“They (the U.S.) cannot strike Iran,” he said at a press conference during a two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates. “The Iranian people can protect themselves and retaliate.”
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/14/iran.ahmadinejad.ap/index.html
Is arming the insurgency in Iraq, preventing free elections in their own country, oppressing their people, developing nuclear weapons, and destabilising a vital region of the world sufficient cause for bombing Iran?
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
“They (the U.S.) cannot strike Iran,” he said at a press conference during a two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates. “The Iranian people can protect themselves and retaliate.”
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/14/iran.ahmadinejad.ap/index.html
Is arming the insurgency in Iraq, preventing free elections in their own country, oppressing their people, developing nuclear weapons, and destabilising a vital region of the world sufficient cause for bombing Iran? [/quote]
At the moment, I’d say no. There’s other ways to hurt them. Closing the borders with Iran would be a good start.
Do they deserve a good bombing for arming and aiding the insurgency in Iraq, sure. But opening up yet another front on this war would be a bad mistake. We need to finish what we started. Any Iranians caught in Iraq supporting the enemy should be sent back to Iran in several boxes.
I don’t give a fuck what they say. Most people are scared of dying and I don’t care what religion you are.
War is a pain in the ass, if we started bombing everybody who deserved it, it’d never end.
Report: Iran Now Enriching Uranium on Larger Scale Than Before
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.
Inspectors for the United Nation’s atomic agency have concluded that Iran is starting to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to The New York Times.
Top officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) came to the conclusion Sunday after a short-notice inspection at Iran’s main nuclear facility at Natanz, the Times reported late Monday.
The inspection was conducted as a report is due early next week on Iran’s program to the United Nations Security Council.
Unveiled in the look into Iran’s capabilities is how the country has apparently overcome some earlier problems that had plagued further enrichment. The Iranians previously had difficulty keeping centrifuges spinning at high speeds needed to make nuclear fuel.
Those troubles appear to have been solved, according to the IAEA’s director general."
Do we want this?
[quote]pat36 wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
“They (the U.S.) cannot strike Iran,” he said at a press conference during a two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates. “The Iranian people can protect themselves and retaliate.”
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/14/iran.ahmadinejad.ap/index.html
Is arming the insurgency in Iraq, preventing free elections in their own country, oppressing their people, developing nuclear weapons, and destabilising a vital region of the world sufficient cause for bombing Iran?
At the moment, I’d say no. There’s other ways to hurt them. Closing the borders with Iran would be a good start.
Do they deserve a good bombing for arming and aiding the insurgency in Iraq, sure. But opening up yet another front on this war would be a bad mistake. We need to finish what we started. Any Iranians caught in Iraq supporting the enemy should be sent back to Iran in several boxes.
I don’t give a fuck what they say. Most people are scared of dying and I don’t care what religion you are.
War is a pain in the ass, if we started bombing everybody who deserved it, it’d never end.[/quote]
Pat,
I agree.
I think iran should be a large part of this next election cycle.
Who will watch iran the most effectively?
Remember the good old days when the jackasses on this board tried to convince us that it was “15” years before iran has the bomb?
This was one time when I wish the jackasses had been correct.
JeffR
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Report: Iran Now Enriching Uranium on Larger Scale Than Before
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.
Inspectors for the United Nation’s atomic agency have concluded that Iran is starting to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to The New York Times.
Top officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) came to the conclusion Sunday after a short-notice inspection at Iran’s main nuclear facility at Natanz, the Times reported late Monday.
The inspection was conducted as a report is due early next week on Iran’s program to the United Nations Security Council.
Unveiled in the look into Iran’s capabilities is how the country has apparently overcome some earlier problems that had plagued further enrichment. The Iranians previously had difficulty keeping centrifuges spinning at high speeds needed to make nuclear fuel.
Those troubles appear to have been solved, according to the IAEA’s director general."
Do we want this?
[/quote]
No, we don’t. I don’t know if we can stop it either. Crap, what a pickle. If we weren’t bogged down in Iraq we could have dealt with this much more aggressively. Opening another front is just dangerous and dumb right now.
We have the ability to bomb them, I am sure we have cruise missiles and B-2s to spare.
What the hell are you going to do after that though? Send troops in on the ground? What troops?
Bomb them to nothingness? The civilian casualties would be catastrophic.
Right now our only option is to tighten economic sanctions. With Sarcozy stating his desire to take a harder stance against Iran we potentially have an allied vote in the war council, at least as far as sanctions go.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Is arming the insurgency in Iraq [/quote]
Contras anyone? Bay of Pigs? Nicaragua? Guatemala?
Just so you know, Tehran is accusing Washington of funding and arming insurgency in Iran.
Gotta be fucking kidding me!
Iran is easily the most democratic Muslim country in the whole region. Iran is many times more democratic than Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, or Pakistan.
As opposed to oppressing other people. See occupied territories for examples.
What is that? 2002 all over again? Are we gonna have Powell giving UN speeches?
Iran is develloping nuclear fuel for civil purposes. Something, the NPT gives it full right to do.
On a side note, how about Israel or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons?
The US did more to destabilize the region in four years than the Islamic Republic of Iran did ever since its founding.
Sanctions are working to a degree. Domestic production of oil is in the tank. Unemployment is rising. Labor strikes are happening all the time.
The populace is not happy with the government. I wouldn’t rule out military action but I wouldn’t use it yet. Iran will not negotiate in good faith without the threat of military action. That’s why they played around with the Europeans for so long.
The next step should probably be an embargo if negotiations don’t work. The embargo should be tied to Iranian activities in Iraq, support of terrorism and the development of nuclear weapons.
Nobody wants a nuclear capable Iran due to the very public posture and statements they have made.
[quote]Ren wrote:
We have the ability to bomb them, I am sure we have cruise missiles and B-2s to spare.[/quote]
I’m pretty convinced that any action against Iran would be limited to a bombing campaign.
Exactly. And I’m sure they’ve been watching and learning these past 4 years while you show them exactly what you have and how you use it next door.
All those Farsi-inscribed IEDs are not coincidences; they’re testing new stuff in Iraq. I’m sure they’d have everything they need to welcome you, were you to invade them with a force as puny as the one you deployed in Iraq.
(Puny in numbers, just to be clear. In destructive power, you’re unmatched, but you’re also unwilling to use it.)
Until you’re ready to do exactly that, I don’t think attacking Iran is a good idea.
In retrospective, when Papa Bush decided to halt the march on Baghdad and let Saddam stay in place under sanctions, it might have been the smartest decision he ever made.
I think that’s the right approach. Western nations are unwilling to wage proper wars, so they need to get together and make negotiations work. Sanctions, embargoes – hell, even black-ops surgical assassinations and infiltrations if required – would probably yield better long term results at much reduced costs.
(1) How about bombing the nuke sites? I have nothing against the Iranian people, except the ones who fund the Iraqi insurgency or other such things.
(2) Why does Iran want nukes anyway? Just to alarm the West? Iran sits on the 4th (I think) largest oil deposits in the world.
(3) Why do political candidates have to ‘pass muster’? The Islamic Council decides who gets to run. That’s oppression.
(4) Funding insurgency by the USA in Iran (and various other places) is GOOD, since the USA is good.
(Alright, I put the last one in to fire up Lixy and Wreckless. 
)
Iran’s Oil Bourse is more of a concern.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Ren wrote:
I think that’s the right approach. Western nations are unwilling to wage proper wars, so they need to get together and make negotiations work. Sanctions, embargoes – hell, even black-ops surgical assassinations and infiltrations if required – would probably yield better long term results at much reduced costs.
[/quote]
The reason western nations are unwilling to wage proper war at least in the middle east is due to the way these countries fight. They have an overt armed forces that we confront in regular battle, then they have covert “militias”.
We all know that if the US or NATO or whoever waged war properly we’d be run through the grinder. All that gets publicized is the blown up school, mosque or hospital.
Not the “militia” hiding in the wounded, the children and those honestly worshipping. Our best hope for Iran is a nuclear meltdown during enrichment.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
(1) How about bombing the nuke sites? I have nothing against the Iranian people, except the ones who fund the Iraqi insurgency or other such things.
(2) Why does Iran want nukes anyway? Just to alarm the West? Iran sits on the 4th (I think) largest oil deposits in the world.
(3) Why do political candidates have to ‘pass muster’? The Islamic Council decides who gets to run. That’s oppression.
(4) Funding insurgency by the USA in Iran (and various other places) is GOOD, since the USA is good.
(Alright, I put the last one in to fire up Lixy and Wreckless. )[/quote]
Are you crazy man!!! We are evil, we kill all sorts of innocent insurgents and oppress foreign lands into a heinous democracy. I mean gosh you wouldn’t want freedom all over the globe…
Compared to Iran’s ‘steady’ oil exports, they are internally consuming a larger share of their oil every year just to power their own country.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much else they can shift away from oil with, which they know is finite, besides nuclear power.
floripa
[quote]florianopolis wrote:
Unfortunately, there isn’t much else they can shift away from oil with, which they know is finite, besides nuclear power.[/quote]
I need to recheck my sources, but if I recall correctly, they’ve been offered assistance from various countries to build nuclear reactors that can’t be used to produce weapons grade uranium, and they’re not terribly interested, or at least, unwilling to stop research in their own more primitive (but weapon capable) designs.
But of course, if you were Iran, you’d want nukes too.
Question for those who are more knowledgeable about these things than I:
Since getting nukes, how are the relations between India and Pakistan compared to what they were before either of them had the bomb?
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
(1) How about bombing the nuke sites? I have nothing against the Iranian people, except the ones who fund the Iraqi insurgency or other such things.
(2) Why does Iran want nukes anyway? Just to alarm the West? Iran sits on the 4th (I think) largest oil deposits in the world.
(3) Why do political candidates have to ‘pass muster’? The Islamic Council decides who gets to run. That’s oppression.
(4) Funding insurgency by the USA in Iran (and various other places) is GOOD, since the USA is good.
(Alright, I put the last one in to fire up Lixy and Wreckless. )[/quote]
They havn’t built nukes yet. They have a civil nuclear program, and as scary as that is, bombing it will only make us look more like assholes. The last thing we wanna do right now is piss off more of the newest generation of Muslims.
We get it. They wanna be a nuclear nation. That doesn’t make bombing the hell out of them right.
Yeah, Iran isn’t exactly a spring of democracy. But as it IS better than most other places in the Middle East, ‘spreading democracy’ would be a BS excuse for military action.
And by making a joke to get a rise outta people, you completely ignore the issue. What’s the difference between US funded insurgents who use civilians for cover and Iranian funded insurgents using civilians for cover? The US isn’t evil, but we’ve done some evil things. Up until FDR and the Good Neighbor policy, we were ass holes in Latin America.
It helped us establish ourselves as a world power, and thrust the US on the world stage, but we did did some assholish things. And still in the modern era, we support insurgencies and revolutions when they go against people we don’t like and when it’s in our interest to do it.
Is this always wrong? No. Is it always right? Hell no.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
(2) Why does Iran want nukes anyway? Just to alarm the West? Iran sits on the 4th (I think) largest oil deposits in the world. [/quote]
Yet, they import a lot of oil to meet domestic demand. That’s because they lack the refining capacity to treat all the oil they need. Also, they may be interested in saving the planet by cutting carbon emissions.
quote Funding insurgency by the USA in Iran (and various other places) is GOOD, since the USA is good.
(Alright, I put the last one in to fire up Lixy and Wreckless. )[/quote]
I think that, deep down, you still believe that if others do it, it’s bad. But if the US does it, it had good reasons to act.
It’s sad.
[quote]snipeout wrote:
The reason western nations are unwilling to wage proper war at least in the middle east is due to the way these countries fight. They have an overt armed forces that we confront in regular battle, then they have covert “militias”.[/quote]
You can’t really blame the countries for using the only type of warfare that can work against a superpower. You can’t ask for a “fair fight” in a war.
No conventional army, anywhere on Earth, can stand against the might of the US Army. The only way to fight it effectively is to bog it down in a long series of guerilla skirmishes and wait until the US people tire of the whole thing and bring the troops home. That works because they know the US will not use any WMDs against civilian populations.
It seems that modern wars are fought more effectively with PR and through the media than on battlefields with high-tech weaponry.
[quote]pookie wrote:
I need to recheck my sources, but if I recall correctly, they’ve been offered assistance from various countries to build nuclear reactors that can’t be used to produce weapons grade uranium, and they’re not terribly interested, or at least, unwilling to stop research in their own more primitive (but weapon capable) designs. [/quote]
They weren’t offered squat! They were told to stop all activities before even sitting down on the negociations table. I think it’s a pretty disingenous offer.