Good, well thought-out post.

So, let me ask you this: say that a sustained Israeli campaign is nearly impossible. Should other nations (such as the US) intervene to assist in order to prevent Iran from obtaining nukes or should be just allow them to have the weapons?

When I say prolonged I assume, although perhaps misguidedly, a hit and egress tactic which will allow for BDA and a return a number of years later, if necessary. The Israelis excuted this type of operation in 1981 against Iraq. No territory needs to be taken. The very bombastic rhetoric for which many Muslims are known will shorten their breath and allow them to realize the folly of their ways.

Also for all intents and purposes the Iranians are surrounded. ISO talking nukes w/ the Russians Mr. Obama should be talking Iran.

At this point, I think the best option is to continue down the diplomatic track. It's the safest option, and it has some important positive effects, which I'll explain below.

Let's look at the facts on the ground. Right now Iran is mostly complying with IAEA inspections and regulations. So far the IAEA has not found any substantial evidence of a nuclear weapons program. That means one of two things:

1. Iran is building nuclear weapons, but they're doing a very good job of hiding it.

2. Iran is legitimately not trying to build nuclear weapons.

Now, let's see how the diplomatic and military options would affect each of those scenarios.

Scenario 1 (hidden weapons program), diplomatic option. - If Iran has an active nuclear weapons program right now, the diplomatic option won't stop them. However, it can slow them down a lot. A nuclear weapons program is a big thing, and it's hard to hide. It can be done, but it requires a lot of additional resources and inefficiencies. Right now, Western diplomacy is keeping the IAEA in Iran and ensuring that the IAEA is as vigilant as possible. This in turn makes Iran's nuclear weapons program a lot more inefficient than it would be if the IAEA wasn't there. So while it's frustrating and ineffective from the outside, the diplomatic option does have some benefits.

Scenario 1, military option. This would delay Iran's program, but I don't think it could stop it. An attack would strengthen Iran's resolve to build nuclear weapons, so they'd simply rebuild their facilities and strengthen their defenses. Of course, the first thing they'd do when the facilites are rebuilt is kick out the IAEA, so the new weapons program would be much more efficient than the secret one it replaced. Now, the US could bomb the sites again, but Iran would just rebuild them again. It would come down to a battle of wills, and I think the Iranian will to build the nukes, having been reinforced by each attack, would be stronger than the US resolve to stop them. The end result would be a nuclear-armed Iran hell-bent on revenge against the US. That would be more than a little bit dangerous.

Scenario 2 (peaceful nuclear program), diplomatic option. Not much would happen. At some point the West would figure out that Iran isn't trying to get nukes, and they'd back off. Israel would probably keep screaming bloody murder, but they'd be ignored. This is obviously the ideal scenario.

Scenario 2, military option. This is the scenario that I'm most scared of. It would turn Iran's nuclear weapons program into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It would turn a peaceful Iranian program into a military one, because the attack would give Iran all the motivation it needed to pursue nuclear weapons. So our effort to eliminate a nuclear threat would end up creating a nuclear threat that wasn't there in the first place.

So given that the evidence of Iran having a nuclear weapons program is weak at best, I think the diplomatic option is the best way to go right now. It has its uses under Scenario 1, and it avoids the nightmare outcome in Scenario 2.

It's also important to remember that the road from the diplomatic option to the military option exists, but it's a one-way street. If we pursue the diplomatic option now, we could switch to the military option if we have to. However, if we go military now, then we permanently destroy the diplomatic option, since Iran never engage in diplomacy with somebody who just attacked them.

If it is wanted to get the US off of its oil addiction why not watch as Israel does the work?

The Osirak attack in 1981 was an extremely difficult attack for the IAF that pushed their capabilities to the limit. To their immense credit they pulled it off perfectly, although they also had a lot of luck on their side (such as the Jordanians failing to get word to the Iraqis in time).

An attack on Iran would make Osirak look like a piece of cake. For starters, Iran is much further away, and crucially it's out of range for the F-16, which makes up the overwhelming majority of the IAF's combat fleet. Second, Osirak was Iraq's only nuclear site. Iran has many nuclear sites spread out across the country. Third, Iran's nuclear sites are online and funcitonal. Osirak was still under construciton when it was hit. Fourth, Iran's nuclear sites are well-fortified. Many of them are underground and would require bunker-busters to damage them. Finally, Iran's air defenses are much stronger than Iraq's were in 1981.

I'm sure Obama is talking about Iran with the Russians. Russia has actually been a huge help on this issue. But if the US or Israel attacks Iran, any international support we have will evaporate pretty quickly, and the Iranians will get a lot of sympathy from the rest of the world.

If you expect Muslims to "realize the error in their ways" you badly underestimate them, especially the Shias. The Shia have a fetish for martyrdom, so an attack would actually urge them on.

All this is about international support? When your life is on the line who cares? When the burgler is breaking in your house and/or threatening your family please ask for permission to protect yourself. How long have we been talking to Iran, North Korea, etc? Talk only works in favor of both/all not Israel.

Obama, Iran, North Korea....bah
This all I have to say:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b26BD5KjH0

I give half a dozen reasons why the Israelis can't strike, right after a very long and detailed post about why we shouldn't strike for now, and you just focus on one tiny bit I wrote about international support?

It's pretty clear that you're not reading my posts, you're just skimming them to find one little bit you disagree with. It's pretty annoying.

Wall of text doesn't impress me so I go to the salient point. Sorry if that anoys you. "Brevity is the essence of wit." William Shakespear.

No, I got both your points, and in parts even agree. I just come to different conclusions.

On your first point, since long I argue that to me a war to stop the program in the meaning of destroying it, necessarily means the selective use of nuclear weapons. that is no hooray-nukeymongering by me, that simply is what it is. That's why I say any determined effort to kill that program would become a real nasty thing. To your relief you can assume that probably even the Israelis currently do not will the use of nukes. That's why they only will delay Iran's work, not stopping it.

On your second point, you are only partly right. That there are Korea and Pakistan cannot be an easy argument why we should not care about a third threat being added to the list, increasing our worries. Korea is rational enough to be able to differ between provoking rethorics and actual deed, they know where to stop in order to not provoke an american first strike - which they would if the CIA learns they are knowingly delivering a warhead to a facion that intend to strike the US. The Pakistani proliferated so far knowledge, but stopped short of exporting actual warheads, here the biggest risk is that the religious nutheads take over the country - in that case I would not give a penny for that country anymore. We need to find out where they have their warheads. In case of Iran you can safely assume that they will start to proliferate actual weapon-capable hardware as soon as they have it. They would welcome a terror group nuking Israel or the West - and afterwards saying "What do you want? It was not us".

One has to make a decision sooner or later here. there are three options only, and none of them is nice.

1. Do you will to accept the risk of living under an Iranian nuclear terror thread, being left with the only option of simply hoping they will be kind and not proliferate to terror groups, and totally depending on their good will, needing to foster it by being the obedient servant to their ideological demands? Do you will to knowingly enter a condition of being prone to blackmailing?

2. Do you will to plan for a future in which you need to strike Iran with extended air campaigns every couple of years in order to delay their progam time and again, always running the risk that they manage to save some components and put them together in a hidden place that you do not know of; by that causing an accumulated death toll and destruction over the years that will make mockery of your intention to wage a civilised war that saves the population, and increases the losses of your own forces?

3. Do you will to strike them with overkill capacity to make sure that while you do not know the precise target locations of critical bunker complexes in the reaearch sites of interest, the ammount of destruction set loose will nevertheless most likely shatter the structures even if they are not precisely hit at weak points of their structures? Taking of small nuclear weapons here. To make that clear: I do not talk of nuking cities and just killing people for the sake of "bombing Iran back into the stone age". I talk about small tactical nukes as bunker busters inside the indentified restricted areas that house installations and facilities of their program. Under Rumsfeld, of whom I certainly am no friend, such tactical nuclear bunker-busters with the special intention to destroy hardened subterranean targets that could not be reached or detsroyed by conventional megabombs, have been researched, and I think it is a safe bet that such weapons exist today. Because there is a clearly defined military need for them, especially with regard to so-called rogue states.

That is what makes the Iranian problem so extremely unpleasant: we either will get our hands dirty - or we will need to accept an nuclear armed Iran, with Saudi Arabia and Egypt going nuclear next, and all the risk in that fragile strategic constellation between hostile rivalling powers, one of them being eager to indirectly strike Israel anyway. For my own part, I am not willing to accept these risks, and I am not willing to accept living in a state of being blackmailed and highly vulnerable to a nuclear and proliferating Iran. The biggest danger here is proliferation by Iran - that is the worst evil here. Taking their program out with the tools needed to assure that, is still an evil - but a minor one, compared to the first. I would not like to do it, but i would do it when thinking that that is what is needed. Priority before anything else is to prevent a nuclear Iran. they have had their chance for a long time to convince the world of their peacefulness and reasonability and trustworthiness, and they failed miserably time and again. That'S why I even changed my mind on the outlook to leave them the civilian use of nuclear energy, because the step from civilian to military use of nuclear technology is no big one and control mechanisms by cameras and inspections can be cheated, blocked, betrayed.



Edit
P.S. Good German-language comment by Der Tagespiegel (not to be mistaken with the far left Die Tageszeitung)
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/meinung/k...art141,2841271

But how on earth do you know what the salient point is if you don't read the whole post?