Anyone watching Obama's speech?

[Guynemer]

Laying the groundwork for war with Tehran.

Sigh.

[Wezil]

The Israeli PM was just here a few days ago. Our PM gave a green light to Israeli aggression.

[Al B. Sure!]

According to this breakdown:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/mar/04/barack-obama-aipac-speech-live

Obama is not being hawkish.

Now the president's approach to today's speech is becoming clear. The thrust is, I've already accomplished a lot, the current strategy of sanctions is working. And we're not done with diplomacy.

The president is not giving the hawks who support an invasion of Iran what they want. In no uncertain terms, he is saying let diplomacy work.

The hall appears to have fallen uncomfortably silent. Have they realized that this president does not intend to advance his rhetoric on military action against Iran?

Or is he saving something – does he have a promise yet to make? Obama now is working his way through familiar rhetoric about "no options off the table" and a "military effort to be prepared for any contingency."

The president has just turned to a section of the speech that may be seized on as its lasting message: "Already, there is too much loose talk of war."

He quotes Teddy Roosevelt: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick."

To observers of the president's drone strike campaign against Al Qaeda militants, his killing of Osama bin Laden and his expansion of the war in Afghanistan, the phrase may resonate.

But it's the very opposite of what many in the crowd were hoping for, which was that he would speak loudly.

[Hauldren Collider]

Laying the groundwork for war with Tehran.

Sigh.

Well, that's interesting. Would you prefer they have nukes?

And it's not like we'd invade or anything. Just bomb a couple remote mountains. Planes go in, drop some bombs, planes go out. Who cares? It'd be less expensive than the Libya thing.

[kentonio]

Dude I know I tend to call you an idiot, but please take this as a genuine response. You are very, very wrong about this. Iran is not Libya, and it's not Iraq. The Iranians have been building a program that means you can't just bomb it from the air and shut the whole thing down. US military commanders have made it very clear that all you can achieve by an air campaign is to delay the program by maybe a few months, maybe a few years tops. The cost of doing so would be to destroy the moderate faction in Iran, cause Iran to strike out against US and Israeli interests across the Middle East including a huge new wave of terrorist support, and potentially make them start hitting vessels in Hormuz and/or tossing missiles into Israel. It also means that the current near total support for sanctions is likely to dissolves as many countries will simply not support a US attack on another middle eastern country.

You're right of course, a nuclear armed Iran is a scary, potentially dreadful thing, but the uncomfortable truth is that there is no easy answer. A non-nuclear air campaign is not sufficient, a land war would make Iraq look like a picnic, and sanctions will almost certainly not work. If Iran are as close as people think, they will dig in until the bomb is ready and then tell the world to go **** itself afterwards.

TLDR: There is no easy win strategy.

[Hauldren Collider]

kentonio, we have "massive ordnance penetrators" that can obliterate even the reinforced sites in the mountains. I recognize that it could (and probably would) result in backlash from Iranian funded terrorist elements, but that is even more reason to act now, before they can extort us with nukes. I'd rather face the conventional rockets than the nuclear warheads. As far as I can tell, so would Israel.

[kentonio]

kentonio, we have "massive ordnance penetrators" that can obliterate even the reinforced sites in the mountains.

You have the new MOP weapons which are still not fully tested and functional which may do an unspecified amount of damage to the program. They're a penetrating 30,000lb bunker buster, but they have never been used in wartime and they are still in research. Just this year the pentagon requested additional funding to improve their penetrating capabilities. They are not a magic super weapon, and there is certainly no guarantee that they can do more than just delay the program.

Your own military commanders continue to warn that an air campaign will not resolve the situation, only delay it. Where does this idea that an air strike can solve everyones problems come from?

[The Mad Monk]

Any speech given on a Sunday morning won't be a good (popular) one.

[Hauldren Collider]

You have the new MOP weapons which are still not fully tested and functional which may do an unspecified amount of damage to the program. They're a penetrating 30,000lb bunker buster, but they have never been used in wartime and they are still in research. Just this year the pentagon requested additional funding to improve their penetrating capabilities. They are not a magic super weapon, and there is certainly no guarantee that they can do more than just delay the program.

Your own military commanders continue to warn that an air campaign will not resolve the situation, only delay it. Where does this idea that an air strike can solve everyones problems come from?

I'd much rather place my faith in B2's and MOPs than a bunch of economic sanctions. Besides, delaying the program by even a year is another year we have to find another way to prevent them from getting nukes. The way I see it, once the Iranians get nukes, it's game over. Sanctions aren't working. There's exactly one option that has any hope of preventing their going nuclear and it's an aerial attack.

[kentonio]

I'd much rather place my faith in B2's and MOPs than a bunch of economic sanctions. Besides, delaying the program by even a year is another year we have to find another way to prevent them from getting nukes. The way I see it, once the Iranians get nukes, it's game over. Sanctions aren't working. There's exactly one option that has any hope of preventing their going nuclear and it's an aerial attack.

No thats faulty logic. An aerial attack does not prevent their going nuclear, it just maybe slows it down and in the process creates a hellish situation in the Middle East. That year you just bought (and it could well be only a few months) is a year of death and chaos and low level war, and costs you your international consensus. If you want to stop the program completely you have exactly 2 options. Attack with nukes or invade. Anything else is just wishful thinking which the military keep telling you is nonsense. Do you only listen to the generals when they support what you already think?

[Dinner]

I doubt the new conventional warhead MOPs could do the job without repeated strikes. If you want to do it in one strike they'll have to use the old nuclear powered bunker busters but using a nuclear weapon would be about as popular in the world as a turd in the punch bowl.

[Hauldren Collider]

Who says we have to get it in one strike? We have plenty of bombers.

[giblets]

Isn't bombing them only going to delay their acquisition of nuclear weapons? And it will make their people hate us. In the long run it only makes their government stronger as far as I can tell.

[notyoueither]

kentonio, we have "massive ordnance penetrators" that can obliterate even the reinforced sites in the mountains. I recognize that it could (and probably would) result in backlash from Iranian funded terrorist elements, but that is even more reason to act now, before they can extort us with nukes. I'd rather face the conventional rockets than the nuclear warheads. As far as I can tell, so would Israel.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/04/irans_superconc/

"I designed a 2”x2” concrete cube with a compressive strength of 16,000 psi [pounds per square inch] at 28-days, a relatively high strength as standard concrete is on the order of 3,000 psi, typically. Now, The University of Tehran made several cubes between 50,000 to 60,000 psi, and possible stronger! I thought the aggregate to be made from quartz, and I also remember some steel fibers in the mix. These cubes exploded at failure, finally damaging the compression machine on the third or fourth cube (that machine was substantial, made for much larger samples). So, keep in mind this is unreinforced concrete (save the steel fibers) at an early age. Concrete becomes stronger, sometimes by orders of magnitude, over time.

[notyoueither]

Here's a newer article.

http://www.economist.com/node/21548918

Bunker-busting
Smart concrete
Iran makes some of the world’s toughest concrete. It can cope with earthquakes and, perhaps, bunker-busting bombs
Mar 3rd 2012 | from the print edition

A DUAL-USE technology is one that has both civilian and military applications. Enriching uranium is a good example. A country may legitimately do so to fuel power stations. Or it may do so illegitimately to arm undeclared nuclear weapons. Few, however, would think of concrete as a dual-use technology. But it can be. And one country—as it happens, one that is very interested in enriching uranium—is also good at making what is known as “ultra-high performance concrete” (UHPC).

Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Such materials could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs.

To a man with a hammer…

Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, seems worried. He recently admitted that his own country’s new bunker-busting bomb, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP, pictured above being dropped from a B-52), needs an upgrade to take on the deepest Iranian bunkers. But even that may not be enough, thanks to Iran’s mastery of smart concrete.

UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibres.

UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. Ductal, a French version of the material which is commercially available, can withstand pressure many times higher than normal concrete can. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures.

For this reason, Iranian civil engineers are interested in using it in structures as diverse as dams and sewage pipes and are working on improving it. Mahmoud Nili of Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamadan for example, is using polypropylene fibres and quartz flour, known as fume, in his mix. It has the flexibility to absorb far heavier blows than regular concrete. Rouhollah Alizadeh may do better still. Dr Alizadeh, a graduate of the University of Tehran, is currently working at Ottawa University in Canada on the molecular structure of cement. Once again, this research is for civilian purposes and could pave the way for a new generation of UHPC with precisely engineered properties and outstanding performance.

One way to tamper with the internal structure of concrete is to use nanoparticles. Ali Nazari and his colleagues at Islamic Azad University in Saveh have published several papers on how to do that with different types of metal-oxide nanoparticles. They have worked with oxides of iron, aluminium, zirconium, titanium and copper. At the nanoscale materials can take on extraordinary properties. Although it has been demonstrated only in small samples, it might be possible, using such nanoparticles, to produce concrete that is four times stronger than Ductal.

All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC’s potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. A study published by the University of Tehran in 2008 looked at the ability of UHPC to withstand the impact of steel projectiles. These are not normally a problem during earthquakes. This study found that concrete which contained a high proportion of long steel fibres in its structure worked best. Another study, published back in 1995, showed that although the compressive strength of concrete was enhanced only slightly by the addition of polymer fibres, its impact resistance improved sevenfold.

Western countries, too, have been looking at the military uses of UHPC. An Australian study carried out between 2004 and 2006 confirmed that UHPC resists blasts as well as direct hits. The tests, carried out at Woomera (once the British empire’s equivalent of Cape Canaveral), involved a charge equivalent to six tonnes of TNT. This fractured panels made of UHPC, but did not shatter them. Nor did it shake free and throw out fragments, as would have happened had the test been carried out on normal concrete. In a military context, such shards flying around inside a bunker are a definite plus from the attackers’ point of view, but obviously not from the defenders’.

Those people who design bunker-busters no doubt understand these points and have their own secret data to work with. Nevertheless, during the Gulf war in 1991 the American air force found that its 2,000lb (about a tonne) bunker-busters were incapable of piercing some Iraqi bunkers. The bomb designers went back to the drawing board and after two generations of development the result, all 13 tonnes of it, is the MOP. So heavy is it that the weapon bays of B-2 stealth bombers have had to be strengthened to carry it. It can, reportedly, break through over 60 metres of ordinary concrete. However, the bomb it is less effective against harder stuff, penetrating only eight metres into concrete that is just twice as strong. It is therefore anyone’s guess (at least, anyone without access to classified information) how the MOP might perform against one of Iran’s ultra-strong concretes.

America’s Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the organisation that developed the MOP, has been investigating UHPC since 2008. This investigation has involved computer modelling and penetration testing. The agency’s focus appears to be on the idea of chipping away at a target with multiple hits. However, this approach requires great precision; and the air force is ordering only 20 MOPs, so there is little room for error.

Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. The DTRA has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of metres of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs.

In the meantime, though, the Pentagon is stuck with the “big hammer” approach. The question is how reliably that hammer would work if the order were given to attack Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. It would be embarrassing if the bunkers were still intact when the smoke cleared.

Clarification: The original version of this article might have been read as implying that the named Iranian concrete researchers were knowingly involved in non-civilian research. They are not. The text was changed to reflect this on March 3rd.