Open discussion: Will the U.S invade Iran?

[RedSea]

Nomads,

 

There has been rumours circulating around the news in these weeks about possible invasion of Iran by the current U.S adminstration.

 

The current regime in Washington has been blaming the Iranians of the U.S failures in Iraq, saying that Iran is feuling violence and aiding the Iraqi Shiica, namely the Mahdi army led by Muqtada AlSadr.

 

Those accusations and Tehrans' pursuit of becoming a nuclear armed, which poses a 'threat' to Isreal in the middle East is mostly in my opinion why the U.S might invade Iran.

 

This week, Ayotollah Cali Khumayni said that Iranians will respond in with rather harsher counter attack if by any chance their country is attacked by the U.S and its allies.

 

Some even predict that an invasion of Iran could start as early as this upcoming summer.

 

What are you thoughts and concerns of this, and if this has any chance of happening?

 

 

Thanks,

[Castro]

Will the U.S invade Iran?

Yes.

[RedSea]

^Can we kiss the U.S good bye if so..

[Castro]

^^^ And the world as we know it along with it.

 

Armed to the Teeth, America Marches Toward Military State

 

by Pierre Tristam

 

 

President Bush's 2008 budget includes a $625 billion request for the military, up from $295 billion the year Bush was elected -- a 112 percent increase. Its about $100 billion more than all other military budgets in the world, combined. Plenty of attention is being paid the exhausted military fighting Bush's various wars. There's no denying it. It's overstretched and undermanned. It makes you think the Pentagon needs more money, not less.

 

But little attention is paid the flip-side of that story -- the squandering of money on defense contractors' swindles, whether it's the superfluous $66 billion F-22 fighter jet program -- one of three jet fighters in development -- or the $9 billion-a-year missile shield, which, one test aside, hasn't gotten much past its middle school science project concept since Ronald Reagan fancied it a quarter century and $160 billion ago.

 

The military is strapped by its own doing. Lawmakers are complicit. Job-producing military contracts are seeded throughout the land's congressional districts like above-board bribes.

 

But lawmakers couldn't get away with it if the military weren't the subject of a misplaced, ill-informed and dangerous public infatuation that's been changing American society for the worse since the early 1980s -- the period when Reagan built up the military into the creepy colossus it's been since. As Andrew Bacevich, author of "The New American Militarism," wrote, "The ensuing affair had and continues to have a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue. Few in power have openly considered whether valuing military power for its own sake or cultivating permanent global military superiority might be at odds with American principles."

 

Misuse of the military abroad and its escalating burdens on taxpayers are well documented. The consequences of the infatuation on civilian society are documented less well, because the effects are more subtle than convoys of tanks down Main Street. The consequences are more diffuse, more pernicious. There is, for example, the increasing role the military is playing in domestic life, secretly and not-so secretly, crumbling almost a century and a half old prohibition against military meddling in civilian business.

 

Five years ago the Pentagon established a "Northern Command" over the United States, the first time such a command was based on the mainland, ostensibly to coordinate responses to terrorist attacks. The Pentagon is actively engaged in domestic intelligence gathering, something that would have been thought outright illegal a generation ago. In December, the president signed a law that gave him the authority to declare martial law virtually at will.

 

Militarization is happening in more direct ways. Last week, the Associated Press circulated a story about the Pentagon selling surplus hardware to police agencies. The story projected a happy, fortunate circumstance. The tone was approving. The suggestion rewarding.

 

A picture featured a young police officer called Shane Grammer holding up a massive M-16 rifle with at least two scopes and a muffler-size barrel, a Chevrolet Blazer behind him, also military surplus, cluttered up with soldiers' helmets, camouflage and gear. The officer was a member of the Litchfield, Pa., Police Department. Litchfield is a minuscule township of 500 families. Who does Officer Grammer intend to use his M-16 against?

 

The difference between police agencies and military units is becoming difficult to distinguish. They love their helicopters, they love their night raids, their SWAT teams, their chases, their drawn guns.

 

We often hear about how "attitude" is in itself a trigger of violence among gang members. What we don't often hear about, but endure, because the media are too busy writing cute features about military surplus property in the hands of local police agencies, is the same attitude from police -- the very same approach: Look at an officer the wrong way and you might be in jail before the rooster crows once. All of that military hardware brings with it an attitude all its own, a sense of power and presumption that has to be exercised. At this rate, a police state would be a blessing. What we're heading toward is a military state, perpetually at war abroad, but also perpetually mobilized at home down to the tiniest mom-and-pop police agency. Uniforms are the new cult, force the presumed solution to order's challengers. The law can wait.

 

When a society is no longer exclusively and vigilantly civil, its claim to be a civilized society, let alone a civilizing one, is in peril. Other countries have been discovering that about the United States. We're discovering it at home, too, every time a police shield is flashed with the presumptive power of an M-16 burst.

CD

[Xoogsade]

Coolly written with very articulated facts, thanks Castro saxib.

 

Do you visit "www.counterpunch.org"?, "antiwar.com"? or "lewrockwell.com" which is cool too lol.

 

I think the US might bomb Iran before Bush's term ends and the repercussions will be felt acutely the world over. The world economy might collapse in no time.

[Castro]

Originally posted by Xoogsade:

Do you visit "www.counterpunch.org"?, "antiwar.com"? or "lewrockwell.com" is cool too lol.

All of them plus democracynow.org, commondreams.org, zmag.org (specially the Chomsky archive), juancole.com, nologo.com and many more 'left leaning' websites. You could find a comprehensive list on the Common Dreams link. Though it is the only way I learn about the world around me, be warned that the more you read about what horrible things are really happening around you (and the media won't bother telling you about), the darker your mood will get.

 

Check out this 3-year old article about invading Iran published on ZMAG:

 

The Next Imperial Lunacy

Super-bully going to Iran?

 

by Aseem Shrivastava; August 14, 2004

 

"My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meanness, and hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it belongs."

 

- Mark Twain

 

"The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."

 

- Cicero.

 

The coming months may eliminate the question mark from the title of this article. And American civilization may well end up where Twain wished in his despair that it should.

 

History returns to haunt in strange ways.

 

It was on August 19th, 51 years ago, that Britain and the US orchestrated a military coup in Iran, dislodged the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq and installed the exiled monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne.

 

What lay behind this maneuver? One of the main organizers of the coup was the Princeton-educated student of Persian architecture, Donald Wilber. He published an account of the coup in 1954 that has since then been confirmed by the release of classified documents from Washington.

 

The summer of 1953 was much like this one. Iran was in a major dispute with the Western powers. The popular government led by Mossadeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, controlled hitherto by British interests who were siphoning off the bulk of the revenues in a colonial-style operation.

 

In reaction to this, the British froze Iranian assets, got all the world’s oil companies to boycott Iranian oil and pulled their technicians out of the country. Oil output collapsed, Iran’s economy suffered and public unrest grew. Meanwhile, Britain managed to convince the US of the need for regime change in Teheran. On July 11th President Eisenhower secretly signed an order to overthrow Iran's fledgling democracy. After a well-organized secret campaign, involving people like the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and the father of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and in which CIA agents did everything from posing as Communists in order to bomb the house of a prominent Muslim leader to forging royal decrees dismissing Mossadeq and getting Associated Press to wire it in the course of an extended propaganda campaign in the media, the Western powers finally managed to purge Iran of democracy and install their chosen vassal, the Shah, inaugurating a quarter century of a reign of terror, before the Islamic revolution put an end to the brutal regime in 1979. (According to ex-US Foreign Service officer William Blum, one of the artifacts recovered by the Iranians after the Shah had been deposed was a CIA film made for his secret service, the SAVAK, on how to torture women.)

 

The CIA’s secret history records that August 19, 1953 "was a day that should never have ended. For it carried with it such a sense of excitement, of satisfaction and of jubilation that it is doubtful whether any other can come up to it." So giddy did the CIA get with its first smell of success in toppling Third World governments that it followed this up with numerous successful coups across the world over the next five decades.

 

That was 1953. The events of 2004 are moving eerily in the same direction. There has been a marked increase in official rhetoric against Iran in recent weeks.

 

Iran has been in American gun-sights for a long time now. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been a "rogue state" in Washington’s classification. The US backed Saddam Hussein, when he was still Washington’s blue-eyed boy, in his aggression against Iran from 1980 to 1988, a war which accounted for over a million victims. More recently, Iran was named in the infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ speech made by Bush Jr. in January 2002. The main fear is that Iran will soon come to possess nuclear weapons.

 

In early August, President Bush and his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said they would demand UN-imposed sanctions if Iran persists with its nuclear program.

 

Speaking with customary alarm at a community college in Virginia, Mr. Bush emphasized again the other day that he has put "hard questions to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), so they ask the hard questions to the Iranians." In a Freudian slip, he said "we got the Iranians to sign what's called an additional protocol, which will allow for site inspections that normally would not have been allowed under IAEA." Immediately he corrected himself and said "not we, the world got the Iranians" to do so. He pointed out that "ever since the late '70s", the US has had no contacts with Iran. "We're out of sanctions. And so we've relied upon others to send the message for us. And the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Great Britain have gone in as a group to send a message on behalf of the free world that Iran must comply with the demands of the free world. And that's where we sit right now."

 

The "free world" is also seeking, through "different methodology", to incite rebellion against the theocracy in Teheran. The newly liberated Iraq proves, according to King George, "that free societies are possible", that "a free country in the midst of the Middle East will send a very clear signal that freedom is possible." A free society was not just possible, but was actually realized for the people of Iran, back in 1953, when the "free world" sabotaged it because it proved too democratic to allow Western plunder.

 

Media commentary on Iran has also been hostile. Writing in The Washington Post a few weeks back conservative intellectual Charles Krauthammer gave what is a far from unrepresentative view:

 

"The fact is that the war critics have nothing to offer on the single most urgent issue of our time -- rogue states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Iran instead of Iraq? The Iraq critics would have done nothing about either country. There would today be two major Islamic countries sitting on an ocean of oil, supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction -- instead of one.

 

Two years ago there were five countries supporting terrorism and pursuing these weapons -- two junior-leaguers, Libya and Syria, and the axis-of-evil varsity: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The Bush administration has eliminated two: Iraq, by direct military means, and Libya, by example and intimidation.

 

Syria is weak and deterred by Israel. North Korea, having gone nuclear, is untouchable. That leaves Iran. What to do? There are only two things that will stop the Iranian nuclear program: revolution from below or an attack on its nuclear facilities."

 

To add fuel to the fire, one of the more handy conclusions drawn by the Kean Commission investigating the 9/11 attacks was, interestingly, that several Al-Qaeda operatives involved in the attacks had "passed through" Iran during the year preceding 9/11, their passports unstamped. This shows, in their remarkable opinion, that Iran and Al-Qaeda are working hand in glove. Just like Iraq and Al-Qaeda were presumably doing so when the US-UK invasion of the country took place last year. It’s not Iraq the US should have invaded, but Iran. What difference does a consonant make, after all, when there is a whole civilization under threat?

 

When you couple all this with the constant barbs being directed by trigger-happy, nuclear-armed Israel in its direction, Iran’s consternation – expressed through its pursuit of a nuclear program and more urgently, its recent testing of a medium-range ballistic missile capable of hitting Israel – is more than understandable. These fears are fueled further by signals that are being sent by the Americans. Unreported in the US media (but in the Israeli press), 100 F16-1 advanced jet bombers have been delivered to Israel recently, with the specific announcement that they can be used to fly to Iran and return to Israel, and that they are capable of carrying "special weapons."

 

At the same time, it is also surely understandable that if Grenada and Nicaragua could scare President Reagan, and Cuba has terrorized all American presidents since Kennedy, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear capability is a matter to keep the best of them awake at night.

 

Iran has been a member of the Axis of Evil for two and a half years. It suddenly becomes an imminent threat. The question is, why now?

 

It is perhaps true that the fuel rods from Russia have not arrived yet and there is still time to intercept Iran’s nuclear program. (Why Washington never bothered to intercept India’s or Pakistan’s nuclear programs before they weaponized is a question well worth asking (there isn’t much oil there?). The fact that the brain behind Pakistan’s program, A.Q.Khan was selling nuclear secrets and centrifuges in the global free market (including, apparently, to Iran), and was pardoned earlier this year by President Musharraf, with the full knowledge of Washington, is also best left alone.) If Bush is so friendly with Putin, as the media appears to believe, why doesn’t he get him to stop supporting Iran’s nuclear program?

 

Nor has Iraq worked out as intended by the Americans. While Saddam Hussein has been deposed, no WMDs have been found, nor any links with Al-Qaeda (a fact reiterated by the 9/11 Commission). Democracy is but a mirage in the desert, as the Americans have installed a thug named Allawi to be their chief executioner. Revealingly sadistic Abu-Ghraib tortures remain uninvestigated and probably still continue. American reputation (or whatever was left of it) is in tatters, in any case. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Iraqis and over a thousand Coalition troops have been buried in the sands in the name of freedom. Last, not least, despite setbacks the insurgency threatens to turn into a national uprising against the Allawi regime. Oil pipelines are being sabotaged every other day and hundreds of attacks on Coalition forces are being reported every week. In other words, the end is not in sight for the Americans. Memories of Vietnam are returning to haunt them.

 

From Iran’s point of view, the tragic element in the timing may be that it is the year for regime change in Washington and there is little that the Republicans have to show for the $130 billion ($4500 for each US citizen) of the American taxpayers’ money already blown up on the misadventure.

 

Given the stakes, Iran has been willing to sort things out diplomatically, but the Bush administration has not condescended to do its part, not having an envoy in Teheran in the first place. (Civilized societies do not deal with rogue states.) Iranian overtures (made through the Swiss, who look after American interests in Tehran) have been ignored. Thus, the Bush administration, with an absence of professionalism that has become all too predictable in the age of vainglorious empire, is dealing with Iran third-hand, through the UN’s IAEA, and of course the muddled media, neither group having any executive power.

 

The timing of the Najaf offensive in Iraq also calls for an explanation. Sh’iite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army has been on the scene for a while. Why precisely now has the US decided to risk wounding Sh’iite sentiments, and perhaps provoking a nation-wide rebellion, by launching a massive offensive against the insurgents in their hideout in the Imam Ali shrine?

 

The Republican National Convention in New York City begins on August 30. A victory in Najaf, unlike the fiasco in Fallujah, would lend some cheer to the Bush-Cheney ticket. Al-Sadr’s capture or killing would bring a smile of hope to Republican faces, anxious as they are with the fallout of Michael Moore’s film. Better still would be a full-scale attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in an appropriate week before the November elections.

 

And that is what the shipment of 100 F16-1s to Israel and the stab at Najaf are about. They are meant to provoke Iran’s ruling Sh’iite theocracy into some form of military retaliation, which would give Bush the ideal pretext to attack Iran. There are already murmurs in the media (BBC, for instance) that there are Iranians fighting in Najaf. Hazim al-Shaalan, defense minister in the Iraqi stooge-government declares, "Iranian intrusion has been vast and unprecedented since the establishment of the Iraqi state."

 

That is also what the global "realignment" of US troops is all about. London’s Financial Times reports this weekend that 70,000 US troops are being asked to move, mostly from Europe. It is ominous when troops stationed in Germany since 1945 are going to be needed elsewhere. Where?

 

When one considers the history of faked incidents created by the US to start a new war – the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 and blaming it on Spain and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 for which the North Vietnamese were held responsible, come to mind, not to speak of Saddam himself being lured into Kuwait in 1990 (as the Senate hearings revealed) – it is far from unlikely that Iran will be inveigled into a war.

 

Is it a military threat to the US? No serious expert could claim that. Does it fund and support Al-Qaeda? Again, there is no evidence whatsoever. On the contrary, given the Sunni Wahhabi roots of Al-Qaeda it is at least as unlikely that they are backed by Sh’ite Iran as that they were supported by the secular Baathists of Iraq when Saddam was at the helm. But just as the Bush administration managed to convince the American public (7 out of 10 of them) that Iraq was behind Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, it can try to do the same now with Iran. Bush’s Axis of Evil speech and the Kean Commission’s naming of Iran in connection with terrorism have already paved the way for making such beliefs credible. Propaganda worked last time. It will work again. Children believe in the innocence of their parents. They will also understand if parents have to occasionally lie and deceive in order to bring the bacon (cheap oil for SUVs) home. Such is the bargain.

 

The ground has been prepared and the Western mainstream media is once again playing ***** Box to Big Brother’s well-planned furtive moves. If someone needs to convince themselves of the cowardly complicity of the Western media in this deceit on an imperial scale, they only need to check how many American and European dailies or TV networks reported the US bombing of the Iraqi town of Kut last Thursday, in which anywhere from 60-100 people, including innocent women and children, have been killed. This writer found the information in Arab dailies and on a South African website.

 

The Western media has also largely failed to report that during the cease-fire in Najaf (to give negotiations a chance) there have been large demonstrations in all the major Iraqi cities as well as in Teheran, asking for withdrawal of US forces from the Gulf. Once again, Al-Jazeera has shown greater daring and accuracy in reporting than anyone from the West.

 

White House whistles, the media wags its tail. Such are the facts.

 

So, Iran must prepare for an air attack from Israel and the US. Given the troop movements a ground invasion can be expected too. And this time, perhaps, no one – not the UN, not European Allies, maybe not even Britain (given its ambivalence on Iran), and certainly not the American public – will be consulted before the invasion is launched. Why would the chickenhawks even bother to tell the lies that they had to last time, only to get exposed later on?

 

Those who have come to believe that the Neo-conservatives have lost for good after their plans for Iraq have been ground in the sand and their criminally awesome lies have been exposed to the world must think again. The climate is psychotic. The empire is in despair. Why shouldn’t an administration, long relieved of any sense of shame and embarrassment plan such an attack? It has much to lose if it doesn’t!

 

The Americans – and the world – are in the grip of a totalitarian system, asleep to the suicide-bombers manning the White House and the Pentagon. The media is silent or obedient and the Democrat Opposition is pusillanimous and bankrupt in imagination. John Kerry responded to Bush’s provocation the other day by asserting that he would have cast the same Yes vote in Congress that he did in Oct. 2002, to authorize the president to launch a pre-emptive war against Iraq, even if he had known that Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction and posed no real threat to the world. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry said, adding that he would just have used that power more "effectively." Just like Clinton did during the Sanctions era in Iraq which accounted for the deaths of a million children.

 

And the public is too busy looking for jobs or working overtime or getting entertained by Murdoch’s TV shows to come out in the hundreds of thousands to protest yet another war. In any case, Washington has armed itself with plenty of anti-terrorist legislation to prevent such exercise of civil liberties. If not, the National Guard is at hand. Democracy today is just a slogan copyrighted by the White House.

 

So it appears that we are likely to see recent history repeat itself in short order. And if the Neo-conservatives perpetrate the belief that it would be a farcical repetition of Iraq, the American public should prepare itself for catastrophic surprises. History shows that savage follies provoke their own nemesis. Even the bills of Iraq will keep coming for a long time.

 

Perhaps America is destined to destroy itself, and with it, maybe large parts of the world. Perhaps it has become too diseased in mind and soul to learn from history. Perhaps it has come to cynically accept, as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times did some years back, the heartlessness of its governments’ calculations that there is really no way to retain economic dominance in the world without ruling the entire globe with an iron fist. (The Chinese and the Japanese could, in a few hours, ruin the dollar forever, given how much of the growing US debt of $7.5 trillion they own, and how much the US is able to buy from them – and spend on new weaponry – with the money lent to it. China certainly will not lend money to the US to go to war against itself!) And even that will not last long unless the galloping military costs of empire can be financed by Republican geniuses while giving tax breaks to the rich. Imperial overstretch? No, not merely. Overkill. And capitalist excess.

 

George W. Bush, for his part, will certainly keep his word to the American people. Last week he said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we." "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

 

Can this suicidal course be averted?

 

The answer depends on American patriots.

[Som@li]

Yes. I think US will invade Iran, and majority of american pple will support becuase they are too dumb,and their officials say so.

[Suldaanka]

Bush is Speechless

[Fiqikhayre]

I think that it is certainly a consideration or prospect for the current US administration but I would doubt it that they would just go in like that and it would take something bigger than Sep.11th to persuade the american public or other international and traditional allies! The US would not be able to go it alone!

 

On the other hand if the US get's into Iran, Syria on the other hand would not sit still and just watch, so who will engage Syria? The Zionists, we've seen the latest debacle and adventure of the Zionists last summer when they were defeated by a ragtag militia from Hizboallaah! Surely if that battle would commence it would be a very brutal and bloody engagement!

 

One thing is for sure they need more then the Zionists on board! They need a coalition of many countries preferably christian and european, mostly from the newly joined EU countries from the former Eastern block! But what about China, Russia and India is the question?

 

Will Russia and China allow such kind of action knowing that if in Iran a new pro western regime is put in place that would threaten their own interest in the region and specially so Iran being a country that is in so close vicinity of their own countries and geo-political interests? Isn't the US infringing into their sphere of influence and control and thereby further isolating them?

 

Russia's Putin is undoubtedly seeking imperial power and competing with the West and they want to return to their former glory when they were besides the US the worlds only Superpower! It has already said that it views the expansion of Europe as a threat to its own existence, so what gives?

 

I really don't like both of the regimes in Washington and Tehran, I view them as Anti-Islaam and Anti-Muslims and a threat to our own interests but how do we combat them is the question?

[RedSea]

Watching that clip posted by Suldaanka, you would realize that the man(Bush) is really an 1diot.

 

He can't seem to get anything right. He flanked the War in Iraq, called it 'mission accomplished' very early on. If the American congress, its people let the people like Bush decide in leading them to war that has no meaning but, then they will regret in many years to come.

[Fabregas]

The Western front, which on the surface appears more problematic, is in fact less complicated than the Eastern front, in which most of the events that make the headlines have been taking place recently. Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.14

 

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.15

 

A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties

by Oded Yinon (with a foreword by, and translated by Israel Shahak)

 

http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html

[Taliban]

Originally posted by Mujaahid: Red Sea:

What are you thoughts and concerns of this, and if this has any chance of happening?

Will the U.S invade Iran?

 

The answer is no; the US is incapable of invading Iran. It lacks enough manpower and resources to mount such a monumental invasion. However, there's a possibility the US would mount limited attacks (especially aerial) against Iran; Iran's response would be devastating and painful. In any case, I encourage a US attack against Iran, because it would benefit the global Islamic insurgency.

[Ahmed_Guree]

Will the US invade Iran Yes and NO

 

Yes as they would be financial and miliatary backed by Arab regimes.

Saudi would pump money and the propaganda(Clerics) needed to sustain the operation.

Egypt will definatly join in and provide mercenaries just like what they are doing in Iraq.

Jordan 2.

Kuwait will also finance it.

So its simply easier than Iraq as the ywould need less manpower and finance.

 

No

As they know that the masssive shia support in Iraq qould dwindle.

As they also know the best way to sustain the middle east chaos is to beef up animosity btw Sunis and Shias which is effective.

[me]

Hell No,

 

The US is too broke! overstreched and on't think that the Persians are Arabs.

[Castro]

^^^ The US is rapidly on its way to being broke. It's not broke yet but the looming war with Iran will seal the deal on this toddler empire. And unfortunately, we'll all feel the pain of this foolish war. Finally, it's not about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

 

How close is Iran to a nuclear bomb?

 

By Gordon Corera

BBC security correspondent

 

In the coming days, Iran is expected to make what is being billed as a major announcement on its nuclear programme to coincide with the anniversary of the Iranian revolution.

 

But just how close is Iran to mastering nuclear technology?

 

Both Iran and some of its critics may have their own reasons for exaggerating the progress - but the real truth is hard to establish.

 

In its announcement, Iran may claim to have begun large-scale industrial enrichment of uranium.

 

But any statement is likely to be as much about political positioning as real technical progress, according to nuclear analysts.

 

The announcement may focus on work Iran has conducted in installing two cascades of more than 300 centrifuges in an underground industrial size plant at Natanz with the aim of moving towards a total of 3,000 machines.

 

The centrifuges are used to enrich uranium. This is in addition to two existing cascades in a pilot plant above ground.

 

But Iran's plan to initially run 3,000 centrifuges before moving towards an ultimate goal of 54,000 has run into obstacles and delays and is well behind target. Even the cascades in the pilot plant have seen problems.

 

However, once Iran has mastered the technology of enrichment and the ability to enrich gas at high speeds in a centrifuge then transferring it to a larger scale presents a lesser challenge.

 

'Own mistakes'

 

Uranium enriched to around 5% can be used as nuclear fuel, but if it is enriched to around 90% it can be used in a weapon.

 

Over the years, some of the problems with the programme seem to be due to Iran's own mistakes.

 

For instance, one of the top figures in the programme has talked of how in the early days, those assembling the centrifuges did not wear cloth gloves.

 

As a result, tiny beads of sweat would be transferred to the rotor which spins inside the centrifuge.

 

This almost imperceptibly increased the weight of the rotor which then unbalanced the centrifuge when it started to spin, causing it to "explode".

 

Iran also was thought to have had problems with the purity of the uranium hexafluoride which is fed into the centrifuges, although its scientists now say this has been solved.

 

'Mossad's hand'

 

But the problems may also be due to more shady activity by others.

 

Over a number of years, both US and Israeli intelligence are believed to have covertly passed flawed parts and equipment to Iran to cause technical difficulties and slow the Iranian programme down.

 

In one event last April, according to Iranian press reports, the explosion of another set of centrifuges was attributed to problems with the power supply.

 

The supply needs to be kept precise and constant to ensure the centrifuges spin at the correct speed but Iranian scientists said that on this occasion the power supply might have been "manipulated" which may imply they were sabotaged.

 

It is possible that some of the electrical parts for Iran may have come through the Turkish end of the network run by Pakistani scientist AQ Khan which also supplied electrical components to the Libyan nuclear programme.

 

By the end of the network's activity in early 2004, it had been penetrated by British and American intelligence with some of the suppliers turned as agents.

 

Recent reports have also questioned whether the death in January of a 45-year-old Iranian scientist, Ardeshire Hosseinpour, might have been the result of an operation by Israel's intelligence service, Mossad.

 

Hosseinpour had been involved in the enrichment programme, but Iranian reports have denied that his death was due to anything other than natural causes.

 

Mossad is widely believed to have been behind a campaign of killings and intimidation targeted at the Iraqi nuclear programme and some of its suppliers in Europe in the early 1980s, but this has never been definitively proven.

 

'Many unknowns'

 

Arguably it is human expertise in the form of trained scientists rather than equipment which is the most important element of a nuclear programme.

 

Whether or not there has been extensive covert activity directed at Iran (and by definition it is hard to discern the truth), the variety of technical problems mean that its hard to know if Iran is actually far away from mastering nuclear technology or relatively close to it and thereby able to make the relatively short journey from "peaceful" civilian technology towards manufacturing nuclear material for a bomb.

 

The problem is that there remain many "unknowns" when it comes to the Iranian programme.

 

One of the most important is exactly how much help Tehran received from the Khan network.

 

The network first sold centrifuge designs to Iran in 1987 and provided on-off help for more than a decade after, including parts and designs for more advanced machines.

 

But international investigators remain unsure that they have an understanding on the full extent of the assistance, not least because no-one outside Pakistan has been able to question Khan directly whilst he remains under a form of house-arrest in Islamabad.

 

The biggest question surrounds the more advanced P2 centrifuge design that Khan passed to the Iranians.

 

Iran initially said it had conducted little work on the design but last year Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Tehran was working on the machine (which would be far more efficient than the model in Natanz).

 

However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not been provided any information on such work.

 

No rush?

 

If Iran was able to run a parallel, second enrichment program which it had managed to keep secret, then many of the estimates of how far Iran was from mastering the technology might be way of the mark. But this remains an unknown.

 

The degree of uncertainty can cut the debate over action against Iran in both directions.

 

Some voices argue that Iran remains at least five years away from nuclear weapons capability, and US intelligence estimates have consistently pushed back when that might be - so some argue there is no rush.

 

Other hawkish and pessimistic voices argue that Iran could soon master the technology and the time-frame for action lies this year.

 

Israel is keen to emphasise that it sees the shorter time-frame as the valid one and is willing to take action.

 

The US has been playing down its willingness to engage in military action but is currently pushing the Europeans to squeeze Iran financially.

 

'Accidental war'

 

But conflict between the US and Iran is still possible.

 

President Ahmadinejad is facing his own domestic problems with mounting criticism of not just his approach to foreign policy and the nuclear issue but also his failure to deal with economic concerns at home.

 

This could lead to other power centres in Iran forcing him to back down but could also encourage him to take a harder line on the nuclear programme in order to try and rally support.

 

At the same time, Washington has been increasing the pressure over Iran's alleged involvement in Iraq.

 

With US troops so close to Iran's borders, a small event could easily ignite a wider escalation and even trigger an "accidental" war - although conspiracy theorists might argue that there are some in both Tehran and Washington who would like to engineer just such a confrontation and blame the other side.

BBC