War with Iran? - Page 5

Bill Nichols · 01-22-06, 05:39 PM

From today's New York Times:

Why Not a Strike on Iran?

By DAVID E. SANGER

DIPLOMATS around the world keep repeating the mantra: There is no military option when it comes to slowing, much less stopping, Iran's presumed ambitions to get the Bomb. The Europeans say so. The Chinese, who need Iran's oil, and the Russians, who make billions supplying Iran's civilian nuclear business, say so emphatically.

Even the hawks in the Bush administration make no threats. When Vice President Dick Cheney was asked Thursday, in a television interview, if the United States might ever resort to force to stop Iran, he handled the question as if it, too, were radioactive.

"No president should ever take the military option off the table," he said, carefully avoiding the kind of language he once used to warn Saddam Hussein. "Let's leave it there."

Mr. Cheney, it seemed, was trying to sow just enough ambiguity to make Iran think twice. Which raises two questions. If diplomacy fails, does America have a military option? And what if it doesn't?

"It's a kind of nonsense statement to say there is no military solution to this," said W. Patrick Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "It may not be a desirable solution, but there is a military solution."

Mr. Lang was piercing to the heart of a conundrum the Bush administration recognizes: Iran could become a case study for pre-emptive military action against a gathering threat, under a policy Mr. Bush promulgated in 2002. But even if taking out Iran's facilities delay the day the country goes nuclear, it would alienate allies and probably make firm enemies out of many Iranians who have come to dislike their theocratic government. And Iran simply has too many ways of striking back, in the oil markets, in the Persian Gulf, through Hezbollah.

"Could we do it?" one administration official who was deeply involved in planning the Iraq invasion said recently. "Sure. Could we manage the aftermath? I doubt it."

Similar fears, he said, gave President Bill Clinton pause about launching a strike on North Korea in 1994. Later that year he reached an accord for a freeze on the North's nuclear production facilities. But in 2003 everything unfroze, and now the North, by C.I.A. estimates, has enough fuel for at least half a dozen bombs.

The Iranians took careful notes then, and here in Washington today the Korean experience underlies diplomacy-versus-force arguments that rarely take place on the record.

The problem is not that Washington lacks targets. Many of Iran's nuclear facilities, or at least those that American intelligence agencies know about, are in plain view or in underground sites whose construction was recorded by spy satellites. The problem is the global consequences of an attack to cripple them.

"The irony is that this is the opposite of Iraq," said John J. Hamre, a deputy defense secretary from 1997 to 1999. "We know a lot about what they have because the international inspectors have been there." Those inspection reports have helped Pentagon planners who, in imagining every contingency, have already mapped out Iran's most vulnerable facilities.

"Elimination of the nuclear program is not possible, but with the right strikes you could decisively set them back," said Ashton B. Carter, an expert at Harvard on proliferation problems.

In Iran's case, any attack would almost certainly start at Natanz, where Iran clipped off the International Atomic Energy Agency's seals a week ago and said it was preparing to reassemble a connected series of 164 centrifuges for purifying uranium.

Just beyond the research laboratories is a huge underground chamber, designed to hold as many as 50,000 centrifuges, yet unbuilt. Iran hid its existence for years.

Also on the target list, officials said, would be factories that manufacture the centrifuge components, and a plant at Isfahan where raw uranium is converted into a form that can be fed into the centrifuges.

Then there are research centers and military installations where the United States suspects - but cannot prove - that clandestine nuclear-related activity may be taking place. Given the track record in Iraq, however, there is always the risk that those facilities will turn out to be a watch factory, or, worse, a schoolhouse. (The Iranians hid one facility behind a false wall in a Tehran factory, but the I.A.E.A. found it.)

"You are talking about something in the neighborhood of a thousand strike sorties," said Mr. Lang. "And it would take all kinds of stuff - air, cruise missiles, multiple restrikes - to make sure you've got it all." Other former officials say fewer bombing runs would be needed.

The Israelis, who see Iran's nuclear program as a threat to their existence and have been far more outspoken about a military option, give a similar assessment. But they also say they lack the air power, or the reach, to do the job.

In any event, it is one thing to talk about such strikes in purely military terms, and another to consider the political cost.

"What you do with a bombing campaign is bring a whole country rallying around its radical leaders," said Mr. Hamre. "And that's the opposite of what we are trying to achieve in Iran," which is to convince a well-traveled, well-educated, and in some cases pro-American population to usher in a very different kind of leadership.

But if Iran knows the United States and its allies ultimately have no stomach to put military muscle behind their demands, what is its incentive to give up its weapons program? Efforts by the Europeans and Russia to come up with formulas that would provide Iran with nuclear material that cannot be used for weapons have been rejected, at least so far. And no one wants to threaten truly tough sanctions, for fear that by hurting ordinary Iranians they will only drive moderates into the camp of their leaders. Those leaders have been threatening retaliation, even to measures as weak as a letter of warning from the United Nations Security Council.

They have threatened to cut off oil exports and send the markets into a panic, though most experts said an embargo is not something Iran could execute for very long without damaging its own economy. Iran could also step up interference in Iraq and dispatch Hezbollah on terror missions. In addition, the Iranians often boast that their missiles can reach Israel.

Some of those threats may be inflated. And for now, at least, Iran's centrifuge program appears to have hit some technical hitches. I.A.E.A. inspectors are still in Iran, and the Iranians have not yet dared throw them out, as the North Koreans did three years ago. A senior European diplomat involved in the talks with Iran dismissed most of the country's threats last week as "bluster meant to buy them some time, and keep us paralyzed."

But, he added, "it may work."

Several American officials, when promised anonymity, said they thought that in 5 or 10 years, Iran will most likely have a weapon.

"They have read us pretty well," Mr. Hamre said. "They have skated right at the edge of controlled pugnaciousness."

The debate among the West, Russia and China is whether, together, they are willing to skate to the same edge in hopes that, in a repeat of the cold war, the other side blinks first.

Abraham · 01-23-06, 04:22 AM

Interesting but scary...

Kapitan · 01-23-06, 09:33 AM

four horse men of the appocolypse

Abraham · 01-23-06, 11:28 AM

So the article says that President Clinton made a grave mistake not destroying the nuclear facilities of North Korea, starting negotiations and passing the hot potato to his successor.
Furthermore that this was seen by Iran as weakness from the US side and that the Iranians then decided to go nuclear themselves.

This means that they have already taken the strategic decision to become a nuclear power years ago and will not be stopped by angry EU or US presidents and prime-ministers.

The conclusion is almost that a change in US policy is needed, the sooner the better.

Again: scary...

Happy Times · 01-23-06, 01:21 PM

Again, if this happens i think everyone should have the right to have them. I think we could have one in 5 years or sooner .

U-214 · 01-23-06, 01:26 PM

It is scary indeed.The US could destroy from air the Iranian facilities,no doubt about that,but the question is,what will be the Iranian reaction ,specially this Ahmajinejad new President seems a bit too trigger happy than his predecessor.

The Avon Lady · 01-23-06, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by U-214

It is scary indeed.The US could destroy from air the Iranian facilities,no doubt about that,but the question is,what will be the Iranian reaction ,specially this Ahmajinejad new President seems a bit too trigger happy than his predecessor.

Happy Times · 01-24-06, 06:57 PM

If theres going to be a big conflict the draft is certain to happen. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009829/page/2/

Abraham · 01-26-06, 12:50 AM

Well, the one thing that should be avoided at almost all costs is a big war with Iran. Quick, unexpected, one day surgical strikes on known nuclear facilities might cause enough havoc to stop the program in it's tracks and topple the regime... (I hope)

Skybird · 01-26-06, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abraham

Well, the one thing that should be avoided at almost all costs is a big war with Iran. Quick, unexpected, one day surgical strikes on known nuclear facilities might cause enough havoc to stop the program in it's tracks and topple the regime... (I hope)

No, it must be far more massive. This is not Osirak. Target lists vary from 30 to 350 listed target locations. Many important targets are deep (and I mean DEEP) inside mountains or under the earth. For many sites, precise coordinates for their most sensible components are even not known.

I am 66% sure that a certain ammount of socalled mini-nukes will be used along with conventional BBBs.

Konovalov · 01-26-06, 07:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

No, it must be far more massive.

I suspect by saying a "big war" Abraham implied not a ground invasion such as like Iraq but he can clarify on that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

I am 66% sure that a certain ammount of socalled mini-nukes will be used along with conventional BBBs.

How did you come to 66%? Why not 50% or 75%?

Seriously though the use of mini-nukes would be seen as a break in the 'traditional' role of nuclear weapons as a deterrance. Would this then open up a new 'nuclear genie out of the bottle' situation whereby states other than the US with nuclear weapons then feel no obligation simply to use their nuclear arsenal in a deterrance role. For example hypothetically Russia may think that they are now free to use tactical battlefield nuclear weapons in Chechnya. IMO I think that it would be a dangerous precedent and a msitake for the US to use mini-nukes. What do you think Sky?

Skybird · 01-26-06, 08:12 AM

Let's say 2:1.

Concerning your question I refer to the analysis by Chossudovsky that I copied completely in my essay http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=47650 under 3.1.2. The use of such nukes is a turning point, yes, and a most dangerous ones. Nuclear war finally is considered to be practicable. It is considered to be a guarantee for stability and peace. If this is not a perversion of thinking. It needs this special type of man, these guys with the stone-like, always motionless faces and hard, lifeless eyes whom you happen to see whenever there is a news conference with politicians or highranking militaries, to allow such a deformation of reason and thinking. Psychopaths altogether. And this I mean word by word: psychopaths they are, all of them. They need to be locked in a high security psychiatry.

Abraham · 01-26-06, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Konovalov

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

No, it must be far more massive.

I suspect by saying a "big war" Abraham implied not a ground invasion such as like Iraq but he can clarify on that.

Right. Perhaps with some special forces. on the ground, but no full scale invasion. It should be clear that the West - if not the world - has an issue with the Iranian nuclear program as it is executed and not with the Iranian people. Furthermore, I think that destroying only deeply covered or remote facilities would avoid "collateral damage" of innocent civilians and would be clear enough a message of the Wests intentions.
Ideal would be as this resulted in political upheaval and a regime change by the Iranian people itself (perhaps with a little bit of covered help).
It should also send a clear message to the numerous other nations who want to gain a nuclear capacity (and probably have signed the Non-Proliveration Treaty).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Konovalov

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

I am 66% sure that a certain ammount of socalled mini-nukes will be used along with conventional BBBs.

How did you come to 66%?...

I think Skybird just took 1% of 100 and multiplied it with 66...

sonar732 · 01-26-06, 10:53 AM

Are y'all forgeting what happened the last time we sent SF's into Iran?

Rejecting the Iranian demands, Carter approved an ill-conceived secret rescue mission: Operation Eagle Claw. On the night of April 24-25, 1980, as the first part of the operation, a number of C-130 transport airplanes rendezvoused with nine RH-53 helicopters at an airstrip in the Great Salt Desert of Eastern Iran, near Tabas. Two helicopters broke down in a sandstorm and a third one was damaged on landing. The mission was aborted, but as the aircraft took off again one helicopter clipped a C-130 and crashed, killing eight U.S. servicemen and injuring more than four.

Abraham · 01-26-06, 11:12 AM

You can't compare...
At that time the morale of the US Army was low, the Special Forces were relatively inexperienced, there was little SF equipment and it was not tested under desert conditions and the logistical problems were emormous.
All that has changed by now.
I am sure that the US military can insert smal teams of SF to pinpoint targets with laser or give after battle damage reports.
Perhaps even bigger parties that could raid some of the targets, in order to make sure that they are part of the nuclear program and avoid civilian casualties.

01-22-06, 05:39 PM	#1
Bill Nichols Master of Defense Join Date: Mar 2000 Posts: 1,502 Downloads: 125 Uploads: 0	From today's New York Times: Why Not a Strike on Iran? By DAVID E. SANGER DIPLOMATS around the world keep repeating the mantra: There is no military option when it comes to slowing, much less stopping, Iran's presumed ambitions to get the Bomb. The Europeans say so. The Chinese, who need Iran's oil, and the Russians, who make billions supplying Iran's civilian nuclear business, say so emphatically. Even the hawks in the Bush administration make no threats. When Vice President Dick Cheney was asked Thursday, in a television interview, if the United States might ever resort to force to stop Iran, he handled the question as if it, too, were radioactive. "No president should ever take the military option off the table," he said, carefully avoiding the kind of language he once used to warn Saddam Hussein. "Let's leave it there." Mr. Cheney, it seemed, was trying to sow just enough ambiguity to make Iran think twice. Which raises two questions. If diplomacy fails, does America have a military option? And what if it doesn't? "It's a kind of nonsense statement to say there is no military solution to this," said W. Patrick Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "It may not be a desirable solution, but there is a military solution." Mr. Lang was piercing to the heart of a conundrum the Bush administration recognizes: Iran could become a case study for pre-emptive military action against a gathering threat, under a policy Mr. Bush promulgated in 2002. But even if taking out Iran's facilities delay the day the country goes nuclear, it would alienate allies and probably make firm enemies out of many Iranians who have come to dislike their theocratic government. And Iran simply has too many ways of striking back, in the oil markets, in the Persian Gulf, through Hezbollah. "Could we do it?" one administration official who was deeply involved in planning the Iraq invasion said recently. "Sure. Could we manage the aftermath? I doubt it." Similar fears, he said, gave President Bill Clinton pause about launching a strike on North Korea in 1994. Later that year he reached an accord for a freeze on the North's nuclear production facilities. But in 2003 everything unfroze, and now the North, by C.I.A. estimates, has enough fuel for at least half a dozen bombs. The Iranians took careful notes then, and here in Washington today the Korean experience underlies diplomacy-versus-force arguments that rarely take place on the record. The problem is not that Washington lacks targets. Many of Iran's nuclear facilities, or at least those that American intelligence agencies know about, are in plain view or in underground sites whose construction was recorded by spy satellites. The problem is the global consequences of an attack to cripple them. "The irony is that this is the opposite of Iraq," said John J. Hamre, a deputy defense secretary from 1997 to 1999. "We know a lot about what they have because the international inspectors have been there." Those inspection reports have helped Pentagon planners who, in imagining every contingency, have already mapped out Iran's most vulnerable facilities. "Elimination of the nuclear program is not possible, but with the right strikes you could decisively set them back," said Ashton B. Carter, an expert at Harvard on proliferation problems. In Iran's case, any attack would almost certainly start at Natanz, where Iran clipped off the International Atomic Energy Agency's seals a week ago and said it was preparing to reassemble a connected series of 164 centrifuges for purifying uranium. Just beyond the research laboratories is a huge underground chamber, designed to hold as many as 50,000 centrifuges, yet unbuilt. Iran hid its existence for years. Also on the target list, officials said, would be factories that manufacture the centrifuge components, and a plant at Isfahan where raw uranium is converted into a form that can be fed into the centrifuges. Then there are research centers and military installations where the United States suspects - but cannot prove - that clandestine nuclear-related activity may be taking place. Given the track record in Iraq, however, there is always the risk that those facilities will turn out to be a watch factory, or, worse, a schoolhouse. (The Iranians hid one facility behind a false wall in a Tehran factory, but the I.A.E.A. found it.) "You are talking about something in the neighborhood of a thousand strike sorties," said Mr. Lang. "And it would take all kinds of stuff - air, cruise missiles, multiple restrikes - to make sure you've got it all." Other former officials say fewer bombing runs would be needed. The Israelis, who see Iran's nuclear program as a threat to their existence and have been far more outspoken about a military option, give a similar assessment. But they also say they lack the air power, or the reach, to do the job. In any event, it is one thing to talk about such strikes in purely military terms, and another to consider the political cost. "What you do with a bombing campaign is bring a whole country rallying around its radical leaders," said Mr. Hamre. "And that's the opposite of what we are trying to achieve in Iran," which is to convince a well-traveled, well-educated, and in some cases pro-American population to usher in a very different kind of leadership. But if Iran knows the United States and its allies ultimately have no stomach to put military muscle behind their demands, what is its incentive to give up its weapons program? Efforts by the Europeans and Russia to come up with formulas that would provide Iran with nuclear material that cannot be used for weapons have been rejected, at least so far. And no one wants to threaten truly tough sanctions, for fear that by hurting ordinary Iranians they will only drive moderates into the camp of their leaders. Those leaders have been threatening retaliation, even to measures as weak as a letter of warning from the United Nations Security Council. They have threatened to cut off oil exports and send the markets into a panic, though most experts said an embargo is not something Iran could execute for very long without damaging its own economy. Iran could also step up interference in Iraq and dispatch Hezbollah on terror missions. In addition, the Iranians often boast that their missiles can reach Israel. Some of those threats may be inflated. And for now, at least, Iran's centrifuge program appears to have hit some technical hitches. I.A.E.A. inspectors are still in Iran, and the Iranians have not yet dared throw them out, as the North Koreans did three years ago. A senior European diplomat involved in the talks with Iran dismissed most of the country's threats last week as "bluster meant to buy them some time, and keep us paralyzed." But, he added, "it may work." Several American officials, when promised anonymity, said they thought that in 5 or 10 years, Iran will most likely have a weapon. "They have read us pretty well," Mr. Hamre said. "They have skated right at the edge of controlled pugnaciousness." The debate among the West, Russia and China is whether, together, they are willing to skate to the same edge in hopes that, in a repeat of the cold war, the other side blinks first. __________________ My Dangerous Waters website:

01-23-06, 04:22 AM	#2
Abraham Eternal Patrol Moderator Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,572 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	War with Iran? Interesting but scary... __________________ RIP Abraham

01-23-06, 09:33 AM	#3
Kapitan Sub Test Pilot Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: UK + Canada Posts: 7,130 Downloads: 77 Uploads: 7	four horse men of the appocolypse __________________ DONT FORGET if you like a post to nominate it by using the blue diamond Find out about Museum Ships here: https://www.museumships.us/ Flickr for all my pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131313936@N03/ Navy general board articles: https://www.navygeneralboard.com/author/aegis/

01-23-06, 11:28 AM	#4
Abraham Eternal Patrol Moderator Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,572 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	War with Iran So the article says that President Clinton made a grave mistake not destroying the nuclear facilities of North Korea, starting negotiations and passing the hot potato to his successor. Furthermore that this was seen by Iran as weakness from the US side and that the Iranians then decided to go nuclear themselves. This means that they have already taken the strategic decision to become a nuclear power years ago and will not be stopped by angry EU or US presidents and prime-ministers. The conclusion is almost that a change in US policy is needed, the sooner the better. Again: scary... __________________ RIP Abraham

01-23-06, 01:21 PM	#5
Happy Times Ocean Warrior Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Finland Posts: 2,950 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	Again, if this happens i think everyone should have the right to have them. I think we could have one in 5 years or sooner . __________________

01-23-06, 01:26 PM	#6
U-214 Gunner Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 95 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	It is scary indeed.The US could destroy from air the Iranian facilities,no doubt about that,but the question is,what will be the Iranian reaction ,specially this Ahmajinejad new President seems a bit too trigger happy than his predecessor.

01-24-06, 06:57 PM	#8
Happy Times Ocean Warrior Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Finland Posts: 2,950 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	If theres going to be a big conflict the draft is certain to happen. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009829/page/2/ __________________

01-26-06, 12:50 AM	#9
Abraham Eternal Patrol Moderator Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,572 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	War with Iran? Well, the one thing that should be avoided at almost all costs is a big war with Iran. Quick, unexpected, one day surgical strikes on known nuclear facilities might cause enough havoc to stop the program in it's tracks and topple the regime... (I hope) __________________ RIP Abraham

01-26-06, 08:12 AM	#12
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,620 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	Let's say 2:1. Concerning your question I refer to the analysis by Chossudovsky that I copied completely in my essay http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=47650 under 3.1.2. The use of such nukes is a turning point, yes, and a most dangerous ones. Nuclear war finally is considered to be practicable. It is considered to be a guarantee for stability and peace. If this is not a perversion of thinking. It needs this special type of man, these guys with the stone-like, always motionless faces and hard, lifeless eyes whom you happen to see whenever there is a news conference with politicians or highranking militaries, to allow such a deformation of reason and thinking. Psychopaths altogether. And this I mean word by word: psychopaths they are, all of them. They need to be locked in a high security psychiatry. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.

01-26-06, 10:53 AM	#14
sonar732 The Old Man Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Central MO Posts: 1,562 Downloads: 6 Uploads: 0	Are y'all forgeting what happened the last time we sent SF's into Iran? Rejecting the Iranian demands, Carter approved an ill-conceived secret rescue mission: Operation Eagle Claw. On the night of April 24-25, 1980, as the first part of the operation, a number of C-130 transport airplanes rendezvoused with nine RH-53 helicopters at an airstrip in the Great Salt Desert of Eastern Iran, near Tabas. Two helicopters broke down in a sandstorm and a third one was damaged on landing. The mission was aborted, but as the aircraft took off again one helicopter clipped a C-130 and crashed, killing eight U.S. servicemen and injuring more than four.

01-26-06, 11:12 AM	#15
Abraham Eternal Patrol Moderator Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,572 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	War with Iran? You can't compare... At that time the morale of the US Army was low, the Special Forces were relatively inexperienced, there was little SF equipment and it was not tested under desert conditions and the logistical problems were emormous. All that has changed by now. I am sure that the US military can insert smal teams of SF to pinpoint targets with laser or give after battle damage reports. Perhaps even bigger parties that could raid some of the targets, in order to make sure that they are part of the nuclear program and avoid civilian casualties. __________________ RIP Abraham