batteries, coal, flywheels, wind, hydrogen, methanol, ethanol, vegetable oil, hybrids, twenty types of fuel cell, shale oil, tar sands, deep drilling, maglev, etc. etc.etc.
This is no job for the government. Fortunately capitalists can see the opportunity and lots, and lots of stuff is getting researched and tried out.
It is however a fifty year project. There is not much to do now in the way of acceleration we can do at this point.
So that leaves the shield and sword. And the will behind them. We have the shield and sword. Finest in the world. The only question is will.
#46 AL.,
You are correct about proliferation.
The American counter is the policy of ending tyranny in the world.
In the mean time we want to slow the advance of proliferation until our policy has had more time to work. No more tyrannies with nukes.
Iran has months.
#47 A.L.,
You are correct. For most of the grid EMP is like a huge lightening strike.
An Iranian nuke could possibly cause severe electrical damage in a 10 to 100 mile radius. i.e. much less damage than Katrina. By orders of magnitude.
Fabio C. is more current on the subject than I am.
It is all about energy and the time it takes to dissipate it. The grid in North America is very large and has a lot of energy absorbing capacity. Hawaii – less so. And even in Hawaii only one radio station went down.
Even ordinary autos are well protected for EMP. They are designed to operate in the near field of large AM broadcast transmitters.
BTW did you know a malfunctioning spark plug is a fair EMP generator. Considering proximity – your auto is well protected from a moderately distant EMP strike.
#55 J. Rockford,
Greetings from Rockford. South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan already have nukes. We shipped the Japanese 20 or 40 tons of (supposedly not class A bomb grade plutonium). South Korea has a reprocessing plant. You can read about it here.
These folks are more pessimistic about EMP.
I have hardened military equipment against EMP. I do think it would hurt. However, one or two Iranian nukes are not a knock out blow.
As the Hawaii results show. It is a matter of the size of the antenna and its orientation. i.e. it is a low frequency problem. Which the grid is hardened against.
Even with a 5KV per meter field (very high) you had to have several miles of antenna properly oriented in order to collect a damaging amount of energy.
Auto protection (which I have also worked on) is in the 10 to 100 volt per meter range bare. Thing is autos get a lot of shielding from their bodies.
“Time to Face Reality on Iran; Zakaria, Newsweek”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10966808/site/newsweek/page/2/
A pretty good read on topic.
#90 M. Simon, I appreciate the response. But I question this statement:
_What you want [Alternative Fuel Program] is a project that would cost 10 to 100 times our current GDP. And we haven’t even decided which of 100 possible technologies we ought to pursue._
I think it is safe to say we could narrow down our alternative options from 100 to 10 or so, from Hydrogen to Biodiesel to electric vehicles, increasing hybrid output, etc. I’m not an expert on the subject, so please prove me wrong.
You must have your calculations off on the cost. USA 2004 GDP was 11 Trillion dollars! So this project would cost 110-1,100 Tril? Run the numbers again.
The administration committed “$84 million to Biodiesel/Ethanol research and 1.2 billion to hydrogen fuel research”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050516.html and my point was that we should be committing much, much more than that. Why not 10 billion? I think it is safe to say that a $9 billion dollar infusion into hydrogen research would move the timetable up. We’ve spent more than $300 billion already in Iraq. I’m not sure which concepts should be supported, but there are more informed people to make those decisions.
#92 M. Simon:
I’d not normally a doomsayer, but having read the Congressional Record you linked, as well as other reports linked from the first article I mentioned, it seems clear to me that EMP is the most obvious way to cause catastrophic damage to the US “on the cheap”.
I’m guessing most folks did not spend the time reading the record you linked, so I will post some (of the scarier) snips:
bq. “EMP is one of a small number of threats that may hold at risk the continued existence of today’s U.S. civil society.”
…
bq. Iran has tested launching of a Scud missile from a surface vessel, a launch mode that could support a national or transnational EMP attack
against the United States.
…
bq. By the way, an enemy no more sophisticated than Saddam Hussein would need no more than a tramp steamer, a Scud missile and a crude nuclear
weapon like is probably available in North Korea or might be bought or stolen from some Russian source. That would not shut down the whole
United States, because the Scud missile could not carry it high enough, but it would certainly shut down the whole Northeast.
…
bq. This likely consequence of a high-altitude nuclear burst was corroborated by Dr. Lowell Wood, who in a field hearing at the Johns
Hopkins University applied physics laboratory, made the observation that a burst like this above our atmosphere creating this electromagnetic pulse would be like a giant continental time machine turning us back to the technology of 100 years ago. It is very obvious that the population of today in its distribution could not be supported by the technology of 100 years ago. And I asked Dr. Wood, I said, “Dr. Wood, clearly the technology of 100 years ago could not support our
present population in its distribution,” and his unemotional response was, “Yes, I know. The population will shrink until it can be supported by the technology.”
…
bq. So all of the satellites within line of sight would be taken out by prompt effects. It would not go so high, by the way, as the satellites
that are 22,500 miles above the Earth. And it would pump up the Van Allen belts so that satellites that were not in line of sight would die very quickly and one could not reconstitute the satellite network by launching new ones because they also would die quickly.
[end snips]
This mentions a Scud missile, Iran’s Shahab-3 has a better range. 500 – 600 kilometers is mentioned as an optimal altitude for an EMP detonation. Question for any ballistics experts out there – if a missile has a range of 1200 km in a ballistic arc – is it capable of reaching an altitude of 500 km within that arc?
I’m not going to claim that Iran has the capability to impact the entire country with a single weapon. The Soviets thought they could impact the entire country with a single weapon – one hopes the Iranians will be no where close to that.
But it does seem to me they would stand a good chance of seriously impacting both coasts, where 75% of our population is clustered.
My point is that we tend to think of the scenario where most of the carnage occurs in the ME with the impact on the US being mostly economic and other. I think we need to consider a direct attack against us – and this seems like the most likely to me. Certainly the most “bang for your buck” if you only have a couple of weapons.
When discussing options concerning Iran, let us not forget oil (!). If Iranian output is disrupted for any length of time, oil prices will surge. There just isn’t a lot of excess crude oil capacity in the world. For the overview, the identities of Iran’s customers don’t matter–petroleum is a fungible commodity.
Longer disruption: higher prices that persist for more time. Oil shocks rob growth from the world economy. A large enough shock could be the trigger for a recession, or worse.
Simply by virtue of being an important supplier in a market operating near capacity, Iran’s leaders have the capability to, probably, cause a worldwide recession. At a large cost to their nation. The perceived cost to themselves would depend on how they view things. (E.g. Mao didn’t mind that his policies caused the deaths of millions of fellow Chinese.)
Considering the power that will accrue from possessing nuclear weapons and the means of delivery, the intentions of the mullahs vis a vis target oil prices and their effects on the world economy becomes more significant.
I would not be willing to bet that they are benign.
OCSteve: _EMP is the most obvious way to cause catastrophic damage to the US “on the cheap”._
+
AMac: _let us not forget oil (!)._
= Nuke the Saudi oil fields. I have not set a ruler to a map, but the main Saudi oil fields would seem to be within Iranian missile range and one wouldn’t have to worry about intercepts. The result would be the contamination and destruction of half the world’s oil supply. I think I’ve read estimates that it might take 20 years to get the Saudi oil fields decontaminated. A 20 year depression. Iran would become the number one source of oil, increasing its profits and making it even more complicated to invade. The First World can’t afford a disruption in Iran’s oil supply and the great powers will possibly intervene if a country moves militarily against Iran at that point. The House of Saud falls; Iran becomes a regional hegemon to which even Sunni countries tilt.
Any EMP threat is no worse than the nuclear threat. Any EMP attack will be considered a nuclear attack for purposes of retaliation. Any other position by the US would be irrational.
“This is like asking whether the moderate Germans would survive if Germany was attacked because of the Nazis’ clear threats and military buildup”
Joe, what date for the Nazis are you talking about? 1934, when the military was still independent, and the non-Nazi far right (hueber?) were still a force to be reckoned with? or spring of 1939, when Germany was effectively totalitarian?
Look, I dont like the Mullahs. Not one bit. They want me and people like me dead. All the more reason we have to look at Iranian politics seriously and accurately. And Iran is NOT a totalitarian state.
Some folks have quoted Iranians saying “why doesnt Bush invade” I know an Iranian whos been back there, and says people tell him the same thing. You think people said such things so casually in Germany in 1939? The fact is the Iranian internal security apparatus simply hasnt achieved that level of control. Khatami was totally ineffective, and was pushed out, and wasnt a good guy on every issue, but he represented a level of public dissent against the regime.
Now this still doesnt guarantee the internal opposition can act in time. Esp if “in time” means in the next few months.
But I note the head of Israeli military intell was quoted today supporting sanctions, and even said they should exclude oil. Now maybe that was a feint, but otherwise it would seem to indicate that folks in position to know think theres more than a few months time.
Joe
What are you suggesting Joe? That I get the NSA to tap your calls so I can figure out which “Iraqi Exiles” you are mystically referring to?
No thanks. To use your own dodge, I never expected a credible alternative from you.
“Any EMP threat is no worse than the nuclear threat. Any EMP attack will be considered a nuclear attack for purposes of retaliation. Any other position by the US would be irrational.”
Not so. A 10 megaton nuclear weapon detonated at ground level would devastate a city and kill a few million. A 10 megaton weapon detonated at high altitude would cripple the majority of the country and shut off the US economy like a light (so to speak). The humanitarian crisis is unthinkable.
“ah, a substantive contribution re: how to deal with end-timer religious fanatics who venerate suicide-murder”
well sure they venerate them. Loads of Israel and US hating muslims venerate suicide bombers. While sipping tea in Nablus, or teaching comfortably in Tampa, or growing fat in Peshawar.
The Japanese venerated suicide bombers. When two of the their cities were destroyed, they were quick to surrender, however.
Venerating those who suicide doesnt prove that one is willing to do the same.
Which also doesnt prove they wouldnt.
It would be easier to say, like the “realists” that the Iranians are deterrable, cause, MAD always works, and states are never suicidal. IT would also be easier, to say, as you seem to, that its 100% certain that Iran will use the bomb as soon as they have it.
But the reality is somewhere in between. Every Iranian leader may hate ISrael and the US, and be willing to support terror, but it seems unlikely to me that everyone of them is willing to suicide to bring about the 12th imam. Certainly not certain based on the evidence presented.
Which means we need to plan given that uncertainty, which is far more difficult.
again jumping in on an old post:
To get to the initial post: What then? let’s look beyond iran a little bit..
Let’s say we have a worst case scenario. We find out Iran has the material it needs to make a bomb. And we decide that the only thing we can do to defend ourselves is to remove the nuclear sites from the map. Let’s assume we hit them all (which is unlikely) but Iran does not live in a vacuum, and neither do we.
this will only draw moderate muslims to become more fanatical against the US. which spawns more terrorist attacks. Which causes more american strikes and attacks; which encourages the appearance that we are fighting the muslim world.
Eventually pakistans crumbles, and terrorists get a nuke anyway. So we strike even harder bombing targets all over the world. The cycle repeats itself until we are trying to fight the entire muslim world (all 1.2 billion). We may never ‘lose’ that fight, but we can’t win it either.
My point: we better be ‘darn’ sure that we control the blowback. It may make us more safe now, but it could make us much less safe 10-15 years from now.
“Steve Clemons has a report from Chris Nelson of interest.”:http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001200.php
These are the guys who really know their stuff, so I urge you to read the article.
Key graphs:
To the point that “Iran is probably just months away.”
“This is complete nonsense. There is no need for military strikes against Iran. The country is five to ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs. Even that estimate, shared by the Defense Intelligence Agency and experts at IISS, ISIS, and Carnegie assumes Iran goes full-speed ahead and does not encounter any of the technical problems that typically plague such programs. In the next few months, they will be lucky to get a test centrifuge cascade up and running. Hardly a “point of no return.”
“This is not a nuclear bomb crisis, it is a nuclear regime crisis. US Ambassador John Bolton has correctly pointed out that this is a key test for the Security Council. If Iran is not stopped the entire nonproliferation regime will be weakened, and with it the UN system.”
“Finally, the strike would not, as is often said, delay the Iranian program. It would almost certainly speed it up. That is what happened when the Israelis struck at the Iraq program in 1981. Israel knocked the Osirik reactor, but Saddam went underground, expanding from 500 to 7000 workers on a more ambitious program that escaped detection until 1991. By then he was closer to producing a bomb than he ever would have been with Osirik. It went from a side project to an obsession.”
“Your other Loyal Reader is correct that we could not destroy it in 1991 war. Even 43 days of coalition bombing failed to destroy the program, which ended only when U.N. disarmament teams methodically destroyed the equipment on the ground. This is the lesson to keep in mind as simplistic ‘solutions’ to the Iran program come churning out of the neocon machine.”
Food for thought.
JC – I agree with you that it is unlikely that Iran is ‘months away’; I’d bet they are further awau or have one now (with instructions in Korean).
alchemist – that’s pretty much my point in a nutshell. We need ot be thinking two or three steps ahead, not just this one; iran isn’t the last Islamist country with the resources and desire to build a Bomb.
Mark Buhner – I’m digging in and doing some quick homework on EMP; my first pass impression is that it’s possible that a sophisticated fusion weapon in the high atmosphere might have a big impact, but I’d doubt that it would shut down the electronics for the whole country. A cruder Hiroshima-type bomb might black out a city…that is ‘might’…I’d love to hear from folks who know more about this.
A.L.
“This”:http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/emp.htm is a good primer:
“A high-altitude nuclear detonation produces an immediate flux of gamma rays from the nuclear reactions within the device. These photons in turn produce high energy free electrons by Compton scattering at altitudes between (roughly) 20 and 40 km. These electrons are then trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field, giving rise to an oscillating electric current. This current is asymmetric in general and gives rise to a rapidly rising radiated electromagnetic field called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Because the electrons are trapped essentially simultaneously, a very large electromagnetic source radiates coherently.
The pulse can easily span continent-sized areas, and this radiation can affect systems on land, sea, and air. The first recorded EMP incident accompanied a high-altitude nuclear test over the South Pacific and resulted in power system failures as far away as Hawaii. A large device detonated at 400–500 km over Kansas would affect all of CONUS. The signal from such an event extends to the visual horizon as seen from the burst point.”
lewy14 @12:38 PM,
I think your numbers are wrong and therefore your premise doesn’t hold up.
Iran’s net oil export is 2.5 million barrels/day. I don’t know what the excess oil capacity in the world today is, I’ll assume outside of Iraq it is zero. I’ll also assume inside Iraq excess capacity is a million barrels/day more than it was March 20, 2003. I’ll also assume this has been kept secret for obvious reasons. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) holds about 700 million barrels.
You’re right when you say we should look to the market to gleam where things are at. Traders are more worried as to what happens in Nigeria than Iran.
As for the Mullahs, I think we can choke them in less than 30 days with a blockade. They will either react by attacking the Strait of Hormuz which will precipitate their doom, or they can stay put and have the Iranian population turn on them. Either way, they’re kaput.
JC:
Cirincione and Lewis are likely correct in assessing that Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons or significant quantities of highly enriched uranium. If Iran was in this position, Tom Holsinger’s “invade soonest” argument would be compelling.
I think they’re over-optimistic on timescales though; once Iran begins large-scale enrichment it would be folly to allow longer than three years before weapons can be expected (though a weapons system with missile delivery would likely take longer).
Cirincione is incorrect, in asserting that air strikes would be incapable of disrupting the program, the OSIRAK raid and Desert Fox notwithstanding.
If the air attacks are permitted to be of the scale, intensity and duration required, (i.e. including destruction of power plants and grid, and reactor containment and cooling sysytems) they CAN stop the nuclear project.
The problem is, the Iranian capability for counter-moves, in Iraq and elsewhere, and above all against the Gulf oil-routes. The economic repercussions of a prolonged shut-down of Gulf oil supply make that unacceptable. Securing the Iranian Gulf littoral would rapidly become essential.
And occupying part of the country and leaving the regime in control of Tehran to wage a guerilla war would be inviting disaster.
There appear to be no viable military options short of full-bore invasion and “regime decaptitation”. And unless the nuclear weapons programme and/or the regime is terminated within two to three years, it will very likely happen.
But unless the Iranians are ready to deploy weapons and begin producing more NOW, it is not necessary YET.
There haven’t been any nuclear weapons used anywhere since the second entity came to possess them.
Iran’s regime is not crazier than Mao Zedong’s China, which engaged in complicated gamemanship over Vietnam even while it was actively straving tens of millions of its citizens. Communism hated and defiled us exactly as much as fanatical Islamism. No one used nukes.
Maximalist scenarios about what will happen when Iran gets the bomb are driven by either fear or ideological yearning. If you don’t believe me, you’ll have the chance to find out, because military options are not going to happen. Anything less than a ground invasion won’t be permanently effective, and will be counter-productive as soon as it’s over. A ground invasion isn’t happen this year, next year, or in 2015. If Iraq had gone like Grenada, this might have been an option, but it didn’t, and it ain’t.
The only thing that will pre-empt Iran’s nuclear timer is its regime timer. When democracy comes to Iran, its regime will be quite likely willing to surrender its nukes voluntarily, as happened in the former USSR and Latin America.
Without democracy in Iran, everything else is self-destructive escalation. Short-term and quite illusory military ‘solutions’, such as air strikes, the maximum realistic aggressive response, will set democracy in Iran backwards. The larger-scale scenarios being tossed around on Winds of Change are simply wet dreams. America acts on that sort of scale only once in a generation, and the perceived outcome of that action dictate the neccesary conditions for further action.
Get used to Iran’s nukes. Some of them hate us and some of them are like some of the people on here- quite willing to openly milk their dreams of destruction when it costs nothing. But like the people on here, they will never pull the trigger when they know the costs. The threats of nuking Israel are uttered for the fun of making threats about nuking Israel. Actually doing it would mean death of the organization that ordered it, and it will not happen.
_Iran’s regime is not crazier than Mao Zedong’s China, which engaged in complicated gamesmanship over Vietnam even while it was actively starving tens of millions of its citizens. Communism hated and defiled us exactly as much as fanatical Islamism. No one used nukes._
Communists were materialists, they had no desire to destroy that which they one day knew they would possess. Ahmadinejad believes that the 12th Imam will return in the next few years and its the goal of his government to precipitate such an occurrence. What needs to happen before the “Mahdi”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi returns is nothing less than war and fire and famine across the Middle East. This is what he wants because it will bring about the End of Times and the return of just rule. No communists ever believed that by initiating a large-scale war a spiritual figure would emerge and protect the believers and transform society.
“Iran’s regime is not crazier than Mao Zedong’s China”
Communists are atheists, dying now for reward in the afterlife holds no appeal for them. Islamacists are religious extremists. There is a critical difference there that must be accepted.
Perhaps more importantly, if we learned anything from the Cold War, it is the downfall of nuclear regimes that are as dangerous than the actual conflict. In the Iran scenario it is even more deadly. It isnt hard to imagine a scenario where reformists are pounding at the palace gates and a maniac like Ahmadinejad is on a conference call with Hezbollah (or worse) and his thugs guarding the nukes. That is the most dangerous situation imaginable. Worst of all it practicaly forces us to support a nuclear Iranian regime no matter how hideious for the sake of stability. We are under the same gun in Pakistan, but fortunately the thugs in charge are secular thugs amendable to our goals. Those deals with the devil always come back to bite us.
Mark – I’m reading up on the EMP issue, and expect to do a post early next week.
But what I’ve read so far suggests that there is No Way a 3rd-world sized bomb – or even a relatively conventional fusion weapon (beyond Pakistani or Iranian capabilities) could shut down the whole country or even a coast.
So I’ll stand pat on my posiiton that this threat is exaggerated. I’d go back to my Red Hook/Seattle/Long beach bomb-in-a-container scenario as a more likely threat.
A.L.
AL:
My gut-checked back-of-envelope calculations suggest that you’d need strategic (~megaton) yield(s) delivered at substantial altitudes (20+miles). To really take out the east coast via EMP “completely” would appear to requre something greater than or equal to 12 to 20 500kT+ warheads, all very-high-altitude airbursts, or some very unlikely “whopper” on the rough order of 20 to 50 MT at 100+ miles up. If you’re going to use that kind of firepower, using it just for EMP seems a bit too “nuanced” for the anticipated adersary.
Now, a really well-informed adeversary could use multiple theater-class (sub-100kT) devices to mess up communications by vaporizing communications nexi. I’ll avoid specificity here for obvious reasons.
One might also be able to trigger certain kinds of network cascade failures with a smaller number of nukes, but further deponent saith not… beyond “fear not the nuke, but the chaos it creates.”
And if the bad guys just want to contaminate annoyingly large areas, that’s another barrel of fish entirely.
Email me if you want some good open sources on the EMP effects of nuclear weapons. There are a couple out there.
–Nort, former physics geek
PS:
Not far down the road, there’s every reason to believe that conventional-high-explosive-pumped EMP gadgets will be viable as a sort of IED-adjunct/substitute. But those will have very limited ranges.
We’ve been giving Iran a pass since 1979. It’s high time that we stopped beating around the Bush and started treating them for the terrorist-supporting theocracy that they are.
I am very impressed with the idea that our strength and courage give us options in regard to Iran’s push to have nuclear weapons. It is important that we use those options and the time remaining wisely.
We have enormously talented leadership in critical positions in our county. I am thinking, Dept of Defense, State. And we have a President who has shown that he can make tough decisions.
This leadership apparently thinks that there is time for the fops in Europe to complete their diplomatic dance. Bush has said Iran will not be permitted to have nuclear weapons and he does’t seem to bluff much.
On the other hand we have an opposition party (aka Democrats) and main stream media (where they are not the same) who are near suicidal in their attempts to limit our ability to respond by doing anything but go crying to the UN.
Politically the militants and terrorists that control Iran have been quite successful, economically less so. Their economy, and Syria should be their weak points, if we have the guts to deal with high prices for oil.
The time to act is getting closer.