gucchipiggy on "Iran: prepared for the worst"

gucchipiggy — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:44:44 +0000

While an awful lot of attention seems to be devoted to the Iranian's machinations, very little seems to be given to the possible legitimacy of their stance. I, personally, would like to see nobody possess NWs, but I fail to see how Iran having them is any more dangerous than the US, GB, China, Israel etc having them. Examine the arguments against: 1. Iran is not a democracy: Well, no, not a western liberal democracy, but still one of the most democratic states in the region. Easily as democratic as russia, far more democratic than china, and not based upon apertheidesque political exclusion like Israel. 2. It would spark a regional arms race: Perhaps; but realistically, only Egypt and Saudi Arabia have the neccessary clout and wherewithall to compete (Egypt have just announced a large, multi-reactor enrichment program, easily eclipsing Iran's own, with no international outcry depite terrible despot in charge and awful HR record). Considering that the foundation of internationa security, according to the US, for the last 50 years hjas been nuclear deterrence nad MAD, why should this not apply to Muslims? if such a theory kept the ideologically opposed and mutually hateful US/Commie fracture Cold, why can it not succeed in pacifying the Muslim/Israel/US fractures? 3. Iran wants NWs to destroy Israel: Poppycock. This presumes the Iranian leadership is entirely irrational and self-destructive. Any objective study of the Islamic Republic shows them to be shrewd, resilient and astute. Israel has one of the largest nuclear arsenals on earth, and could flatten the entire persian gulf in a second strike with no fear of reprisals. So why the dogmatic opposition to Iran enriching uranium? Because then Iran would be (like the big 6) immune from invasion, secure, and in possession of a voice that needs to be listened to; which is the great US fear. They want to able to commandeer Iran's resources at some stage in the future, NWs would totally preclude this, as well as forcing Israel to back down in its horrendous bullying of its own population and its neighbours. Basically the US wants regional hegemony over an area thousands of miles away, and that is being seen as a more legitimate national aspiration than enriching fissile material. I know which is the bigger crime, and which will likely kill more innocents

danielet on "Iran: prepared for the worst"

danielet — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:15:00 +0000

Before dying, a top CIA source told me that the Cuban Missiles Crisis was a fantastic double hoax in that Khrushchev didn't dare install the nuclear warheads and JFK knew it. Then came the American genius in JFK letting the Russians get away with it as a down-payment towards an end of the Cold War that Nixon brought midway, splitting the Chicoms and Soviets forever, and Reagan brought to a conclusion by making nuclear assault arms irrelevant by forcing the Soviets (then ahead of the US in ABMs) to struggle to match the US R&D in anti-missile systems. The devil, of course, is in the details. But American genius was evident in every president since Truman to save America's global leadership and greatness, despite numerous stupidities. Now, the Iran Crisis makes no sense to me, just as 9/11 had not. First of all, it seems to me, 9/11 was totally OUR fault in that we had long been in the habit of breaking two firm rules established in the 1970s when we suffered a spree of skyjackings: (1) the pilot's cabin is to be made impenetrable,(2) two sky-marshals are to be on every airliner. On 9/11, four airplanes were taken over, functionally, inside of 10 min. That means that the one point on which there was no hitch was in the takeover of the pilot's seat, in all four cases. As one American Airlines Exec had the gall to say on 9/12 in order to excuse the open pilot's cabin door: The people who pay so much for a First Class ticket have the right to see that someone is flying this thing. And since then, I have seen little discussion of the access to the pilot's cabin recklessly provided, not even in the 9/11 Commission's report. Perhaps Corporate America was then united on saving a couple of airlines from the liability of violating the law. But the real consequence of disregarding this issue is that we created another monster to slay: Islamic Terrorism, far more monstrous in our collective imagination-- fed by a homeland security bureaucracy of "terrorism experts" dependent on that fear of "Islamo-fascism," whatever that is, for house and car payments and kids' tuition. And indeed, as with Communism, we fed the beast and made it bigger and stronger directly with our mindless reactions to it, often killing innocent civilians. Worst of all, by invading Iraq, according to an alQaeda site, we demonstrated our total dependence on Mideast oil. Cognizant of the importance of our dependence to its strategy, the site ordered all Jihadists not to touch the oil wells with explosives, for they will be critical to both the struggle to Sharia and its later economic survival. In so doing, they gave away the maximalist perimeter of the Islamic World as end goal to their grand strategy. As for America, several alQaeda sources predicted (as well as Russian and Chines sources), the Iraq War would expose America's upper limit in its capacity to fight Islamic Terrorism. And indeed it has-- proving that manpower is its weak point, and so it is forced to waste its economy's finances seeking security both in terms of external and internal combustion (ie. getting blown up and having fossil fuel for its engines). So, the very alQaeda we decimated in Afghanistan has led a Sunni Resistance against us that kept us from materializing our oil bonanza enticements to the "Coalition of the Willing," rendering them all gradually unwilling, to the point where we fight alone, stubbornly seeking to control Iraq's oil through the PSA Law we are trying to impose on all Iraqis. But for the last six years we have known no American genius as we had in sparks at the necessary moment from Truman to Clinton. All we had is neuropathologic perceveration with the pedal to the metal until our engine (the US Army) began to seize. Instead of imposing our PSA Law, we created a Shia takeover of Iraq so that both the Saudis and Israelis that originally convinced Bush (through Rumsfeld and Cheney) to remove Saddam, became convinced that with friends like the US you don't need enemies. The Iraqi Sunnis realized that, ridding themselves of the alQaeda sent "foreign Jihadis," they could get the US to undermine the Shia regime which the US created. But Iran's diplomacy has brought all the Shia factions together in reaction to American attempts to split them up and exterminate them one at a time through assassinations, as taught to do by the Israelis. Now, as the power in the Iraqi government, the Shi'ites will not permit the efforts by Bush's pal Hunt to force a PSA relationship with the Kurdish 20% of Iraq's oil, nor will they allow the US to touch the 80% of Iraq's oil in the Shia south. To make things worse for Bush, the Maliki government of Iraq has announced that it will not permit renewal of the UNSC resolution that legalizes US occupation of Iraq; that when on December 31st, 2008 the resolution expires, the Maliqi Government will then retake total sovereignty of its nation and that the PSA Law will never be passed. So, whereas Bush hoped that all the costs it blood and treasure he caused would be forgotten as he comes to be remembered as the president who, in the last moment, pulled off the fill-er-up of your SUVs with cheap oil, his dominion in Iraq will only end up with a $3 trillions bill and thousands of our best and most motivated troops dead or injured, while Iraq becomes a Shia nation allied to Iran. To prevent total failure of his presidency in the war on terror-- because he exposed the upper limit of our power, our maximum capacity in war, inadequate manpower spread so thin that it can be slowly eroded by an endless supply of shahids (as the Soviets had in their own case discovered in Afghanistan) Bush will have no choice in order to prevent an end to the game than to attack Iran, once again singing his WMD "mushroom cloud" tune. But as Bush attacks Iran, he in no way improves our greatest weakness: manpower, for no one will accept a draft so that we can hold on to Iraq's oil. On the contrary, our attack of Iran will multifold increase the availability of willing shahid manpower for the Islamist Jihad-- Shia and Sunni. The weak Saudi leaders may now have influence over the Iraq Sunni resistance, but once the US gives signs of prolonged occupation and Iraq becomes an extended battlefield, they will return to alQaeda's side, accepting hundreds of thousands of "foreign" Sunni volunteers. Zawahiri deliberately betrayed Zarqawi's position to US forces in June 2006 because he could no longer tolerate Zarqawi's obsessive hate for Shia. Yet, it is now, a year and a half later, clear that if the US attacks Iran it will be fighting ALONE a UNITED Islamic world at the very moment when Bush is on his way out and desperately trying to force a fait accompli on his Democrat replacement. But I would bet all the cash I have that, instead of that, he will face a last minute impeachment and possible conviction by the Senate. By then, Podhoretz will be too frightened to show off his Medal Of Freedom, given him by Bush in 2004 when he became the chief neocon mouthpiece for "World War IV." What is needed now is another American moment of genius; and if it should somehow soon come from the Bush Administration, then one would have to admit that he was truly inspired by God, for Bush certainly lacks that je ne sais quoi that made so many of his presidential predecessors pull success out of the jaws of failure. What could he do now? Bush could simply do nothing. He could disregard Iran's prospective puny nuclear capacity and let the chips realign themselves. The Saudis have used the US to come to dominate Islam. Khomeini challenged them, so a string of US presidents, all beholding to Riyadh for their personal fortunes and their presidential libraries, sent American soldiers to fight and die in the Arab deserts. Israel became their duped cover, because it cheered on every one of these presidents, hoping against hope, that Americans were enough ruled by "dumb goyim," as the neocons assured them, to eventually take out the Iranian mullahs. It was a perfect storm, thought the neocons (even to the point of offering the Saudis silence of slanderous anti-Arab propaganda if they invest in neocon businesses), In that way, figured the neocon con men, Israel would get what it wants: removal of the Islamic regime in Tehran while they add a couple of billions to their portfolios. But Israelis closer to the crisis came to see it all quite differently. As so ably demonstrated in Trisa Parsi's excellent new book: "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States," http://tinyurl.com/2ysxll Israel knows the mullahs well, for TO THIS DAY, it has been deep in political and economic relations with them (as with all other Islamic states-- quietly but critically important to mutual benefit). A destruction of the Tehran regime can only perpetuate US presence in the Mideast, hence Israel's domination of the region. But that is a short sighted Likudnik World War IV-ist view. There is an alternative quite popular in Israeli security circles: No Israeli intelligence, security, academic or military circles believe that the Iranian nuclear capacity-- if it ever comes to be-- would be meant for anything but as a deterrent. But then that puts the Sunni Arabs in a desperate need for a mutual deterrence of their own. Unfortunately for the Arabs, none of them--INCLUDING THE SAUDIS-- can afford one. And so, that leaves them to become totally dependent on the only nuclear power in the region, Israel. For its part, Israel is a failed state. Netanyahu, when Minister of Finance, promised to make Israel independent of any US aid. He totally failed because Israel is a welfare state in which, according to the JERUSALEM POST, you can make more on welfare than from a paycheck. Israel has no bargaining position economically because it has no open economic relations with its neighbors. You might say that it really only serves as a big campus in that millions of young Israelis, once educated, leave for good jobs in the West. Israel is bleeding a youth aliyah in the wrong direction. The Israeli shekel is TOTALLY supported by the US dollar. But as the dollar loses value in the global economy, Israel's only real export industry-- deadly weapons-- can't support its welfare state; and so it need even more welfare from the US, not less as Netanyahu had promised. When PM Olmert came to Wash DC in March of 2006, begging for an extra #10 billions for that year, Bush forced him to turn Israeli troops into mercenaries for his schemes to provoke war with Iran so that the US would not be able to withdraw from Iraq without controlling its oil. But, as Israel found that its war machine in Lebanon-- much as ours in Iraq-- strengthens the enemy by massively killing innocent helpless civilians rather than cowering Hezbollah, unlike Bush in Iraq, he immediately pulled out. Now Olmert is only [propagandistically] singing, not [militarily] performing, for his #10 billions dinner; bellowing hollow warnings that he will bomb Tehran, he is really hoping that Bush will find a way for the USAF to strike Iran without the Israelis having to do so. In other words, Olmert is not as reckless as Bush. That is because he is a mature solid thinker (even if facing indictment by his own national prosecutor for corruption). Right now, he is reassuring the Iranians while threatening them. This makes Bush seem like nothing more than an aggressive drunk (as claimed by a number of journalists that saw him in the White House, they claim, drunk and publicly cursing his wife). No doubt all this will come out in last minute impeachment proceedings; until then, as far as Iran is concerned, we will have to rely on the threat from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and SecDef Gates threat that they will all resign en masse if he attacks Iran. With dependence on Israel as their deterrent to a nuclear Iran, the Arabs will have to see Israel in a thoroughly new light. The more they force the Palestinians to cease their Intifada, the more the Israelis will appreciate their need for economic ties to their neighbors. The courageous Rabin strategy of LAND FOR PEACE will now become the willy Olmert strategy of LAND FOR BUSINESS. And the Arabs nations will need Israeli know-how because they are all like one crop banana republics: OIL. And, whoever follows Bush will get rid of the OILERS in the administration, replacing them with alternative fuel experts whose goal it will be to make the US fossil fuel independent. No Arab country has the know how to switch from an oil income economy and survive. Only Israel has the technical know-how to switch them all to globally competitive high-tech industries. It will thus befit the admonition of its Zionist Forefathers, to become "a light onto the [Arab] nations." Just as Jews from all over the world had to learn Hebrew in order to live in Israel, Israelis will learn Arabic in order to get payed well saving the Arab economies for them in return. It is fortunate that Arabs deep down in their hearts really trust Israelis (their Semitic cousins) as "family" more than they trust Americans and Europeans. Finally, because of a nuclear Iran, Israel may once and for all time be economically and politically integrated as a leader of the Semitic family, the Middle East. With Middle Eastern Jews quickly becoming the biggest group in Israel, there is no shortage of a political will to regional integration. Israel's educational system, the best in the world, may do more for Zionism's survival than any of its military services. So now it seems, the whole world wants Bush to take hands off of it. It remains for the American people to show its children that neither crime nor negligence pay, because with responsibility (I am the decider) comes culpability, by impeaching and removing Bush from office, even if just one day before his term ends. That will once again show that in a sea of stupidities Americans will always have moments of utter genius that maintain them as "the shinning beacon on a hill," to which Reagan referred. Daniel E. Teodoru

Iran: prepared for the worst, Omid Memarian

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:37:34 +0000

The resignation of Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's national-security council and top nuclear negotiator, on 20 October has provoked been much discussion about what it might reveal of Tehran's complex intra-regime politics. What has been less remarked is that this was the second key personnel change among Iran's governing elite in the past two months. This sequence of events, reflecting the key arguments and calculations of Iran's top leaders, signifies the emergence of a revised political strategy designed to cope with with the heightened threat of United States military action.

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gucchipiggy on "Iran: prepared for the worst"

danielet on "Iran: prepared for the worst"

Iran: prepared for the worst, Omid Memarian