Israeli Chief of Staff: Iran will not build a bomb

[Al B. Sure!]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/benny-gantz-israel-iran_n_1451644.html

Israel's military chief said in an interview published Wednesday that Iran will ultimately decide against building a nuclear weapon – putting him at odds with Israel's more pessimistic prime minister.

Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz told the Haaretz daily that he believes that diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions, along with Israel's determination to strike if necessary, will deter Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons.

"I don't think (Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) will want to go the extra mile," he said. "I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people."

[giblets]

Don't be ridiculous Al, it's common sense that muslims are irrational lunatics.

[Zevico]

Rich Lowry put it better than I have time to; rationality is not the issue here. No one is saying that Iran is run by psychologically identifiable lunatics. Ideology is the issue, not psychology.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, thinks that Iran is a “rational actor.” He is indisputably correct.

Iran has, quite rationally, concluded that if it spins thousands of centrifuges to enrich enough uranium, it will soon have the bomb. Just as rationally, it believes it can string the West along. Then there is its airtight chain of cause and effect in the alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States: If it hired a Mexican drug gang, and that gang blew up a Washington, D.C., restaurant, and the Saudi ambassador was dining there at the time, the ambassador would die. Q.E.D.

General Dempsey said too little and too much about the Iranian regime. Tehran couldn’t have made itself into the world’s foremost exporter of terror and extended its tentacles throughout the Middle East without resorting to rational calculation. That’s obvious. What Dempsey is implying, though, is that a regime capable of such calculation can necessarily be deterred if it gets a nuclear weapon. That’s an unsupportable leap.

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If there’s one thing we should have established beyond doubt during the past decade, it is that involvement in terror attacks on American soil is extremely costly to the perpetrators. Nonetheless, according to the U.S. government, the Iranians hatched a plot against the Saudi ambassador where the risk bore no relation whatsoever to the possible reward — from our perspective.

More fundamentally from our perspective, there is no point in establishing a theocracy, killing innocents abroad, pursuing sectarian war, crushing protesters, denying the Holocaust, and threatening Israel with annihilation, either. From the point of view of the Western liberal tradition, the Islamic Republic itself makes no sense. Yet there it is, withstanding punishing economic sanctions to pursue the weapon that the regime wouldn’t want in the first place if it accepted international norms.

If the Soviets, the famous “evil empire” bristling with thousands of nuclear weapons, could be deterred, why not Iran? The Soviet leadership became more pragmatic over time. After Nikita Khrushchev renounced Josef Stalin, it didn’t believe that war with its enemies was imminent and inevitable. Iran’s religio-ideological fire, in contrast, is still burning hot.

A highly ideological leadership with a sense of desperate urgency is the enemy of deterrence. In 1941, Dean Acheson rightly said: “No rational Japanese could believe an attack on us could result anything but disaster.” Except the Japanese — driven by a sense of honor alien to us — believed that they only had two choices: getting squeezed out of China by the U.S., or launching a risky war.

Even in the Cold War, deterrence almost failed. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the airstrike and invasion pushed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff might well have unwittingly prompted a nuclear exchange. The defense secretary at the time, the late Bob McNamara, maintained that “we lucked out.” Ah, yes, that crucial backstop to deterrence — luck.

The Israelis can be forgiven for not feeling very lucky. Do we think Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will establish a “red telephone” to smooth out misunderstandings after Iran goes nuclear? The Iranian regime is factionalized, and it is sure to be the most fanatical elements that control the nukes. It is also prone to bouts of popular unrest threatening its existence. If the regime ever believes it is going down, national martyrdom might look gloriously alluring.

In March 1945, Adolf Hitler gave his infamous Nero Decree, essentially calling for the destruction of Germany. After the first U.S. atomic attack on Hiroshima, the Japanese war minister mused about how wonderful it would be if his nation were destroyed “like a beautiful flower.” It is in this tradition that former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — a relative pragmatist — said that “even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”

On his own perverse terms, Rafsanjani’s reasoning is unassailable. He’s just another “rational actor.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291862/iran-s-terrible-rationality-rich-lowry

[DinoDoc]

Does it really matter at this point if they build a nuclear weapon since they've already mastered the critical steps needed to build one according to the IAEA?

[DaShi]

Rich Lowry put it better than I have time to; rationality is not the issue here. No one is saying that Iran is run by psychologically identifiable lunatics. Ideology is the issue, not psychology.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, thinks that Iran is a “rational actor.” He is indisputably correct.

Iran has, quite rationally, concluded that if it spins thousands of centrifuges to enrich enough uranium, it will soon have the bomb. Just as rationally, it believes it can string the West along. Then there is its airtight chain of cause and effect in the alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States: If it hired a Mexican drug gang, and that gang blew up a Washington, D.C., restaurant, and the Saudi ambassador was dining there at the time, the ambassador would die. Q.E.D.

General Dempsey said too little and too much about the Iranian regime. Tehran couldn’t have made itself into the world’s foremost exporter of terror and extended its tentacles throughout the Middle East without resorting to rational calculation. That’s obvious. What Dempsey is implying, though, is that a regime capable of such calculation can necessarily be deterred if it gets a nuclear weapon. That’s an unsupportable leap.

Advertisement
If there’s one thing we should have established beyond doubt during the past decade, it is that involvement in terror attacks on American soil is extremely costly to the perpetrators. Nonetheless, according to the U.S. government, the Iranians hatched a plot against the Saudi ambassador where the risk bore no relation whatsoever to the possible reward — from our perspective.

More fundamentally from our perspective, there is no point in establishing a theocracy, killing innocents abroad, pursuing sectarian war, crushing protesters, denying the Holocaust, and threatening Israel with annihilation, either. From the point of view of the Western liberal tradition, the Islamic Republic itself makes no sense. Yet there it is, withstanding punishing economic sanctions to pursue the weapon that the regime wouldn’t want in the first place if it accepted international norms.

If the Soviets, the famous “evil empire” bristling with thousands of nuclear weapons, could be deterred, why not Iran? The Soviet leadership became more pragmatic over time. After Nikita Khrushchev renounced Josef Stalin, it didn’t believe that war with its enemies was imminent and inevitable. Iran’s religio-ideological fire, in contrast, is still burning hot.

A highly ideological leadership with a sense of desperate urgency is the enemy of deterrence. In 1941, Dean Acheson rightly said: “No rational Japanese could believe an attack on us could result anything but disaster.” Except the Japanese — driven by a sense of honor alien to us — believed that they only had two choices: getting squeezed out of China by the U.S., or launching a risky war.

Even in the Cold War, deterrence almost failed. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the airstrike and invasion pushed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff might well have unwittingly prompted a nuclear exchange. The defense secretary at the time, the late Bob McNamara, maintained that “we lucked out.” Ah, yes, that crucial backstop to deterrence — luck.

The Israelis can be forgiven for not feeling very lucky. Do we think Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will establish a “red telephone” to smooth out misunderstandings after Iran goes nuclear? The Iranian regime is factionalized, and it is sure to be the most fanatical elements that control the nukes. It is also prone to bouts of popular unrest threatening its existence. If the regime ever believes it is going down, national martyrdom might look gloriously alluring.

In March 1945, Adolf Hitler gave his infamous Nero Decree, essentially calling for the destruction of Germany. After the first U.S. atomic attack on Hiroshima, the Japanese war minister mused about how wonderful it would be if his nation were destroyed “like a beautiful flower.” It is in this tradition that former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — a relative pragmatist — said that “even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”

On his own perverse terms, Rafsanjani’s reasoning is unassailable. He’s just another “rational actor.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ity-rich-lowry

In confrontations between two or more rational actors, one inevitably loses regardless of who was "more" rational.

[dannubis]

Does it really matter at this point if they build a nuclear weapon since they've already mastered the critical steps needed to build one according to the IAEA?

So, buying a gun gets you arrested for armed robbery these days ?

[Zevico]

So, buying a gun gets you arrested for armed robbery these days ?

He's comparing them to e.g. the Japanese, who are not in the possession of a nuclear weapon but are regarded as capable of making them fairly easily. The point being that the danger is the same whether or nor they have an actual nuclear weapon if they have the cabability to make one. That danger does not depend on capability per se but on the beliefs, actions, stability and culture of the regime entrusted with the care of the nuclear material or weaponry. The danger lies in the character of the Iranian regime; the question is whether it can be entrusted with material that could relatively easily be converted into nuclear weaponry, or nuclear weaponry itself.

[dannubis]

I am happy to say that that is not your decision to make. Sovereignity i believe it is called.

BTW, that question I asked, your reply to it wasn't an answer.

[Zevico]

I am happy to say that that is not your decision to make. Sovereignity i believe it is called.

I'll have you know I'm a one man sovereign state. I call myself Zevicotania.

BTW, that question I asked, your reply to it wasn't an answer.

True. But strictly speaking if your question is taken literally it's completely irrelevant to the subject. It's only relevant as an analogy; I addressed the analaogy instead of the question. So what?

[dannubis]

I'll have you know I'm a one man sovereign state. I call myself Zevicotania.

I will not get an entry visum I promise you that !

True. But strictly speaking if your question is taken literally it's completely irrelevant to the subject. It's only relevant as an analogy; I addressed the analaogy instead of the question. So what?

No you made an inconsistent attempt at refuting the fact that DD is changing the rethoric from:

"Quickly, they are building the bomb. Let's stop them by any means possible"
to
"We don't care if they are actually building the bomb, let's go to war"

And jsut for you I will reword the question:

So being black and buying a gun gets you arrested for armed robbery these days ?

[rah]

If that black guy has been saying for months that when he gets that gun, he's going to kill every white guy on the block, it makes the white guys want to try to make sure he doesn't get a gun.

Maybe if they didn't spend so much time mouthing off about killing all the jews, people wouldn't be so uptight about them developing the means to do it.

It's their right to do so, but when they mouth off like that, they should expect to have to deal with the response.

[DinoDoc]

So, buying a gun gets you arrested for armed robbery these days ?

Are you so brain damaged as to think domestic law analogies have any useful place in this discussion?

[dannubis]

No, but since you obviously are too dumb to understand I am not going to try to explain to you what part of the analogy you should be focussing on.