should the West invade and/or bomb the fuck out of Iran?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NAZ20061001&articleId=3361

If a peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear problem is to be found, it is time for Washington to plan for war. Diplomats cannot break the current impasse simply by trying more aggressive diplomacy. Tehran will only change course if it believes it faces a credible threat for defying the will of the world.

...

Indeed, the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East may be underestimation of Western resolve. On Aug. 27, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said of kidnapping Israeli soldiers that, had his militia known how fierce Israel's retaliation would be, "we would definitely not have done it."

You see, the main problem with diplomatic efforts these days is that America and Israel are not militaristic enough.

This, however, is not quite the picture of a profoundly capable Iranian military:

Video of Iran's test missile called fake
Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, September 10, 2006

(09-10) 04:00 PDT Washington -- U.S. military intelligence has determined that a video released by the Iranian government purporting to show a test of a new submarine missile is bogus, three Pentagon officials confirmed.

The Iranians released the video Aug. 27, one of a series of steps the Tehran government has taken in recent months to display its military potency in the midst of a confrontation with the United States and other Western nations over its nuclear ambitions.

The test apparently was designed to intimidate Iran's neighbors in the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which are U.S. allies and important oil-producing countries, regional experts said. The video showed what appeared to be a successful test of a submarine-fired missile that flies above the water's surface to attack ships.

But U.S. intelligence officers analyzed the plume of smoke from the missile and determined it matched a video of an earlier Chinese test.

"It's the identical launch," a Pentagon official said. "The plume, everything, is the same."

U.S. officials have been unable to confirm whether any test took place during the Iranian exercise. They say they are certain, however, that the video of the purported test is not of an Iranian sub in the Persian Gulf.

U.S. intelligence agencies have been closely tracking developments in Iran in an attempt to monitor Tehran's efforts to build up its nuclear capabilities as well as its conventional military capacity. The surveillance efforts are part of what experts see as a strategic contest of increasing complexity, with the two nations working to decipher each other's motivations and intentions.

The purported missile test, which was announced by Iran's official news agency a day before the video was released, was made public days before an Aug. 31 deadline set by the United Nations for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment.

The test video was broadcast on Iranian state television and picked up around the world, including by CNN and Fox News.

What has American military officers scratching their heads is why the Iranians would see the need to release a bogus video.

"They have enough things they can do to frighten people, I don't know why they would have to fake something," a senior defense official said. "They are frightening enough as it is without faking things."

Iran said it was conducting the missile test as part of a summer war games exercise in the Persian Gulf that began Aug. 19. U.S. military officials believe such exercises are aimed primarily at intimidating gulf countries.

"It is like when the missiles went through Red Square in front of the Politburo," a military official said. "Their MO is to put on a media blitz."

The officials asked that their names not be used because the Defense Department had decided not to publicize the discovery of the bogus test. Taking on the role of superpower tattletale could exacerbate already tense relations, or potentially provoke more, real tests.

Pentagon officials said Iran possessed several Russian Kilo-class submarines, the kind of sub shown in the Chinese video. Iran's growing naval capability is real, said the senior official, which is what made the use of bogus video seem particularly "clumsy."

"They do have a serious military capability," the official said. "They are a growing military problem
===
Years ago, it was often said you could tell operations were imminent when lots of orders for pizza came out of the Pentagon late at night.

I wouldn't bet the Iranian navy or air force could survive much beyond a few days, if that, against an activated Global Strike plan which, it's my understanding, doesn't particularly require forward deployments. The idea is to be able to hit anyone very hard anywhere on the globe within hours of receiving the order.

However, what comes after that is pretty unknowable.

Reminds me of the parts of Dr Strangelove where George C. Scott as the Pentagon general in the warroom is advising the president to launch a full scale attack. "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed," he says, or something to that effect.

Then there's dialog later in the movie to the effect that the enemy talks big but doesn't have the know-how of our boys flyin' the B-52's.

I like this one.

However, what comes after that is pretty unknowable. "

this strategy sure worked wonders in Iraq didn't it. fucking people.

uh don't american ships deploy to the persian gulf all the damn time? big deal.
-- hstencil (hstenc!...), October 3rd, 2006 2:05 PM. (hstencil) (link)

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otm -- wonkette ain't going to break anything this big anyway.
-- the classic sounds of the seventh of january 1998 (miltonpinsk...), October 3rd, 2006 2:07 PM. (Enrique) (link)

I think there's more to this than Wonkette ruminating over a deployment to the middle east.

Wasn't it Richard Armitage who told Musharraf we would bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age? Now there was a country that even had atomic bombs. And there's Musharaff on "60 Minutes" -- an entertaining fellow -- saying "one does what one has to do for the nation . . . " Which is smile, make nice, and wait a few years to go back to business as usual.

that was jon. way to beef it on his birthday, dude.

As much as I'm inclined to agree with you, I don't. What we have not done well for 40 years is use principled geopolitical reasoning in concert with our allies to achieve discreet and reasonable goals with a mixture of military might, moral and economic leverage, and long-term planning. 'We' have also been notoriously bad at selling our foreign policy at home and abroad, so, of course, the executive branch tends to lie about what they're up to a good deal which now has an incontrovertibly proven record.

The naval build-up seems like a total strawman. Haven't we had a major naval presence in the Persian Gulf since the '80s?

I would think the build-up (if it is actually a build-up) is a move to put diplomatic pressure on Iran.

xpost

http://www.radioblogger.com/images/serpentegg.jpg

If the Republicans want to continue playing the 'party of national defense', they'll do well to re-think their positions on the politicization of the military. It's analagous to their mistake on the separation of church and state. The military need to be accorded the respect and the leeway to explain how military means can be used to achieve foregn policy goals nad when they're coerced into playing too much of a role in the formation of said goals, we end up with disasters.

The US military should be viewed as good at destroying things. It's what it's designed for and it can perform the duty mercilessly, as we've all seen. Achieving geopolitical ends, sometimes, yes. The first Iraq war. Serbia.

It can be assumed the Pentagon has a number of flavors of plans to demolish Iran's conventional military, its heavy weapons, its command structure, and its ability to wage war with that instrument.

Then Iran can foster terrorism or engage in asymmetrical efforts, guerilla war. Ship Katyushas here and there. Contribute to the bad publicity and rep we already have. Try to sabotage oil production in regional neighbors.

I'm skeptical that Iran could do much initially against the continental United States. While the US playbook certainly has nothing in it beyond destruction of the enemy's ability to do anything with its conventional military, I would tend to not be as generous as others in describing the options open to Iran after that. They would have a thin set of realistic plans, too.

Nothing fancy in this. Many here could figure out the basics scribbling on the back of envelopes.

No rational leader would look forward to or welcome their country being hit by a US strategic air assault. But stupidity, on both sides, gets its way a lot with regards to history.

I agree. The synchronistic and complementary use of hard and soft power for 'diplomacy by other means' is not an exact science. For example, I always felt that the U.S. was justified in going into Afghanistan to extirpate the Taliban government. I also felt that with the approval of the U.S., the involvement of Nato forces and a generous and committed policy of aid and development at a level we have not seen, we could have shown the world and much of the Muslim world that we were not self-centered, ADD-afflicted, 'crusaders'. If we had adequate troop strength to allow major U.S. and foreign aid to rebuild roads, schools, electrical grids, water-treatment plants, etc... and our outreach to the Pashtuns was flavored by more considerable redevelopment efforts, our whole standing in the world might have changed and the salafists might not have the same amount of suasive traction that they have in the Muslim world. I could be wrong about all that and none of that is to say that Hussein's constant disregard for the U.N. and the murderous intent of terrorists wouldn't have been very much on the national agenda but our intent and behavior would have been seen as measured, more ethical, and more of a steady long term one than the thrashing frenzy of a wounded beast.

I've said before that being in Iraq and Afghanistan puts Iran in the position of being squeezed in between two fronts making them less tractable. We need to decide if our opposition to their obtaining nuclear weapons is more because of the erosion of IAEA (in which case our attitude toward India was counter-productive) or because of the nature of their regime (in which case, maybe it wasn't). All I can say, is that if we play this like we played it against Iraq, we're admitting to an immense impotence and lack of finesse.

http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2008/07/irans-fake-miss.html

LOOOL SONNED

and if you don't click the link it is about more than their shitty photoshop. Also has funny photo.

Is there anything that can't be improved by photoshopping in a humorous picture of a cat? I think not.

Pizza Hut is like that ultra-hardcore gagging porn -- once in a long while you think you want it but then you remember again how repulsive it is

-- Hurting 2, Monday, July 14, 2008 10:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/missiletest.jpg

lol i heard ppl were doing their own

UK military steps up plans for Iran attack amid fresh nuclear fears

Iran is crazy right now because of the power struggle between Khamenei and Ahmedinejad

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137038/jamie-m-fly-and-gary-schmitt/the-case-for-regime-change-in-iran

The Case For Regime Change in Iran
Go Big -- Then Go Home
By Jamie M. Fly and Gary Schmitt
January 17, 2012

smh

can't even bear to read that, or really even talk to anyone who would think that invading iran is a good idea

Schmitt's bio says he works at that right-wing thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that Iran “had its own tools” to respond to such threats and that it would use them “if necessary,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported.

“The threat of war would disfavor the United States itself,” he said, adding that war with Iran “would be 10 times worse for the interests of the United States” than it would be for Iran, he said.

“Americans say all options are on the table, even the option of military strike,” he said, according to a Reuters translation of his televised remarks. “Such threats show that they have no sufficient discourse against Iran’s logic and discourse.”

No sufficient discourse against Iran's logic and discourse.

in slavish imitation:

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/03/iran_is_the_root_of_all_evil/singleton/

is this a good time for a patriotic, non-islamic iranian-american to apply for a job with the us intelligence community? would that be a power move?

Zoroastrian?

Yeah the "Iran Al-Qaeda Terror Plot" headlines of late have been giving me the queasy feeling of becoming aware that I'm old enough to have heard this one before and yet it will probably work again.

baha'i

i'm going to answer my own q by saying i'm pretty sure getting a job w/ in the intelligence community would require moving to some godawful place (ie outside california) but maybe somebody (tombot?) knows more about this than i do?

How's your Farsi?

getting a job w/ in the intelligence community would require moving to some godawful place

Virginia?

farsi is fluent but i am illiterate

I'd rather see better translations in the news media. In the intelligence community your work will likely be ignored if you don't provide the politically approved translation.

is this a good time for a patriotic, non-islamic iranian-american to apply for a job with the us intelligence community? would that be a power move?

oh hell yeah. how are you with battery cables?

battery cables??