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To: eater-of-toast
It's not “goading”. It is in America’s interest to take down Iran, with or without the Israelis. The Israelis wanted to hit Iran years ago but the US told the Israelis, wait, try diplomacy (which never works) and, as Obama said, “We've got your back”. What bunch of horse hockey! The Israelis are not the boy who cried wolf but the Jews always see this stuff coming BEFORE others. Give Israel credit. Her INTEL is better and more accurate AND they ACT ON IT!
Iran is building ICBM launchers for whom??? Not just Israel...
21 posted on 02/21/2015 11:54:23 PM PST by Netz
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To: Netz

If Netanyahu perceived Iran as an imminent threat to Israel, he would attack immediately using his own country’s armed forces (already generously subsidized by the US). The fact that he doesn’t do so, but instead tries to sucker the US into launching a war against Iran with no help from Israel, lest he lose Israeli troops killed and take a political hit, indicates that he sees confrontation with Iran merely as a war of choice.

Israeli intelligence does not agree unanimously that war with Iran is the best course; some past intelligence chiefs oppose it. Neither is it a matter of “the Jews.” Some Jews favor war with Iran and some don’t. It’s a good bet American Jews have less desire for war with Iran than American Christians; certainly that was the case with the Iraq war.

A war that toppled the regime in Tehran would be bad both for the US and Israel. There are only two possible outcomes for such a war, the same two that confronted us with the Iraq war.

1) Eventually giving the country over to an even worse gang of Islamic fundamentalists. This is what happened in Iraq and this is what would happen in Iran despite the fantasies of those who see the mirage of a viable pro-Western secular opposition. Unless we committed ourselves to...

2) Permanent occupation. And we obviously aren’t going to do that, any more than we did in Iraq.

The least bad realistic alternative for both the US and Israel is to deter Tehran with nuclear and other weapons. Deterrence works with the lunatics in North Korea; it’ll work with those in Iran. Despots living high on the hog don’t risk their own necks; they leave that to the little people. This principle dictates that Iran won’t risk all-out war, let alone nuclear war, with Israel or the US, though they will predictably harry us with terrorism, although we should remember that toppling the regime in Tehran would predictably make Iran an even worse hotbed of terrorism, as toppling Saddam set the stage for the rise of ISIS. Ah, the Mideast! Where there are no good alternatives, only less-awful ones.


22 posted on 02/22/2015 2:26:18 AM PST by eater-of-toast ("It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones." --Calvin Coolidge)
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