Are Western Leaders Stupid or Malicious in Letting Iran Go Nuclear?
The most pressing question for the world today is which atomic state will be the second nation in history to use nuclear weapons. Will it be Iran in its much-publicized threat to “wipe Israel off the map” in a “single storm”? Will it be Israel in a preemptive strike using nuclear-tipped bunker-busters? Will it be a suicidal North Korea launching ballistic missiles at South Korea, Japan, Hawaii, or Washington State? The most likely nuclear prospect is that Iran, whether directly or by proxy, will assume that tainted honor, and that Israel will necessarily retaliate, becoming the third nation on the active nuclear roster.
Perhaps an equally pressing question is why the world’s major chanceries should have allowed the situation in the Middle East to deteriorate to such a degree that a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel has become a distinct possibility. The three largest members of the European Union, France, Germany, and Britain, have been engaged in negotiations with Iran since October 2003 without having made the slightest dent in Iran’s determination to acquire an operational nuclear arsenal — one, let us recall, that it has promised to use.
Sanctions have been feeble and ineffective. Timelines for resolution have been constantly moved forward while Iran marches inexorably toward nuclear capability. Russia and China are demonstrably abetting the Iranian project and the United States, especially under Barack Obama, in its timid and indeed pusillanimous response to the issue, behaves almost as a silent partner.
Aside from the Russians and the Chinese, who are practicing a particularly short-sighted version of realpolitik and whose intransigence is to be expected, the Americans intermittently and the Europeans consistently have implemented a policy toward the Middle East that appears entirely counterproductive, one that almost seems intended not to resolve but to exacerbate the state of affairs in the region. What they have put on the table is the road map to war.
The folly of bankrolling the Palestinians to the tune of billions of dollars to no beneficial effect, thereby contributing chiefly to offshore accounts, arms buildups, and a condition of professional mendicancy, appears not to have dawned on the ostensibly benighted donors. The international backing for UNRWA, whose real mandate is to perpetuate the manufactured refugee problem and to provide logistical and moral support to Hamas, continues apace. The ignorant or disingenuous attempt to portray the Palestinian and Islamic carnival of terror as motivated by despair, frustration, or exploitation only ensures that it will persist. The diktats leveled at Israel to compromise its security without reciprocity, to cede territory and shrink its borders to a state of indefensibility, to surrender its capital city, and to refrain from answering unprovoked attacks upon its civilian population, argue another agenda apart from the declared intention to establish conditions for a “lasting peace.” For it is patently undeniable that no Israeli concession has ever resulted in anything but escalating hostilities and mounting depredations. This is a fact that only the dead — or the brain-dead — are unable to perceive.
As for the ongoing “negotiations” and “dialogue” with Iran, these have led absolutely nowhere since day one and can no longer be taken seriously. Six years of utter futility would have had some impact on the Western mind — by which I mean primarily, though not only, the European mind — were it not bent to some other purpose. The Western reluctance to punish or incommode the Iranian mullahcracy for the violence it unleashed upon unarmed citizens protesting the 2009 rigged elections also speaks volumes. It seems reasonable to infer that Iran as it is presently constituted may serve a clandestine function.
Chirac, Schroeder, Robinson, Solana, Kouchner, Pillay, Ban, Carter, the Clintons, Zapatero, Stoltenberg, Calmy-Rey, Brown, Miliband, Blair, and now Obama, along with their ministerial colleagues and like-minded, highly placed officials, commissioners, civil servants, diplomats, and friends, cannot be casually described as congenital imbeciles. These are people with university degrees, with reasonably good IQs, with considerable experience in international relations, with a dexterous ability to manipulate language, and with an enviable shrewdness in managing their own fiscal and electoral interests. Yet in their economic and political policies, their diplomatic comportment, and their reading of the geopolitical text, they give every indication of being retarded from the egg.
There are only two ways of making sense of such apparent myopia and stupefaction. We can chalk up such self-defeating behavior to the perennial human disposition to pretend that a crisis we do not know how to handle isn’t really that critical and will somehow filigree for the best. This tendency has been aggravated of late, to quote Peter Sloterdijk in Terror from the Air, as “modernity’s campaign against the self-evident.” Or, no less saliently, we deduce that nobody can be that stupid and posit an ulterior design that comes to fruition through deception and misdirection.
In other words, our political Illuminati may cherish a shadowy blueprint of which the rest of us are obligingly ignorant. Daniel Pipes makes a similar point in his 1997 book Conspiracy, where he refers to the “double doctrine” of the Illuminati, namely, “that the rank and file learn of anodyne goals, while the supérieurs inconnus know the organization’s true, and quite different, inner secrets.” We happen to know who our supérieurs are but we may not know their goals. And it is at least tenable that those of us who are suspicious of the professed aims of our political masters may not be suffering from galloping paranoia.
I am now beginning to suspect that this second alternative may well be the agenda furtively in play. If the Palestinians, the Syrians, and Hezbollah fail to do the job of reducing Israel to inconsequence, Iran remains the default option. I am coming to believe that the actual strategy at work in the official European and Western mind may be to encourage by every covert means, including endlessly protracted and fruitless negotiations, a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran, thus getting rid of the perpetual nuisance which is Israel, appeasing the Arab world, and moving in to rebuild a devastated Iran for eventual, unencumbered oil and trade. The loss in immediate economic advantage would be offset in spades by future economic gains.
This scenario would explain why Israel has been repeatedly warned against initiating a preemptive attack on the Iranian nuclear sites, why an Iraq overflight by the IAF has been turned down, and why the Israeli request for the sophisticated military assets and hardware it would need to facilitate the mission has not been granted. This in the teeth of the manifest insanity of the mullahcracy, its theological conviction in the imminent return of the Hidden Imam who brings a universal conflagration with him, its development of long-range solid-fuel missiles, and its threat to visit nuclear holocaust upon the Jewish state. Our only hope is that the Israelis will nevertheless find a way to neutralize Iran’s nuclear factories and, once again, do not only themselves but the world a favor, as in 1981 when they bombed Saddam’s Osirak reactor and in 2007 when they demolished Syria’s al-Kibar nuclear installation. But their hands are being tied by the Western powers for whom Iran looks like it has become the discretionary accomplice, the recourse of choice.
It is no secret that a nuclear attack upon tiny Israel would either annihilate it totally or at the very least render it a non-factor on the world stage for any foreseeable future. But as Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the orgulous Iranian Expediency Discernment Council, has stated, Iran is sufficiently large and populous to survive the harm inflicted by an Israeli second strike and the Islamic world could well absorb the damage. Moreover, from the Western perspective, a nuclear convulsion in the Middle East would remain localized and the cost in world panic and plummeting markets, as I have suggested, would be gradually amortized by the removal of Israel and by a severely weakened Iran, thereby killing a gadfly and crippling a pterodactyl with one stony policy. I, for one, do not think a nuclear firestorm could be so easily contained. But for our political elites, scheming and devising in camera, it would be a calculated risk presumably worth pursuing, clearing the decks for a “new world order.”
Unlikely? Nightmaring in Technicolor? Think again. On the face of it, these are not stupid people and it is almost inconceivable that European and Western heads of state, government officials, plenipotentiaries, and diplomats could be so blindly unaware that this is the destination toward which their policies, decisions, and enactments are inevitably leading. Such a terminus should be glaringly obvious to even the most frivolous and inattentive of observers and certainly to anyone who has studied the tactics, statements, religious culture, and actions of the Iranian regime.
Historian of religion Emmanuel Sivan warns of precisely this danger in Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, a discussion of Shi’a belief and thought. In what is known as Twelver Shi’ite theology, God’s kingdom is to be brought upon earth by the Twelfth or Hidden Imam (or Mahdi), and “one should help precipitate its descent” (emphasis mine). The mullahs’ intention may well be to provoke the Mahdi’s arrival by kindling an act of apocalyptic violence, and Ayatollah Rafsanjani, as mentioned above, has no compunction against starting the nuclear ball rolling — even if his plan is only limited to Israel. Why is it so difficult to connect the dots that literally speckle both the Shi’a scripture and the geopolitical map? Unless, of course, I am wrong and our political authorities are indeed stupid people, abusing by their irresponsibility and obtuseness the positions to which they have been elected or appointed.
Our leaders, naturally, would vehemently object to this allegation of complicity in disaster, discounting it as merely unwarranted hyperbole, conspiracy mongering, blatant cynicism, or outright defamation. The reply to their indignation can be found in Matthew 7:20: “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Both explanations for current policy that I have put forward may appear implausible; notwithstanding, one of them must be right. In any case, should the event come to pass, we will all pay, whether for our leaders’ stupidity or for their canniness. Perhaps we are the stupid ones. After all, we put them there.
A well-written article that will have no impact on the Western leaders who have spread their blankets and opened their picnic baskets to watch the destruction of Israel. Israel is on her own and, if necessary, will turn Iran into a lump of charcoal in order to survive.
“Are Western Leaders Stupid or Malicious in Letting Iran go Nuclear?”
Is this a rhetorical question?
If not, then the answer is “yes.”
Why should we allow Hitler’s antagonism against the Jews drag the whole world into war?
Motivation is manifold. I would not discount the antisemitism of Western leaders but would add that they are vote grubbers saying what they think people want to hear; and I think it is easy to underestimate how, in an age ruled by White guilt, dominant opinion is all about doing nothing, insuring nothing can be done that could plausibly create more victims of Western “hegemony”. Paralysis and appeasement is the ruling imperative of the West, with a magical faith that this will somehow keep Utopian dreams alive.
Ever since the Iranian menace loomed large over Israel I was convinced that the western powers were preparing the ground for the world to ‘accept’ that Israel will either be cut down to ‘acceptable’ size by the Iranian Hitler, or would be so cowed by its arsenal that it would accede to all its demands, thus satisfying an enraged billion plus population.
One needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to accept the above paradigm, all the arrows are pointing in this direction.
At the end of the day Israel’s leaders must understand what is afoot too, and the expectation is that they want to live to see another day.This is why I believe they will pre-empt, just in the nick of time.
By the way, IF I am corect and the mullahs have been given the green light t get rid of Israel once and for all, my fervent expectation is that the ENTIRE Middle East becomes a wasteland for an incalculable period of time.In effect, the oil dreams of the western powers will be nothing but a nightmare for time immemorial.
In other words. Israel’s Samson Option should make sure that its ENTIRE nuclear arsenal is used to lay waste to every city, every person within its possible radius of accuracy. NOTHING, NO ONE should be left standing.
In a broader sense, what we see here is simply the latest iteration of the anti-Semitism which has festered in the Western and specifically “modern European” subconscious for centuries.
While the average man or woman in the street may not even think much about Judaism on a day-to-day basis, much less how he or she “feels about Jews”, the idea that Jews are somehow “at fault” for practically all the world’s ills is an old one that still persists today, especially in the minds of those who fancy themselves as “intellectuals”. Never mind “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” or “Mein Kampf”- look up “Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid” by Jimmy Carter. (Interestingly, in bazaars in the Muslim world, all three books are often seen stacked side-by-side at bookstalls; never mind that the first was a hoax, the second was written by a murderous dictator, and the third is the work of an idiot.) I’ve always been fascinated by the number of supposedly-smart people who believe that such a relatively small group is so powerful- and yet could not save itself from the Holocaust. (Except for those who deny that the latter ever happened, of course.)
It also interests me that when it comes to hating “Zionism” (one of those “codewords” which is used to conceal one’s true motive, as Voltaire once observed), those on the political left are as likely to indulge in such irrationalism as those on the extremist political right. The difference being that, on the “progressive” side, being “anti-Zionist” (i.e., anti-Semitic while claiming you’re just “demanding justice for the Palestinians”) is not considered an “extremist” position. In fact, it’s considered somewhere between just being “mainstream” and final, clinching proof that one truly has reached the highest possible level of enlightened multicultural consciousness.
Seen in this context, the seemingly irrational behavior of the various Western polities makes perfect, if disquieting, sense. Simply put, they want the following;
1. The “Jewish Question” dealt with once and for all;
2. A single “warlord” in the MidEast to deal with for oil; and
3. The ability to claim innocence and clean hands after the fact.
If Iran takes out Israel, you can be sure that most of the “wise heads” in the West will be publicly proclaiming that it is a “fait accompli”, hence there is no sense in our attempting to exact revenge. Privately, they will be telling each other that “our long nightmare is over”.
And a generation later, they’ll be telling our children, in the college classes, just what heroes they, our leaders of today, were in the bad old days of the early “one-and-twenty”, for “standing up for the downtrodden”- by looking the other way in the run-up to the second Holocaust.
(Unless they decide to deny the existence of that one, too. I call the odds six-five and pick ‘em.)
clear ether
eon
I think this author, David Solway, is reading way too much into the European and Liberal American minds when it comes to appeasing the Iranians. The bottom line is that even though all of the Europeans and the liberal Democrats here in the United States believe that something should be done about Iran, nobody wants to do anything if it means actually having to use force against Iran. Think about it. The only person who actively threatened to use force against the Iranians was George W. Bush and he was constantly being discredited and mocked by everyone, especially the Europeans. The Europeans wanted to “talk” to the Iranians. Well, they’ve been talking to them for six years now and have accomplished nothing. The Europeans wouldn’t dare threaten the Iranians with military force because it would actually mean they would have to back up their threats with force. Certainly can’t have that. The last thing liberal Democrats like Obama want is another war, so they’re not about to seriously threaten Iran with anything, especially since we already have two wars going in Iraq and Afghanistan. So both the Europeans and the liberal Democrats are probably hoping for Israel to do the dirty work for them. And if Israel should get incinerated in the process, well that would be one less thing to worry about in the ARAB world, right? Strength in foreign policy all boils down to the will to use force in order to back up your threats against another country. If Iran thinks you’re a paper tiger, you’re not going to get very far with them. The Europeans and Obama can afford to talk tough as long as they know the Israelis will do the fighting and the dying. The Western nations are playing with fire here and, in the end, they are the ones who are going to get burned.
My money is on Israel, before New Year’s Day.
By “western” I guess that means Obama? And the answer is Yes-to both.
But 90% of American Jews voted for Obama so I no longer care. If Israel means less to these ideologues and their worshipping of false demogogues of the left then they and Israel deserve what they get in the end.
I do however feel sorry for the great nation of Israel to have so many turn coats living here in the US calling themselves Jews.
Smart people are really good at deluding themselves. Look, there is no global conspiracy here. Just a lot of leaders who prefer ‘stability’ over action. Our leaders really don’t believe in the value of our civilization. In our post-modern world, no civilization is better or worse, just different so why should we fight to preserve it? The mullahs obviously haven’t been reading the French post modernists so they have no such moral ambiguities. I fear this will all end very badly.
“Are Western Leaders Stupid or Malicious in Letting Iran Go Nuclear?”
Our species, as a whole, is stupid to allow any nation to go nuclear.
Are Western Leaders Stupid or Malicious in Letting Iran Go Nuclear?
Mmmmmmmmm…… Paid, perhaps?
I think that the present leadership in the West seems to be always gauging the wind, which appears to blow to and fro causing them to sway back and forth never being able to stand firmly.
I think one day the wind will stop and where the West is leaning will be what we are judged on. When George W. Bush said that Israel has the right to defend itself, the world was silent for a brief moment before again the bickering resumed, always demanding Israel give up more and more of it’s rightful place on the earth. The truth of what he said was on firm footing, yet the wind began to blow again, back and forth, causing us to again be indecisive and doubtful, always with our finger in the air.
The odds against the survival of Israel has been unprecedented since ancient historical times, yet there it is, still existing, still reviled. It’s memory and it’s affect on the world is plain for all to see. I think more than the danger of Israel and the memory of Israel being destroyed, is the danger of this country forsaking what that tiny nation has contributed to our civilization and who we are. There is no doubt that our laws and our code of conduct has made us a more perfect union because of the word they so stubbornly set down despite the many who wished to destroy them and silence their voice.
It seems to me Iran is one of many, waiting and watching to see what direction we are leaning. As far as many of the people who live their, I think they have spoken, and the leaders in the world had no ears to hear so did not speak in support for them.
This administration seem more comfortable dealing with the dictators, than they do with their victims. They are appeasers and a comfort for them. GWB wasn’t and that is probably one reason he was so hated.
It is about timelines. Too many people insist on the silver bullet approach to deal with what bedevils us. Well, given that governments play a reactive/provocative role in this, is it surprising.
For governments turn as white as a ghost when they are forced to abandon plausible deniability. Well, because of frankly too many eggs in the basket favoured by Gramsci, Dewey, Russell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, et al., and not enough in the basket favoured by Mortimer Adler,
C.S. Lewis, et al.; we find ourselves in this wretched mess.
Two middle eastern countries decide to commit suicide by nuking each other causing hardship and death throughout the Islamic lands.
“What’s not to like?”
I think one area of thought that has been
ignored is that the mullahs are not as
fanatical in regards to their own persons
as some think. They are in power and they
like it. Problem is that the regime is not
as popular as it is made out to be(for them).
As such brutality keeps control at home and
nuclear weapons deter any intervention from
abroad. These weapons also free them from
forceful retaliation at home for the jihad
they encourage abroad. The communists taught
them well.
Perhaps the only way to dislodge these
weapons is to use nuclear weapons; however,
they know the Western mentality on the use of
these formed through years of Soviet propaganda.
Fortunately also you still have Israel to gauge
the sanity of the mullahs. I have no doubt
that Israel would use any appropriate measure
(while still respecting lives of innocent
civilians) in a first strike to neutralize
an imminent aggression. Nothing like having
a black sheep in the family to get the dirty
work done.
Do not ascribe to malice what can be
explained by stupidity, or simple
inexperience.
Truth is where you find it, even here:
6. Adina Kutnicki, Israel:
Holocaust: The (oil) Fire next time.
The refugees from the first Holocaust
offered the right of return to all Jews,
and the back of their hand to all Arabs,
even the Christian Arabs who could have
been their first allies in the region,
the first to adopt the western worldview
imported by the founders of Israel.
As a result, they have become another
middle eastern state, complete with the
imperative of blood vengeance.
16. Barry 0351: “What’s not to like?”
The radioactive and economic fallout
from the second Holocaust may claim a
great many victims in the rest of the
world, including you, Barry 0351.
People learn only from experience,
if they learn at all; After/If the
1st world recovers, it will set up
a CoDominium, whose first goal will
be to forcibly de-nuclearize the
2nd and 3rd worlds, followed by a
permanent ban on their acquiring
any weapon of mass destruction.
I think the roots of the Left’s inherent abhorrence of Jews and Israel, must go deeper than current political and economic issues. Before the dawn of history, God drew up out of the earth of that region a People and a Book that ever stand athwart the self-quided path to perdition of unredeemed mankind. As long as there are Jews bearing witness to the promise of the Covenant, the power of our leaders to take us unchallenged toward the slavery of a godless, man-centered destiny is confounded. The Left knows this in their bones and there is no price they will not pay to prevail.
“The refugees from the first Holocaust
offered the right of return to all Jews,
and the back of their hand to all Arabs,
even the Christian Arabs who could have
been their first allies in the region”
They offered the “back of their hand” or the palm of their hand as in STOP calling for the destruction of Israel and driving the Jewish People into the sea. I think the palm of their hand would be more accurate.
I think the Christians in the Middle East are busy practicing dhimmitude which requires most of their energy, so have little left for their Jewish counterparts. I imagine threat of death would also be a deterrent.
Israel has enough nukes for everybody. Are you paying attention France, England, Germany and America? Once they start throwing them who knows where they will land. This is sort of like Dr. Strangelove isn’t it? I wonder if Israel has a “doomsday device”.
I agree with Adina, Israel must adhere to a policy greater then MAD (mutually assured destruction). Western apathy towards us for the second time in less then a century shouldn’t be rewarded with a revised landscape & blossoming new conditions. Israel’s “Sampson Option” should echo in the minds of our leaders & their supérieurs that one can’t excavate in uninhabitable nuclear wastelands.
I agree with Adina, Israel must adhere to a policy greater then MAD (mutually assured destruction). Western apathy towards us for the second time in less then a century shouldn’t be rewarded with a revised landscape & blossoming new conditions. Israel’s “Sampson Option” should echo in the minds of our leaders & their supérieurs that one can’t excavate in uninhabitable nuclear wastelands.
To Oldguy; What an abssurd and ill-informed comment. It is such thinking and public comments that fan the flames of anti-Semitism. Israel has been accused of many iniquidies but never STUPIDITY. Israel’s goal is to survive and, to hopefully thrive in peace along with it’s Palestinian neighbors. It has abided by negotiation after negotiation and still the Arab/Palestinian leaders are hell-bent on the total destruction of the Jews and this tiny , magnificent country. Once their enemies accept that will NEVER happen, perhaps peace will replace their goal of death to Israel with an unfeigned attempt at peace.
My vote is for stupidity. American politicians play American politics. American style politics work in America, but no where else.
This produces a disconnect between US politicians and the way the rest of the world works. So it is inconceivable to an American politician that nukes would be used for ANY reason. The first rule of US politics is ‘Don’t kill voters’. While the Democratic party has managed to get the dead vote for quite a while, it is still a very small percentage of total voters.
Then you have MAD and the Soviet Union. The politicians think that since MAD worked with the Soviets, it will work with the Mad Dog Mullahs ( hereafter MDM). This is a matter of faith, not fact. There is no evidence supporting the theory that a death threat will deter a suicide bomber. MAD is a death threat. Kill us and our dying act will be to kill you. It is not logical that this would halt a suicide bomber.
I’m not getting my throng all wadded up over it. The MDM’s will not nuke fly-over America, where I live. They will nuke the places where those that think they should be allowed nukes live. So I see it as a self solving problem.
As far as Israel and the Jews go, Jews have been dying in job lots for thousands of years. They seem to keep breeding back. I suspect they will this time too. Prolly the next time also.
On a positive note, America got away with nuking Japan because we were to powerful for anybody to stop. the MDM’s can’t make that claim. If they ( the MDM) nuke Israel, Islam might not survive.
Israel has the capability to reduce the number of Muslims on this planet by 50%. Israel can also make the 5 pillars of Islam 4. Turn Mecca into overlapping glow-in-the-dark craters and there will be no place to make the Hajj to.
http://www.bloggybayou.com/2009/06/ya-say-you-want-revolution.html
One way out, but it would take some cajones from Obama and he doesn’t have any….
The danger of the Iranian nuke is the possibility (likelihood?) of passing it on to Hamas and Hezbollah. While the mullahs talk about wiping out Israel, they can plausibly deny that responsibility by facilitating the real self-immolaters in Gaza and Lebanon. For the latter groups, suicide in the cause would be much honored. I don’t think Iran is dumb enough to initiate the first strike but they have given ample evidence of their willingness to induce others. If Hamas and Hezbollah could have reached Tel Aviv with their missiles, they would have. And, if they could have been nuclear-tipped, so much the better. Under the circumstances, I’m not sure Israel has any choice. As to the Western powers, they are morally bankrupt…Israel may just be another Rwanda.
Western leaders are short-sighted (they will not be hanged ten years hence for their actions) and cowardly, in part because Iran has been clever at making decisive action difficult and politically costly. The media poisoning of the Vietnam War, aided by the USSR’s propaganda initiatives, has left the Western populaces feeling guilty about defending their allies and even themselves–our allies and our selves.
Only when we shake this off, only when the fashionable Left is discredited, can we fix this. In the meantime, we may see another great bloodletting to match the various Communist horrors and the Second World War.
On the other hand, if Obama’s plans can be made to collapse quickly enough and loudly enough, maybe the USA can wake from its dream of guilt, the dream that says that all we have to do is let others hurt us and the world will be a better place.
Are Western Leaders Stupid or Malicious in Letting Iran Go Nuclear?
They’re impotent, in stopping this or any other matter under the sun.
First it was el Baradai and the UN’S IAEA issuing countless voluminous reports on the Iranian nuclear agenda, is they are or is they isn’t ? The Iranians let the inspectors see what they wanted them to see, and the entire process of Iran holding up its obligations as a signatory to the NPT gradually became a joke.
Somebody has been consistently supplying Iran’s program from the getgo, I’d guess (gee) the Pakistanis proliferating know how under AQ Khan, the Norks have quite an exchange program with Iran, missiles & missile technology &, likely, nuclear support material, the Russians have actively been aiding & abetting, even building nuclear installations in Iran, the Chinese…probably even some more under the radar “western” countries have been selling the Iranians stuff for fun & profit.
When your own government is profiting, it’s real tough to get down and dirty and “care”.
The cretins running Iran increasingly sense the lack of resolve, the impotence.
Israel should just not worry about it.
When Obama allows the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons-
We promise to take care of your orphans and bury your dead.
I don’t like to say it but really I see no downside to Israel turning all of Iran into a glassed over wasteland. Now if the kids there could rid themselves of their sick parents and their ‘revolution’ it might be another story.
“Never Again’ was just a saying. The generation that understood it is all but gone. The ‘jews’ that are Israel today will not use the atomic option. They will go quietly into that evil night.
I don’t see it as an either/or proposition. Bush dropped the ball, Europe is sticking its head in the sand (again), and Israel is going to be left swinging in the wind. I’m sure she was comforted by Clinton’s promise to extend an ‘umbrella of protection’, just as I’m sure that no-one in Obama’s administration would ever, ever stoop to attach ‘costs’ for Israel to such protection. Like the Saudi ‘peace plan’, as one likely cost that comes to mind.
I hope that Israel strikes Iran, and strikes hard.
In 1983, the original movie “Dead Zone”
had a Psychic vision of a U.S. President
deliberately starting WW3=GTW, and saying
“Hallelujah ! The missiles are flying.”
The Loony Liberal Left projected that
desire to initiate the End Times onto
a Far Right Wing gun and bible clutcher.
In 2009, confronted with real world
Apocalyptic Millenialist Mad Mullahs,
they criticize the sum of all fears
as unrealistic, while doing everything
they can to make it happen.
I really hope we have some ABMs positioned
West of the Zagros mountains, with a backup
around Ar Rutbah; The recovered wreckage
should be enough to convince even the UN
that it is time for a regime change in Iran.
The real stupidity is on the part of the Russians. No sooner will Iran get sufficient nuclear arsenal than they’ll drag Russia into a nuclear war. After all, if they should trigger the Samson Option, Moscow will be on the target list for Israeli bombers. What happens next is Ezekiel 38.
Iran gets nukes and strikes Israel: Results in 2 million dead Israelis: then western world can watch the following 12 cities….Dispear on CNN Tehran; Baghdad;Riyadh;Damascus;Mecca;Amman;Beirut;Qom;
Dubai; Kuwait; Cairo all HISTORY
That is the SAMPSON OPTION and I would Think The Jews would not stop there with their over 200 nukes….Obama playin with heat…as in 3000 degrees
My answer to the basic question posed is a big, loud, unequivocal “STUPENDOUSLY STUPID!”
I had expected Israel to attack before Bush left office while they still had America’s support. I knew they could not count on squat from Barry. At least up to now, Israel has bought time to refine their attack plan, so any time now will do for me as the crazies in Iran, and backed by Russia, China and the NorKo’s, cannot be allowed to finish their developments. The Iranian program must be destroyed back to the starting point, scientists, every yard of poured concrete, and the loonatic leadership infecting that country.
I suspect that Israel will bide their time until the assembly process is well under way. At that time, they can strike and not just destroy the bombs being built, but will take out the cream of the crop in nuke technical personnel. I wonder how many Korean and Russian widows will be created.
Paul # 38 – You are very well on track…..
“The most likely nuclear prospect is that Iran, whether directly or by proxy, will assume that tainted honor, and that Israel will necessarily retaliate, becoming the third nation on the active nuclear roster.”
goodness. iran doesnt have the weapon, it is not likely to have it the very short term. any expert on the matter in the last 2-3 years has pointed out that it will take years for iran to get the weapon, if they end up getting the weapon.
in addition to that usually in life barking dogs dont bite.
if anyone is going to attack, it is israel. it is absurdly sad, that most of you guys including the guy who wrote this funny article have bought into the (politics of) fear. interesting that everyone assumes iran is going to wipe out israel based on words of some stupid leader who uses semantics for his own internal cause. is it words that cause wars by now? are we back to that stage of world’s history? words of iran combined with paranoia of israel?
pakistan is much more of an issue
the unsettled conflict in the middle east fostered by our own western nations not stopping it (which they so easily could) is more of an issue.
if we go on the way we did in the last decades another war will break out, but then it is us deserving exactly that, based on our semantics of fear, putting it upon all of us
To Adele; what an abssurd and ill-informed comment. It is such thinking and public comments that fan the flames of Jihad. Israel has been accused of many iniquidies but never COWARDICE.
The rest of your comment is just maudlin wishful thinking.
@32. Anonymous:
Your succinct sentence is the true statement on the Israelis of today. The Holocaust generation that smelled the stench of burning flesh were the valiant warriors – both men and women -, of the Jews: now they are all but gone.
I am not in position to make any judgment about events that might or might not happen in the future but the present is casting its ominous shadows over the future of that country.
If the American Jewish establishment is good a compass for what one might expect, then the needle is firmly settled on South and will stay there.
The success of an Israeli attack is by no means assured. And the possible unintended consequences of any attack on Iran are horrific to contemplate. Remember hos Saddam (with US help) attacked Iran during its revolutionary chaos and wound up in a six (or eight?) year unwinnable bloodbath.
# 43, biblio44-Your comparison to the war between Iraq and Iran is not applicable here.
Israel is not Iraq,it has VERY capable fighters on all fronts. Its IAF is as good as the USAF(in fact, they often win in mock dog fights against US pilots)and its navy has nuclear tipped arsenals.
Therefore, IF Israel decides to pre-empt, rest assured the blow back will be anticipated and will be dealt with as harshly as possible.
What is more likely to occur is the decapitation of the elite Iranian forces in tandem with the destruction of the major nuclear facilities, plus whatever it takes to fend off Iran’s proxies on our borders.
It is also highly likely that crater-like holes will be prevalent within several major points in Iran, not unlike the giant crater(indicative of a low yield nuclear bomb) left behind in the wake of the Syrian, nearly completed reactor.
This task before the Israeli forces is for keeps, and even Israel’s appeasement oriented leaders can smell the Jewish corpses if they do not do what they must to save our nation.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
#44: “Therefore, IF Israel decides to pre-empt, rest assured the blow back will be anticipated and will be dealt with as harshly as possible.”
I hope you’re right, but considering the botch we made of Iraq (Chief-of-Staff Andy Card said the war would cost no more than $100 million; Cheney said it would be over “in six months, tops”; Rumsfeld said we had enough troops, etc.) I have my doubts. Also, analysts say even a successful strike would set Iran back only two or three years. And in the meantime, a rogue nation like North Korea or a sympathetic Islamic nation like Pakistan might more openly support Iran’s efforts in the wake of what surely would be worldwide condemnation of Israel — especially if it uses nuclear-tipped bunker busters.
#44: “Therefore, IF Israel decides to pre-empt, rest assured the blow back will be anticipated and will be dealt with as harshly as possible.”
I hope you’re right, but considering the botch we made of Iraq (Chief-of-Staff Andy Card said the war would cost no more than $100 million; Cheney said it would all be over in six months, tops; Rumsfeld said we had enough troops, etc.), I have my doubts. But analysts say that even a successful attack would only set Iran back two or three years. And in the meantime – amid the world-wide condemnation of Israel, especially if it uses nuclear-tipped bunker busters – a rogue nation like North Korea or sympathetic Islamic nation like Pakistan might openly increase support for Iran’s nuclear program.
#46, biblio44. Setting back Iran’s programs by 2-3 years would not be the only result of a successful Israeli attack. I think that the effort would include decapitating the Mullahs, too. BTW, a successful attack on the construction site where Iran’s bombs are being constructed could also kill off the top echelon of scientists if properly timed. The ‘support’ by NK or Pakistan is probably already in place and would make no practical difference.
“goodness. iran doesnt have the weapon, it is not likely to have it the very short term. any expert on the matter in the last 2-3 years has pointed out that it will take years for iran to get the weapon, if they end up getting the weapon.”
Are those ‘experts” the same one that were caught by surprise when India, then Pakistan, then North Korea built and tested a bomb? Or are they a different set of experts?
FWIW, Iran tested a bomb last year. They tried to hide it among a series of earthquakes and almost got away with it.
One bomb is not a threat to the Great Satan. 100 Bombs is not a threat to the Great Satan. The Soviets estimated it would take 800+ bombs to destroy America. Factoring in their problem with reliability, that is how the SALT arrived at 1200 warheads.
The Soviets figured that 2/3 of their weapons would reach their target and function. The USA thought 10% would be closer to the truth. Plus it would only take 1 nuke to cause regime change in the Soviet Union. Nuke Moscow and there is no more Russia. Just like the Soviet Union. Turn Pootie into a radioactive cloud and it will free the Russians to find another tyrant. Nuke Washington and the Governors appoint new Congress critters as needed. Somebody down the list takes over and we keep going until the next election. The true power of Democracy is that Presidents are easy to replace. In a legal manner.
China has the same problem. Take out the upper leadership and all the petty criminals become warlords. In a few decades, one would fight his way to the top.
Patience, our Iranian brothers,
your strategy is working, and
in a year or two, the issue will
be resolved without recourse to
nuclear weapons.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSN0213354020090802