U.S. Studies Military Strike Options on Iran

[TCO]

They can't do ****. We control that air space.

[C0ckney]

fo

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
What a useless post.

ta.

[GePap]

Its sad that the admin. is starting to move towards this totally imcomplete and sad option. But seeing that the US is currently ruled by imbeciles, I am nhot surprised.

The US certainly would "win" a series of limited or even more extensive air attacks, since the US could certainly overcome Iran's air defenses. That said, the air strikes would certainly fail to stop Iran from making nukes- at best, Iran would be delayed. The government in Israel would be delighted of course (they lack the military capability to do much of anything, despite their bluster), but the political damage to the US would be immense, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all over the Muslim world. The damage would be compounded if strikes came from Iraq, since it would make it seem that the US was using Iraq to attack its neighbors, certainly without the political support of the biggest parties in Iraq, all of which have close connections to Iran.

IN short, attacking Iran would fail to stop their programs, isolate the US further, and probably cause grave if not terminal damage to the Iraq experiement.....Just the sort of general disaster this administration is always willing to bring about...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Eli

Iraq showed everyone, including the Iranians, that the US is a paper tiger.

The Iraqi army was blasted to little pieces and the entire country occupied with minimal casualties within 3 weeks. If that's a paper tiger, I dont know where the real tigers are.

Hello!!! Elephant in corner of room!!!!

Sure, the US can invade Iran (at a much higher cost than Iraq), but that's not winning the war. In order to win the war, you need to occupy the place and impose your will on the inhabitants. The US cannot do the latter. The Vietnamese demonstrated this to the world, and the Iraqi insurgents are doing so again.

Traditional war just does not work any more.

And since the US is definetely not going to invade Iran, the Iraqi style terrorism/guerrila warfare is not relevant.

But it would be a diplomatic disaster. The Iranians have not been proven to be doing anything wrong. As GePap has just pointed out, the costs of doing this would be ridiculously high.

[SlowwHand]

Let me understand, it was said that nuclear air strikes would have no effect? I have to disagree.

[Jon Miller]

I think the fallout from nuclear strikes would be enormous.

JM

[PLATO]

Using Nuclear weapons...to stop the use of nuclear weapons...


hmmmm....

Double Plus Good!

_________________

[SlowwHand]

There's a lot more to it than that.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Let me understand, it was said that nuclear air strikes would have no effect? I have to disagree.

Yep. The short-term effect could be to halt Iran's program. The long term effect would be to make the whoel Muslim world implacably hostile toward us. And regime change? Oh, for sure you'd get regime change. But I suspect that the new regime will make us nostalgic for the old one.

We could achieve our short term goals, but would it be worth it?

[Ramo]

Airstrikes would be foolish. Airstrikes using tactical nukes would be astoundingly idiotic.

The diffusion of their nuclear program makes a long-term knockout through a bombing campaign unlikely. The only real chance of destroying the program permanently would be ground forces combing through potential nuclear sites followed by the installation of a pliant gov't, and that's impractical for any number of reasons. As for the political fallout of using a bunker-busting nuke on Nantaz, the upheaval in the Islamic world would be inconceivable - in Iraq alone.

According to Hersh's sources (and others), their thinking is that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” And that's patently absurd, since even Iranian Reformists generally agree with persuing Iran's nuclear ambitions (given the fact that nearby unfriendly states Pakistan and Israel have nukes). Of all the possible issues that they'd rebel against, nukes are the least likely of them; rather, such a bombing campaign would easily strengthen Khamenei's (who is the real center of power, rather than Ahmadinejad) grasp.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Yep. The short-term effect could be to halt Iran's program. The long term effect would be to make the whoel Muslim world implacably hostile toward us. And regime change? Oh, for sure you'd get regime change. But I suspect that the new regime will make us nostalgic for the old one.

We could achieve our short term goals, but would it be worth it?

As opposed to right now, where we have nothing but warm and fuzzies.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Lonestar


As opposed to right now, where we have nothing but warm and fuzzies.

Actually, right now, we've got traction with a number of Muslim countries: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia are all playing ball with us, however reluctantly and self-servingly. It's not warm and fuzzy, but it's dialogue and something to build on. Nuke a Muslim country? That's over.

[SlowwHand]

Hide and watch. The countries you named are getting bombed regularly, and surely not by us.

[techumseh]

Who, aside from the Kurds, is the closest thing the US has to an ally in Iraq? The Shiites? You got it!

But their real allegiance is to Iran. So what happens to the US position in Iraq if they attack Iran?

Don't really know, but it's not gonna be pretty.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Hide and watch. The countries you named are getting bombed regularly, and surely not by us.

There's bombed, and then there's nuked.

Here's the thing: The Muslim world, in its cohesion, is actually a lot like the West. There's a certain unity, but there's also a range of voices, from moderate/accomodationist to extreme. There are Muslim equivalents of Bush's arrogant, nationistic America -- Iran, in fact, is a good example. Jordan and France, similarly, play roughly equivalent accomodationist roles in each of their worlds.

How do you unite the disparate voices of the West? Easy: launch an unthinkable, inhuman attack on one of their countries. We saw that after 9/11, when the West was solidly united in its horror and anger, and stayed that way until Bush stopped thinking about 9/11 and decided to go after Saddam instead. Do we really want to be the catalyst for a similar kind of unity in the Muslim world?