don't Read The Belmont Club (gloomy nuclear Iran scenario)

claytoncramer.com ^ | 1/19/06 | Clayton Cramer

[finnman69]

Don't Read The Belmont Club

It will not make you happy and cheery. Wretchard points to a recent study of what happens when Iran gets nuclear weapons, from the U.S. Army War College. Short of invasion, there's probably no way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons--which will likely lead Arab nations in the region to get nuclear weapons as well, as a way of deterring Iranian ambitions. (They may all be Muslims, but Iranian desires to be the big cheese of the region will probably trump religious similarities.)

The comments on the article are quite thoughtful, and very disturbing. In some respects, this is 1936, when the Western powers had the option of responding militarily to Hitler's remilitarization of the Ruhr. They chose not to do so--and that is now recognized as the last time that Hitler could have been stopped without massive bloodshed. One commenter captured the rather significant hazard of waiting:

But, as our capabilities can grow, so can those of Iran and its myrmidons the Islamists. You suggest we have a 5-year window. I think that if we wait those 5 years the number of dead in the ensuing war will be at least an order of magnitude, perhaps two orders of magnitude greater than if we strike now while our superiority in 'national strategic means' remains overwhelming.

I know this sounds overly dramatic, but I honestly believe that to avoid the fight before the Iranians acquire nuclear weapons is to ensure the fight with Islam turns into a Vernichtigungskrieg - a war of extermination.

By this, I think he means that if Iran reaches the point where they can carry out their President's wish--of wiping Israel off the map--this will lead to a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran. I would also expect that Israel might engage in the Samson option--figuring that if more than a couple of nuclear weapons go off over Israel, they are not going to continue to exist anymore, they won't need American aid, they already don't much care what a bunch of whining Europeans think, and they might as well exterminate their enemies. That would likely mean destruction of Mecca, Medina, and all major Arab and Iranian population centers for which they have enough bombs.

If you thought that al-Qaeda and sympathizers were mad at the U.S. for having troops in Saudi Arabia, I think this would provoke a pretty sizeable fraction of Muslims in the Western world to join up. Follow that path to its logical conclusion, and we'll end up with all sorts of really ugly but probably necessary steps:

1. Mass arrests of Muslims, and mass deportation of those that aren't citizens. The ACLU will file all the "free exercise of religion" suits that they want, and the courts will ignore the Constitution because of the severity of the crisis. In Europe, it may be uglier, because the Muslim percentage is so much higher, and a much higher percentage of European Muslims are sympathetic to Islamofascism.

2. Nuclear retaliation by the U.S. when an Iranian weapon ends up in the hands of a terrorist group that uses it against the U.S. or one of our NATO allies.

3. If any other Muslim power has nuclear weapons at that point, they will be at war with the U.S. in short order, leading to an asymmetrical set of nuclear weapons uses. The U.S. will certainly lose a city (or two, or three), with hundreds of thousands dead, trillions in losses; countries that attack us--or are believed to have attacked us--will suffer millions or tens of millions of deaths. Some of these countries will rapidly return to the 14th century in technology.

4. Oil prices will skyrocket during all this, but the collapse of the world economy will solve that problem. What happened after 9/11 will be almost nothing by comparison.

Unfortunately, a U.S. attack on Iran will inflame patriotic sentiment in Iran--probably making any sort of overthrow of the mullahocracy impossible. We pretty much have to stop this madness before it reaches the point where we have to go to war.

[finnman69]

scary scary stuff

[thoughtomator]

I wonder if Paris and Berlin are on Israel's list for the Samson option. They would be if I were making the list, and possibly Moscow too.

[Travis McGee]

Interesting times indeed. Invest in precious metals: gold, silver, brass, lead, steel.

[sonofjoe]

or bronze.

[Thunder90]

Add Beijing to the Samson list!

[Thunder90]

Don't forget how Russia and China would play out in this.

[Kuehn12]

Shut the heck up guy, saying what you are saying only makes you sound like an idiot.

[thoughtomator]

This from a guy who says "I can live with a nuclear Iran"?

That alone should disqualify you from the conversation. A nuclear Iran=nuclear terrorism, and if you can live with that you are on the other side of this war.

[Lejes Rimul]

Anyone who really believes that Israel would nuke Mecca, Medina, et al. doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. There are still hundreds of thousands of Jews across the greater Islamic world, and they're at the mercy of their Muslim neighbors. That's reason enough to stay Israel's hand, no matter how much people might like to fantasize otherwise.

[eddiespaghetti]

There are still hundreds of thousands of Jews across the greater Islamic world . . .


Hundreds of thousdands? Where?

[Lejes Rimul]

My mistake on the hundreds, but there are tens of thousands. Some 20,000 in Iran alone.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html#region
seems to be a decent source.

[eddiespaghetti]

Tx. I'll check it out.


es

[Kuehn12]

I believe we can put in place a sufficient level of surveillance that Iran wouldn't be able to do so, engage in any nuclear terrorism. An the certainty of massive retaliation would dissuade them using a one or two bomb Peril Harbor against Israel. Do you really think Israel detecting a missile launch their way from Iran wouldn't respond with a massive nuclear counter strike? Fanaticism can only go so far and even fanatic realize certain realities.

[sonofjoe]

But when that Fanatic doesn't care after he pushes the button whether he lives or dies...it's a little hard giving him the option of the button.