Iran determined to break nuclear freeze, dismisses UN threat

How bout this. Iran is currently digging a hole which is thought to be a nuke test site.

Take a small nuke, drop it on the site when Iran has put its nuke there. Call it an accident. Iran people looses interest in nuclear development.

Problem solved.

Roger that.

"Take a small nuke, drop it on the site when Iran has put its nuke there. Call it an accident. Iran people looses interest in nuclear development."

I've been envisioning this same scenario for North Korea, but hey, I'm easy.

Forget an invasion. Strategic Bombing.. Like Afghanistan. Special Ops painting targets all around Iran. Force the Iranian Military to throw a coup. I've read that the Iranian Military has leaders in it that don't follow the hard line of the Mullahs that in the past have refused to put down student protest. Also special forces set up loyal to the mullahs, kind of like the KGB, watch over the Iranian military to keep them in line. Target the nuke sites and those loyalist forces you may not need an invasion force.

Thanks for the reply. The frogs are joke, but I do like french women. The germans have cut their defense budget so low over the years that they don't really have an effective military any longer, just a glorified police force. And Schroeder and Chirac enthusiastically endorse an independent EU rapid reaction force? Ha!

Irans real power......Oil!!

article excerpts:

One further caveat: When talking about oil's importance in American strategic thinking about Iran, it is important to go beyond the obvious question of Iran's potential role in satisfying our country's future energy requirements. Because Iran occupies a strategic location on the north side of the Persian Gulf, it is in a position to threaten oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, which together possess more than half of the world's known oil reserves. Iran also sits athwart the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which, daily, 40% of the world's oil exports pass. In addition, Iran is becoming a major supplier of oil and natural gas to China, India, and Japan, thereby giving Tehran additional clout in world affairs. It is these geopolitical dimensions of energy, as much as Iran's potential to export significant quantities of oil to the United States, that undoubtedly govern the administration's strategic calculations.

It is not, however, just sheer quantity that matters in Iran's case; no less important is its future productive capacity. Although Saudi Arabia possesses larger reserves, it is now producing oil at close to its maximum sustainable rate (about 10 million barrels per day). It will probably be unable to raise its output significantly over the next 20 years while global demand, pushed by significantly higher consumption in the United States, China, and India, is expected to rise by 50%. Iran, on the other hand, has considerable growth potential: it is now producing about 4 million barrels per day, but is thought to be capable of boosting its output by another 3 million barrels or so. Few, if any, other countries possess this potential, so Iran's importance as a producer, already significant, is bound to grow in the years ahead.

No doubt the major U.S. energy companies would love to be working with Iran today in developing these vast oil and gas supplies. At present, however, they are prohibited from doing so by Executive Order (EO) 12959, signed by President Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President Bush in March 2004. The United States has also threatened to punish foreign firms that do business in Iran (under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996), but this has not deterred many large companies from seeking access to Iran's reserves. China, which will need vast amounts of additional oil and gas to fuel its red-hot economy, is paying particular attention to Iran. According to the Department of Energy (DoE), Iran supplied 14% of China's oil imports in 2003, and is expected to provide an even larger share in the future. China is also expected to rely on Iran for a large share of its liquid natural gas (LNG) imports. In October 2004, Iran signed a $100 billion, 25-year contract with Sinopec, a major Chinese energy firm, for joint development of one of its major gas fields and the subsequent delivery of LNG to China. If this deal is fully consummated, it will constitute one of China's biggest overseas investments and represent a major strategic linkage between the two countries.

India is also keen to obtain oil and gas from Iran. In January, the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL) signed a 30-year deal with the National Iranian Gas Export Corp. for the transfer of as much as 7.5 million tons of LNG to India per year. The deal, worth an estimated $50 billion, will also entail Indian involvement in the development of Iranian gas fields. Even more noteworthy, Indian and Pakistani officials are discussing the construction of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan ¬ an extraordinary step for two long-term adversaries. If completed, the pipeline would provide both countries with a substantial supply of gas and allow Pakistan to reap $200-$500 million per year in transit fees.

Japan has also broken ranks with Washington on the issue of energy ties with Iran. In early 2003, a consortium of three Japanese companies acquired a 20% stake in the development of the Soroush-Nowruz offshore field in the Persian Gulf, a reservoir thought to hold 1 billion barrels of oil. One year later, the Iranian Offshore Oil Company awarded a $1.26 billion contract to Japan's JGC Corporation for the recovery of natural gas and natural gas liquids from Soroush-Nowruz and other offshore fields.

The Iranian leadership is well aware that it faces a serious threat from the Bush administration and is no doubt taking whatever steps it can to prevent such an attack. Here, too, oil is a major factor in both Tehran's and Washington's calculations. To deter a possible American assault, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and otherwise obstruct oil shipping in the Persian Gulf area. "An attack on Iran will be tantamount to endangering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and, in a word, the entire Middle East oil," Iranian Expediency Council secretary Mohsen Rezai said on March 1st.

Such threats are taken very seriously by the U.S. Department of Defense. "We judge Iran can briefly close the Strait of Hormuz, relying on a layered strategy using predominantly naval, air, and some ground forces," Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 16th.
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Ontop of all this....Iran has **Callabo Froggy[France]...and Russia in their corner.
Is following China's lead in awakening South American nations in future trade relations with an eye to undermine the U.S....if not arrange new world scale trade blocks with U.S. ranked as unfavorable trading partner.

Better cut the head off this soon.....If Iran is trouble today,
its a shadow of what it will be in the future.
U.S. will have their handsfull keeping Japan from going over to the Dark Side.
Japan.....who leads the world in Superconductor tech.
Superconductor tech....the new trade giant,
the oil killer!!

True, very true. Is the solution, however, some form of real, tough world government with its own, strong military to replace the UN? And what do we do about those countries (an awful lot of them!) who are uneasy about America's own ownership of nuclear missiles??? We could intimidate them by projecting our own power, but Britain (in Israel in the 1940s) and France (in Algeria in the 1960s) could point out that this seems to encourage acts of terrorism.....