The Case For Invading Iran

America has come to another turning point – whether our inaction will again engulf the world and us in a nightmare comparable to World War Two. This will entail loss of our freedom as the price of domestic security measures against terrorist weapons of mass destruction, though we might suffer nuclear attack before implementing those measures. The only effective alternative is American use of pre-emptive military force against an imminent threat – Iranian nuclear weapons, which requires that we invade Iran and overthrow its mullah regime as we did to Iraq’s Baathist regime.

All the reasons for invading Iraq apply doubly to Iran, and with far greater urgency. Iran right now poses the imminent threat to America which Iraq did not in 2003. Iran may already have some nuclear weapons, purchased from North Korea or made with materials acquired from North Korea, which would increase its threat to us from imminent to direct and immediate.

Iran’s mullahs are about to produce their first home-built nuclear weapons this year. If we permit that, many other countries, some of whose governments are dangerously unstable, will build their own nuclear weapons to deter Iran and each other from nuclear attack as our inaction will have demonstrated our unwillingness to keep the peace. This rapid and widespread proliferation will inevitably lead to use of nuclear weapons in anger, both by terrorists and by fearful and unstable third world regimes, at which point the existing world order will break down and we will suffer every Hobbesian nightmare of nuclear proliferation.

Iran has dramatically shortened the time required to acquire the necessary weapons-grade fissionable materials by purchase abroad of pre-enriched, but not yet weapons-grade, fissionable materials (not just from North Korea). Iran’s technicians already have the expertise to fabricate functional nuclear weapons. The latter opinion is held by, among others, Mohamed El Baradei, director-general of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, who said that Iran can produce nuclear weapons in a few months if it has the requisite weapons-grade fissionables: "And if they have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponization program along the way, they are really not very far—a few months—from a weapon."

It normally takes years to produce the highly purified fissionables required for nuclear weapons – that is the only obstacle after Pakistan let its nuclear weapons program director sell the knowledge of weapons fabrication to anyone with enough money. All estimates alleging that it will take Iran years to produce nuclear weapons assume that they will do so from scratch, but that is not the case. Iran purchased pre-enriched fissionables with the intent of “breaking out” in a short period to a fully stocked production “pipeline” of fissionables under enrichment at all stages of the process, from “yellowcake” at the low end to almost ready at the high end.

It is possible, and in my opinion has already happened, that Iran has purchased enough nuclear materials from North Korea to fabricate a few nuclear weapons and facilitate the following strategy. Iran could minimize the duration of a “window” of vulnerability to pre-emptive American or Israeli attack between their first nuclear tests (or announcement that they have nuclear weapons), and possession of enough nukes to deter attack, by postponing the announcement and/or first tests until they have a full-speed production line going – everything from enriching fissionables to weapons-grade and fabricating those into nuclear weapons, to stocks of finished nuclear weapons. At that point most or all of the latter will likely be of North Korean origin, but those will be quickly outnumbered by made-in-Iran ones under final assembly at the time of the announcement. I believe this is the plan Iran is following, and that the announcement will come late this year.

The recent spike in world oil prices gave Iran’s mullahs billions of dollars more in hard currency for use in acquiring material for their nuclear weapons program. The timing of their ongoing breakout to public nuclear weapons capability, and the public threats of Iran’s president, indicate that some recent event has given them additional confidence here. I feel this was their purchase of enough nuclear weapons materials from North Korea to fabricate a few nuclear weapons. They might have bought fully operational North Korean nukes. Such North Korean complicity carries other implications.

Whatever the reason, Iran’s mullahs no longer seem to feel a need to wait for final processing of fissionables, and fabrication of those into nuclear weapons, before their nuclear deterrent against the United States is ready. They act like they presently have that deterrent, and are proceeding to backfill their fissionable processing and weapons fabrication line before announcing that they have nuclear weapons. America’s election cycle plus the Bush administration’s fictitious budget estimates might also have a role in the timing of this announcement.

Those who have considered the consequences of Iran’s open possession of nuclear weapons (as opposed to covert possession) have generally focused on its avowed threats against Israel and the United States. Those are certainly enough grounds for pre-emptive attack by both – Iran’s mullah regime is the one government in the entire world whose possession of nuclear weapons would most pose a direct and immediate threat to America and Israel.

Iran’s mullahs will use nuclear weapons as a shield against foreign attack while they more openly support terrorism elsewhere. American acquiescence in Iranian nuclear weapons will lose the war on terror by ceding terrorists a “privileged sanctuary” in Iran. We’ll have let terrorists have in Iran what we invaded Iraq to stop. The invasion of Iraq will have been a complete waste of effort, and our dead in Iraq will have died in vain.

The chief threat of Iranian nukes, however, is what they will lead to elsewhere – something which will make all of the above trivial by comparison, something which will go on and on long after Iran’s mullah regime is overthrown by the Iranian people.

If the United States does not forcibly prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons, every country in the area will know to a moral certainty that they cannot rely on the United States for protection against Iranian nuclear attack, or Iranian nuclear blackmail in support of domestic opposition to the generally shaky regimes of the Middle East. American prestige and influence there will collapse. If we won’t protect ourselves by pre-emption, we can’t be relied on to protect anyone else.

So every country within reach of Iranian nuclear weapons will have enormous strategic pressure to develop their own nuclear weapons to deter Iranian nuclear threats. As a recent strategic survey noted, Syria has many times the per capita and absolute GDP of North Korea, and Egypt several times the per capita and absolute GDP of Pakistan. If North Korea and Pakistan can develop nuclear weapons, so can Syria and Egypt, and also Saudi Arabia, all three of whose regimes are shaky. And they won’t be the only countries to develop nuclear weapons after Iran does - many more will join the nuclear “club” within a few years, some within months.

All of those countries having nuclear weapons will create a security nightmare – at some point terrorists will be able to buy or steal some (assuming that Iran doesn’t first give a few to favored terrorist groups). It is likely that at least some will use their nuclear weapons on each other, or in a domestic coup or factional fight. The latter might first happen in Iran.

Few have any idea of the degree to which international trade and prosperity relies on free movement of goods between countries. Container cargo is an ideal means of covertly transporting terrorist nuclear weapons. Once the first terrorist nuke is used, international trade will be enormously curtailed for at least several months for security reasons, and the entire world will suffer a simultaneous recession.

It won’t stop there, though. These same security precautions, once implemented, will significantly impede future economic growth – a ballpark estimate of reducing worldwide growth by 20-30% is reasonable. Consider the worldwide and domestic effects over a twenty-year period of a one-quarter across the board reduction in economic growth.

This will be just from security precautions against terrorist nukes –not physical destruction from such use nor, more importantly, the consequences of nuclear wars between or within third world states. Physical destruction from these will be bad enough, but that pales compared with the social and consequent economic effects – enormous tides of refugees, economic collapse and outright anarchy over wide areas.

We cannot avoid that washing over us from abroad even if we manage to avoid terrorist nuclear attack at home, and we are unlikely to be so lucky. Scores if not hundreds of thousands of Americans will likely be killed, and many more injured, from terrorist nuclear devices used in America when so many politically unstable countries possess hundreds of the things.

We better than most can economically afford the thoroughly intrusive security measures required to protect against terrorist nukes when the threat can come from anywhere, as opposed to Islamic extremists alone.

But the price of domestic security, when foreign security fails due to a failure of leadership and will by President Bush, will be something much more precious – our freedom.

Freedom everywhere will suffer due to those same security precautions. The greatest loss of freedom will come in those countries which are freest, i.e., especially America. Especially us.

It is obvious that Iran’s leaders cannot be deterred from developing nuclear weapons. The U.N. won’t stop them. Diplomatic solutions won’t – the mullahs’ bad faith is obvious. Their diplomacy serves the same purpose as Japan’s with us in late 1941 after their carrier attack fleet had sailed for Pearl Harbor - to distract us from the coming attack. We are at that same point now, only we know the Kido Butai is coming and have no excuse for surprise. Iran’s President has openly stated their real intentions. Iranian diplomacy merely lets the willing deceive themselves.

There isn’t time to overthrow Iran’s mullah regime through subversion before the end of this year, and President Bush’s toleration of factional disputes in our national security apparatus means that we lack the capability to do so, period.

Iran seems to be in a pre-revolutionary state such that its mullah regime will collapse from purely domestic reasons within a few years even if we do nothing, but by then it will have openly had nuclear weapons for several years, possibly used them against Israel and/or been pre-emptively nuked by Israel, and widespread nuclear proliferation will have started with all the horrors that will bring.

Only military force THIS YEAR can prevent this nightmare. Bombing alone won’t do it – it will only postpone things, and Iran’s mullahs won’t just sit there while we’re bombing them. War is a two-way street. They have spent years preparing for this conflict, and will try to stop Persian Gulf oil exports. There will also be an instant massive uprising by Iranian-led Shiite militias in southern Iraq.

Half-measures in war only make things worse. If we really want to find out how much Iran’s mullah regime can hurt us, and relearn the lessons of Vietnam, we need only bomb without invading. That will maximize our losses. Those who advocate mere bombing have not considered that Iran might already have some nuclear weapons.

Israel does not have the military capability we do. Israeli air attack against Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear facilities will at most postpone Iranian production by a few months. The United States Air Force can postpone it for as long as we keep up the attacks, but the mullahs will counterattack such that we’ll be at war whether we want to be or not, only with no chance of victory while we’re afraid to win.

The only effective way to stop the mullahs from building nukes, while minimizing our losses from their counter-attacks, is to overthrow their regime by invasion and conquest as we did against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

Democratic military experts agreed in a recent Atlantic Monthly article that eliminating Iran's mullah regime with a ground invasion is feasible - they were more optimistic about it than I am (my emphasis:

I believe the durations mentioned in the Atlantic article should be at least doubled – it won’t take us only 7-10 more days to overthrow Iran’s regime than it did Iraq’s, not to mention locating and destroying the known and secret nuclear facilities scattered over a wide area. I feel the Atlantic panel significantly underestimated logistic problems. Our forces must pass through mountains to get to Iran’s capital of Teheran, while getting to Baghdad required passage only through deserts and broad river valleys. Iran is much bigger than Iraq, so our ground forces will have a greater distance to travel, while even minor resistance in mountain passes will cause significant delays.

The Atlantic article concluded that eliminating the mullah regime was feasible – we agree that Iranian ground resistance will be minor, especially compared to our forces’ extreme effectiveness - but the Atlantic panelists felt that the consequences had too high a price. I agree that the occupation campaign afterwards will be much worse for us, in terms of intensity and required manpower, than the occupation campaign in Iraq – they felt the necessary manpower required for several years’ occupation duty would be prohibitive. They did not, however, even attempt to weigh that against the consequences of letting Iran have nuclear weapons, the effects of it already having some, and the probable duration of an occupation campaign.

I do. The tradeoffs between the cost of an extended occupation in Iran, and its desirability, change dramatically if we must search for easily concealed, ready-to-use nuclear weapons, as opposed to merely destroying the physical ability to produce them.

I also feel the occupation campaign in Iran will take much less time than the one in Iraq for the following reasons:

(1) Iran has a functioning civil society and democratic tradition while Iraq didn't. The mullahs veto candidates they don't like, more in the past few years than earlier, but the systems and mindset for a functioning democratic society are present.

(2) We can use many of the Iranian army's junior officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel as a cadre for the new democratic regime's security forces. We couldn't do that with Iraq's army as the officers and non-coms were almost exclusively Sunni Arabs aka Baathist regime loyalists, and the mostly Shiite conscripts had almost all gone home.

3) Iran has at least one order of magnitude, and probably several orders of magnitude, less loose explosives than were present in Iraq, for possible use in improvised explosive devices. The mullah regime die-hards will die much faster than the Baathist die-hards in Iraq, because the ones in Iran will be attacking our forces mostly with direct-fire weapons. That is suicidal against American forces.

4) Language and ethnicity differences mean that Al Qaeda's purely Sunni foreign terrorists won't be able to operate much in Iran. The latter operated only briefly in Shiite areas of Iraq - those that didn't leave quickly died horribly at Shiite hands. While there are a lot of Sunnis in Iran, few of those are Arabs - they're Kurds, Azeris, etc.

My rough estimate of American casualties in the conquest and occupation campaigns for Iran, assuming that the mullahs don't nuke us, or use chemical weapons, is that we'd take about 50% more casualties in the first 18-24 months in Iran than in three years in Iraq, mostly in the twelve month period after the initial conquest.

I agree with the Atlantic panelists that the conquest campaign in Iran would, in terms of casualties, cost little more than Iraq’s - several hundred allied KIA. I just think it would take longer.

Everyone I know of with opinions on the subject agrees that the occupation campaign in Iran would be more intense than Iraq's, but Iraq's has seen only about 1700 KIA (or is it total fatalities including accidents?) during the 33 months of the occupation to date. That is about 50 fatalities per month for an average of about 120,000 troops (1 fatality per month per 2400 troops).

If Iran's occupation entails 200,000 men and is twice as intense as Iraq's in terms of casualties, we're looking at 1 fatality per 1200 men per month. 200k x 12 months = 2400k divided by 1200 = 2000 fatalities per year. This is certainly a lot compared to Iraq’s occupation campaign, but it also indicates that American casualties in Iran will be acceptable by any reasonable standard.

In my opinion the occupation campaign in Iran will be awful only for the first year, and then conditions will improve much faster than in Iraq for reasons mentioned above in this post. My guesstimate at this point is about 3000 American fatalities over two years for both the conquest and occupation campaigns in Iran, though the first year would be ghastly.

That Iran may already have some nuclear weapons (IMO this is likely) complicates a prospective invasion. We’d had a plan for several years to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capability (i.e., the launchers as well as the warheads) – it is called variously “Global Strike” and CONPLAN 8022. The United States Air Force excels at blowing things up.

Consider also, that, if small numbers of Iranian nuclear weapons are enough of a threat to seriously menace an American invasion, they are enough of a threat to merit pre-emptive attack with American nuclear weapons. Get real - our nukes are bigger than theirs, and we have lots more than they do. And if Iranian nuclear weapons aren’t enough of a threat to merit pre-emptive use of our own, they’re not a reason to avoid invading. It is not likely, however, that the USAF will need nuclear weapons to keep the mullahs from getting any off.

Did I mention the bribes? Now is the time for some breathtaking bribes – say a billion dollars per Iranian nuke delivered to us, which would be cheap given the alternative. Once we demonstrate the will to invade and eliminate the mullah regime, such bribes would be more effective than most think. Psychological warfare was wildly successful in the invasion of Iraq.

Fear of possible Iranian nuclear weapons use against an American invasion is not a valid reason for doing nothing. A thousand more American civilians have been killed by enemy action at home in this war than American servicemen killed at home and abroad. Not invading Iran will increase this disparity by several orders of magnitude. We have armed forces to protect our civilians from the enemy, not vice versa – soldiers die so civilians don’t. We will invade Iran to protect the American people from nuclear attack. That is worth the risk posed by Iranian nuclear weapons to American soldiers, and the burden of deploying 200,000 troops there for several years. Our reserves knew when they enlisted that they’d be called up for the duration of a major war. Invasion of Iran to protect America from nuclear attack, and preserve our freedom, counts as a major war.

This would, however, make absolute hash of the Bush administration's quite fictitious future budget estimates, which are the reason why it refused to significantly expand our ground forces after 9/11 though such was obviously necessary. Those phony budget estimates are arguably the biggest obstacle to our invasion of Iran this year. Iran’s mullahs might even have counted on this in timing their breakout to public nuclear weapons possession.

And if we don't invade this year, it won't matter much after that. We'll be in the worst case scenario. And President Bush will be reviled as America’s worst President – the one who through inaction cost us our freedom.

[Yeah, we'll use the newly formed 120th AA Division, the 12th Armored Division and the 212th Infantry Division and the 8th MEF...just for starters.]

The Iraqi Army is being given more and more responsibility, freeing up US forces for action in Iran. Rumsfeld will have been incompetent if he hasn't prepared a significant foreign and US force for the job. Whatever forces are now being arrayed, is a secret. No need to discuss possible secrets. No need to continue the bogus argument that we "are tied down" by the very regimes in Iran and Syria that are tying us down. No need to continue allowing the Iranian support of the insurgency and Syrian government via the billions in oil revenue they are still allowed to benefit from at our expense (and the expense of damaged Iraqi oil pipelines - why we don't damage Iranian pipelines for every Iraqi pipeline hit by the insurgency is beyond me).

The argument that our troops are tied down in Iraq is like saying that, if someone is pinning both your arms down on the floor and cutting your wrists, your only way out of the predicament is to loosen the grip of your tormentor on one of those arms...instead of heading him or kneeing him in the groin to escape and then finish him off.

[Maybe we should sign a mutual-defence treaty with Israel]

It is common knowledge in the Middle East and USA that the USA would attack Iran if Iran attacked Israel. Only the type of FReeper who doesn't like Israel would assume or pretend that this isn't already a given...if only because "saving a sovereign country under attack" would be a legitimate excuse. Note that the Iraqi insurgency only gets the little currency it gets with the international left wing...because it fights supposedly in its own country for its own freedom.

Also...I don't think the Bush administration *wants* to deter Iran from precipitating its own revolution via foreign policy mistakes. We don't necessarily want the Iranian regime to suddenly get reasonable.

[With the taxpayer on the line for $250 Billion plus interest, just how much will the "major oil companies" be paying of that debt?]

Point taken, but how does that differ from the DU or KOS line? Until this evening, I thought this was the leftist point of view.

A nuke attack on an American city would cost us $1Trillion per nuke.

I choose to see the trickle down effect. The 200,000 Americans who have new jobs because of the Iraq War pay taxes. Geopolitically, the USA just grabbed the center of the world's chessboard. The Saudis would have abandoned the USA if the USA hadn't not taken out Saddam. By taking the resources, you suddenly have more friends and not less friends. The USA is much stronger in relationships with Europeans and Russians and Chinese now that Iraq is clearly going to be free and pro-American (assuming we guarantee this by doing the same in Iran). The geopolitical, and thus financial, advantages of that are priceless.

Plus, 9-11 cost the nation $100 Billion in the month of September 2001 alone. An Iran action will probably get us another 9-11 and an additional $200 Billion cost from that possible as well.

But the geopolitical advantage of a free pro-American Iraq and a pro-American free Iran will be worth much more.

Too many here are pretending that Iran is not our enemy in Iraq.

Too many FReeper types agreed with the leftists about Vietnam as well and still do. They didn't see how China wasn't going to flip and get capitalistic if we just allowed them to take Indonesian oil and most of Asia. They didn't see and still don't see that Nixon's detente with China was the result of the American public standing behind Nixon in the 1972 election polls (the Chinese predicted the Nixon win based on the polls) which showed heavy backing for the continued American presence in Vietnam until victory (over China) was achieved.

[There are a number of "foreign investors" who stand to create generational wealth by controlling a share of the profits from the iraqi oil fields.]

We do have to bribe our allies to be with us and not compete with us by supporting terrorists.

Meanwhile, this could be a problem to deal with creatively:

Russia has really profited from the turmoil in the Middle East which raised oil prices. An Iranian revolution and the outbreak of peace that results from the Iraqi insurgency and Syria no longer having any funding...would cause oil prices to drop and end the gravy train for Russia.

Unfortunately, I believe theory #3 is what is going on. Chirac's statement today only makes me more concerned that Paris is under a horrible nuclear threat right now. Why else would he so vehemently announce TODAY that he is prepared to wipe out places like Pakistan and Iran and Syria and Saudi Arabia (who else could he have been talking about)? What suddenly crawled up Chirac's trousers?

I never heard Chirac say such a thing. Maybe the rioting was a diversion to plant a nuke in the city if what you say is true?

THIS suddenly crawled up Chirac's trousers:

http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/01/purchase_of_nor.html

"A little-noticed story from late 2005 could prove quite significant as conflict with Iran draws closer. On December 16, the German newspaper Bild reported on the German secret services' claim that Iran had bought 18 disassembled BM-25 missiles from North Korea.
...Reader Timothy Thompson, who is always able to provide keen insight into weapons systems, comments on the missile purchase:

[The BM-25 missiles that Iran purchased] can easily be launched from [a] freighter modified with launch tubes and blast channels. They give Iran a projection of force capability far beyond the 2000-3000 km range of the missiles. It is possible -- though not confirmed -- that Iran may not use the BM-25's but only bought them to get the R-27 rocket motors for a missile of their own design."

The Saudis aren't going to do jack, drop the stupid hobby horse.

It only takes one security council permanent member to scupper everything, and France is going to agree with Russia and let Iran off. What Swedish public opinion thinks of it is as irrelevant as what naked tribesmen in Borneo think of it. As for Germans, no they are not exactly working with US diplomacy in the matter. They want to go slow, slower, molasses, consult, refer, consult, circulate drafts, sleep, anything but make a decision. Oh and after they make a decision they'd like a minimalist travel ban. Oh and if anything ever does go beyond sanctions they will be found sitting on their ass.

[The Saudis aren't going to do jack]

What is your opinion of what we should do with the Saudi Royal Family *after* they refuse to help us and after Iran is free?

I find your take on Chirac's announcement fascinating. This morning I awoke to the German media massively criticizing Chirac for "bringing nukes into the discussion". As usual, the Germans were talking at a 5th grade level. No mention of whether Chirac's words meant that he was for or against Iran getting nukes. This means that you, JasonC, and most any other FReeper, is more worth reading than a German newspaper. But meanwhile...expect Merkel not to actively try to subvert Bush this time. Merkel openly supported the Iraq War in the election campaign of 2002 and her party only lost by 0.5% at the time. Of course, support for the war back then still did not mean support for sending German troops...but even under Schroeder, we did get 2 German spies (BND agents) who won major medals from the Pentagon for secretly giving us a lot of target information when we bombed Baghdad.

Nothing. Pressure them to keep spigots open, encourage them to liberalize their society slowly and at the margins, increasing rights for women and religious minorities and adding forms of democratic consultation. Without expecting them to actually do much. I don't go running to France for military alliances and I don't go running to Saudi Arabia for leadership against militant Islam. There is no water in that well, it is a fool's errand.

As for Germany, I expect them to straddle as usual, trying to support the US but also deferring to Jack Straw's diplomatic silliness and French lust for Iranian contracts, by slowing things down, leaving any reaction at the level of economic sanctions not military intervention, and urging those sanctions be minimal rather than touching oil etc. Yes that is better than actively castigating imaginary US warmongering in the press every week. But responsible leadership it is not, and it just leaves all the real work to better leaders and less frivolous countries.

Thanks for ping. Been reading the past few days articles in more or less silence. Both the main article as well as the Belmont articles are rather informative. In fact provide more common sense knowledge then many that have come along in recent times.
Sure looks like things could be perking up. If we see a sudden shift in Russians involvment, e.g. siding with US, then perhaps we actually will be going in. Deals can be made as to how the Russians can continue having a chunk of the oil/gas pipeline business in Iran. We should remember the Russians lost some four billion dollars on the Iraqi deals. Perhaps they will start to see the wisdom of siding more with us in the days to come. As far as the Chicoms go. It could appear they simply would reject any invasion. But if deals went down where they get a piece of the oil perhaps they may give in this time around.
Lastly. If we start hearing about Army divisions being activated, Marine MEU's shipping out for the gulf, Airforce fighter wings being flown over to say Qatar/Kuwait, and of course Naval Carrier Battle groups heading for the gulf, then we know the fate of Iran. Until these signs come to past, all remains in a state of flux. For all we know this crap may go on for a few years. Then there is the un-resolved issues in Syria. It is so easy for Ed-Ops to discuss in a vacuum how we may take out a given ME dictator. But the realities within the whole often come out looking a bit different once some action is performed.
One thing is for certain. The Iranian mullahs do not appear ready to have their president meet an un-timely death and have him replaced by what would appear to be a moderate.

It looks more now like this is what crawled up Chirac's trousers:

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060119-075725-6399r

"Tehran plans nuclear weapon test by March
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Tehran is planning a nuclear weapons test before the Iranian New Year on March 20, 2006 says a group opposed to the regime in Tehran.
The Foundation for Democracy citing sources in the U.S and Iran offered no further information.
The FDI quotes sources in Iran that the high command of the Revolutionary Guards Air Force have issued new orders to Shahab-3 missile units, ordering them to move mobile missile launchers every 24 hours in view of a potential pre-emptive strike by the U.S. or Israel. The order was issued Tuesday, Jan. 16.
The group says the launchers move only at night, and have been instructed to change their positions "in a radius of 30 to 35 kilometers." Prior to the new orders the Shahab-3 units changed position on a weekly basis. Advance Shahab-3 units have been positioned in Kermanshah and Hamadan province, within striking distance of Israel. Reserve mobile launchers have been moved to Esfahan and Fars province."

So the mullahs gave those orders on January 16, and Chirac's speech was delivered on January 18 or January 19.

Note the prediction in the article above:

"It is possible, and in my opinion has already happened, that Iran has purchased enough nuclear materials from North Korea to fabricate a few nuclear weapons and facilitate the following strategy. Iran could minimize the duration of a “window” of vulnerability to pre-emptive American or Israeli attack between their first nuclear tests (or announcement that they have nuclear weapons), and possession of enough nukes to deter attack, by postponing the announcement and/or first tests until they have a full-speed production line going – everything from enriching fissionables to weapons-grade and fabricating those into nuclear weapons, to stocks of finished nuclear weapons. At that point most or all of the latter will likely be of North Korean origin, but those will be quickly outnumbered by made-in-Iran ones under final assembly at the time of the announcement. I believe this is the plan Iran is following, and that the announcement will come late this year."

Late this year looks optimistic now.

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