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

oh, and hi blount.

by cruise missile? where will they get one from? north korea? how will the north koreans actually get it to iran? by train through china?

by tactical bomber? oh wait, the iranians don't have one, just a fleet of outmoded fighters from the late 70s.

i suppose they could load it into their WWII-era diesel submarine (aka the iranian submarine fleet) and putt-putt their way around cape horn into the mediterranean, then blow up off the coast of haifa or something ... just kidding.

dirty bomb? i suppose, but wouldn't it be cheaper and easier for terrorists to buy warhead material from disaffected chechens or something?

North Korea has longer range missile technology, including ICBMs in development. I don't think North Korea would sell a whole missile, but rather the know-how and complex parts. That could be smuggled by ship.

But the real issue is the destabilizing effect a nuclear Iran would have on the region. Israel would be desperate. Saudi Arabia would feel highly uneasy. Iraq would be further divided. Etc. etc.

http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/Missile/3367_3395.html

It's pretty clear that Iran has the missile technology to hit Israel.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40144000/gif/_40144948_iran_missile2_map203.gif

But saying that doesn't mean you think the country should be invaded. (Anyway, Israel will do it no matter what you think, if someone else doesn't.)

what, not even in a post-holocaust agrarian society peopled by adults with the minds of children?

hum. never heards of that film. seems interesting. too bad it's unavailable (except for those ready to pay 150$ for a vhs !).

Iran can't build the engines themselves, but North Korea is perfectly willing to sell them.

Clearly Iran is at least a few years away from being able to nuke Israel , and it's hard to imagine why they would. But everything I've read indicates that a nuclear Iran with advanced missile technology is just a matter of time, Iran's desire, and continued help from China, Russia, and North Korea.

it is the single bleakest thing i have ever seen. absolutely fucking astonishing.

and continued help from China, Russia

this seems to be key at the moment: the "talks" this week seem to have been very much about putting pressure on those two ... although from what i understand russia isn't exactly enamoured by the latest nuclear developments either.

behavior, it would have no incentive for restraint.

What about a pre-emptive strike of our own, like the Osirak raid? The problem is that Iran's nuclear program is now much more advanced than Iraq's was at the time of the raid. Already the U.S. government has no way of knowing exactly how many sites Iran has, or how many it would be able to destroy, or how much time it would buy in doing so. Worse, it would have no way of predicting the long-term strategic impact of such a strike. A strike might delay by three years Iran's attainment of its goal—but at the cost of further embittering the regime and its people. Iran's intentions when it did get the bomb would be all the more hostile.

Here the United States faces what the military refers to as a "branches and sequels" decision—that is, an assessment of best and second-best outcomes. It would prefer that Iran never obtain nuclear weapons. But if Iran does, America would like Iran to see itself more or less as India does—as a regional power whose nuclear status symbolizes its strength relative to regional rivals, but whose very attainment of this position makes it more committed to defending the status quo. The United States would prefer, of course, that Iran not reach a new level of power with a vendetta against America. One of our panelists thought that a strike would help the United States, simply by buying time. The rest disagreed. Iran would rebuild after a strike, and from that point on it would be much more reluctant to be talked or bargained out of pursuing its goals—and it would have far more reason, once armed, to use nuclear weapons to America's detriment.

Most of our panelists felt that the case against a U.S. strike was all the more powerful against an Israeli strike. With its much smaller air force and much more limited freedom to use airspace, Israel would probably do even less "helpful" damage to Iranian sites. The hostile reaction—against both Israel and the United States—would be potentially more lethal to both Israel and its strongest backer.

A realistic awareness of these constraints will put the next President in an awkward position. In the end, according to our panelists, he should understand that he cannot prudently order an attack on Iran. But his chances of negotiating his way out of the situation will be greater if the Iranians don't know that. He will have to brandish the threat of a possible attack while offering the incentive of economic and diplomatic favors should Iran abandon its plans. "If you say there is no acceptable military option, then you end any possibility that there will be a non-nuclear Iran," David Kay said after the war game. "If the Iranians believe they will not suffer any harm, they will go right ahead." Hammes agreed: "The threat is always an important part of the negotiating process. But you want to fool the enemy, not fool yourself. You can't delude yourself into thinking you can do something you can't." Is it therefore irresponsible to say in public, as our participants did and we do here, that the United States has no military solution to the Iran problem? Hammes said no. Iran could not be sure that an American President, seeing what he considered to be clear provocation, would not strike. "You can never assume that just because a government knows something is unviable, it won't go ahead and do it. The Iraqis knew it was not viable to invade Iran, but they still did it. History shows that countries make very serious mistakes."

So this is how the war game turned out: with a finding that the next American President must, through bluff and patience, change the actions of a government whose motives he does not understand well, and over which his influence is limited. "After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers," Sam Gardiner said of his exercise. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work."

But for the purposes most likely to interest the next American President—that is, as a tool to slow or stop Iran's progress toward nuclear weaponry—the available military options are likely to fail in the long term. A full-scale "regime change" operation has both obvious and hidden risks. The obvious ones are that the United States lacks enough manpower and equipment to take on Iran while still tied down in Iraq, and that domestic and international objections would be enormous. The most important hidden problem, exposed in the war-game discussions, was that a full assault would require such drawn-out preparations that the Iranian government would know months in advance what was coming. Its leaders would have every incentive to strike pre-emptively in their own defense. Unlike Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a threatened Iran would have many ways to harm America and its interests. Apart from cross-border disruptions in Iraq, it might form an outright alliance with al-Qaeda to support major new attacks within the United States. It could work with other oil producers to punish America economically. It could, as Hammes warned, apply the logic of "asymmetric," or "fourth-generation," warfare, in which a superficially weak adversary avoids a direct challenge to U.S. military power and instead strikes the most vulnerable points in American civilian society, as al-Qaeda did on 9/11. If it thought that the U.S. goal was to install a wholly new regime rather than to change the current regime's behavior, it would have no incentive for restraint.

oh great. thanx for the link ! i'm gonna order it right now... (should be good to watch it with some junk food !).

Turkey is kind of an Israeli ally, so they might turn a blind eye to Israeli overflights, though that would mean their reaping the hurricane of Iranian vengeance.

and anyway, is israel that apocalyptic? i would think not.
m.

israel wouldn't have to use nukes.

Clearly Iran is at least a few years away from being able to nuke Israel , and it's hard to imagine why they would. But everything I've read indicates that a nuclear Iran with advanced missile technology is just a matter of time, Iran's desire, and continued help from China, Russia, and North Korea.

They've certainly tested it, but the success of those tests is an entirely different story. There's been six tests, with only half of them attaining any degree of success. Still, I think it gives enough reason for Israel to bomb all the bomb plants and probably a few missle facilities too. I've said many times that I don't see the US doing it (and we certainly won't invade anytime in the next 10-20 years, if ever), but Israel is different.

well... what other routes could they take? Through Turkey or through Saudi Arabia, I reckon. Again, depends on range. I've lost track, do either of these American allies have US fighter planes based in them? Would either of their own air forces have the capability of taking down any Israeli bomber planes en route to Iran?

I wouldn't be surprised to see them fly over Saudi Arabia. They're not going to fly in a straight line anyhow.

They have a pretty good idea where all the facilities are. Even if they miss just one, destroying 4 or 5 others is gonna put a huge dent in the Iranian plan to build nuclear weapons. That alone will probably delay it about 3-4 years. Were Iran to respond with a nuclear weapon (I can't imagine them building a big stockpile in the next 12-18 months), what's left of Israel would flatten Iran within an hour.

Its not like Israel is the size of Rhode Island. Again, it comes down to whether or not Israel would feel comfortable that Iran has no nuclear weapons and lacks the capability to use those weapons against Israel, and right now, I think most folks feel pretty strongly that they do not (unless they've stolen them from Russia).

Invasion is insane. The gains from doing so just aren't worth it, even if there's some mild (and its just that, mild) justification. Bombing nuclear facilities? I'm a little less opposed to that. Basically only if all the diplomatic means have been exhausted. I can certainly understand why people might ask, "how come the Iranians can't have nuclear missles and we can?," but by the same token, I don't think its bright to allow them to develop a nuclear program just to follow a personal philosophy in that way. Its not an easy question to answer, and realistically, no one should try to reduce geopolitics to yes/no or true/false questions.

The article Ned posted up top is pretty damn good, though I'm not sure how we can automatically infer that the Iranians have lost any hope of making Iraq a sister state.