BBC: Will US use Iran military option?

BBC ^ | Thursday, 30 March 2006, 11:38 GMT 12:38 UK | Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

[Red6]

Bombing them is 26 years overdue.

[expatpat]

No, the Israelis will use the military option.

[samcgwire]

I'm all for praying night and day up until the point that they still don't get it, then destroying their government and WMD capabilies. I'm not for rebuilding so much.

[SevenMinusOne]

"The United States has the capability to come out of the clear blue sky and destroy the Iranian military infrastructure"

And when / if this happens it will very likely come via this route - Not much talk / hype beforehand -

But still likely a ways off from happening -

[johnny7]

Fred Barnes & Mort Kondracke said we won't... they both alluded to “let Israel do it”. Mara Liason went so far as to say that Iran will get nuclear weapons... it's a given.

[hershey]

I caught that newscast on Fox last night, too. But Mara said Iran would have nukes in five years, she didn't say one way or the other whether we or Israel would bomb Iran now. Israel just had elections...I don't know what the new prime minister's stance is on defending Israel through preemptive strikes. He's not much of a conservative, though.

[cccp_hater]

"No, the Israelis will use the military option."

Regardless of who attacks them, any overt attack on Iranian soil will percipitate a regional war the size of which hasn't been seen since WWII. I really don't think either Israel (new leadership) or the US has the political capital to pre-emptively attack Iran at this point in time without completely decimating Iraq's security and political situation.

[moose2004]

"If Iran does not go down the military road, and it says it will not, there will be many governments around the world who will argue that it should be allowed to enrich fuel, under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."

THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE PROBABLY SUPPORTED NORTH KOREA'S PEACEFUL ENRICHMENT AS WELL.

[carl in alaska]

Mara is mistaken, and I have no idea how she reached that conclusion.

The most striking apsect of this BBC article is the complete lack of recognition of the extremely severe threat from a nuclear-armed Iran to the US, Britain, and Israel. This clearly shows how the world has been dangerously lulled into complacency about nuclear weapons by 60 years of non-use of nukes and Pakistan's recent acquisition of nuclear weapons. Thank God that the reckless and exceptionally risk-tolerant Clinton Administration is gone, and that Israel will not accept a nucler-armed Iran.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The BBC is a Leftists outfit :

There is a book,:

Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left (Hardcover)

*******************************

And a review:

****************************************

Communism is dead. Long live Islam!, September 30, 2004

Reviewer:

Kevin Beckman (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

It sounds absurd: why would Leftists make common cause with a religion that is diametrically opposed to everything the Left stands for? David Horowitz explains that it is really quite logical given the Left's first principle: America is evil and anything or anyone opposed to America is good.

Part I of the book is a brief history of 9/11 through the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and the Left's behavior during this time. Horowitz includes the reaction of Katha Pollitt of The Nation magazine: "The flag stands for vengeance, and jingoism, and war." Anthropology Professor Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University said he hoped for "a million Mogadishus." His colleagues objected, not to the despicable sentiment, but because of the bad publicity it brought their "teach-in." Our tax dollars at work!

Part II is the heart of the book: a history of the American and international Left. Horowitz calls them Neo-Communists or Neocoms. The Neocoms of old believed in the Soviet Union the way religious people believe in God. Those who spied for the USSR didn't see themselves as traitors to their country, but rather loyalists to humanity and an ideal of America that's never existed. When the Soviet Union fell, a few of them stopped for some introspection but most pressed on as if nothing happened. Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm put it nicely: "Without the Revolution, my life and my work are meaningless."

Now that they no longer have to defend an indefensible regime, modern Neocoms are simply nihilists. They know what they oppose but they have no plans for the aftermath of the revolution which they still believe will happen. They don't know what they want, but they know what they hate: the United States, capitalism personified.

So why are they allying with radical Islam? Horowitz says that the Neocoms still believe in Marx's dictum that "religion is the opiate of the masses." Once private property is abolished, the need for religion will vanish, and Islamic radicals will stop being Islamic and radical. The only thing standing in the way is the United States.

Sound insane? It is. They are. I highly recommend this book. Horowitz makes the insanity understandable.

[carl in alaska]

A typo in post #10. Israel will not accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

[carl in alaska]

I think a lot of these people who hate America have serious psychological conflicts with authority figures in their lives. That is why they hate America, because America is powerful and to them all forms of power represent the misuse of authority. I had a friend who was a big liberal and had a strong dislike for big business, the military, and anybody with a lot of power. She also had huge psychological conflicts going on with her father and her family was totally dysfunctional. I see that kind of stuff simmering under the surface in most of these America haters. These neocoms and America haters need psychological counseling.

[johnny7]

I'm not sure that ANYBODY has the spine to attack Iran... the west thinks that if Iraq winds down, everything will go back to normal. Israel also is living an illusion, believing they can deal with the PA and Hamas... who have been 'leavened' with al Qaeda cells.

We're revisiting the 1930's again pal... sending aggressors the message of weakness and confusion. We may want to walk away from the Islamo-nazi's... but they won't stop until they bring us to our knees.

[carl in alaska]

This is like reading an article about a convicted serial murderer who wants to buy an Apache helicopter and 100 Hellfire missiles for "peaceful self-defense only." The police think that given his history, the murderer will use the chopper and the missiles to blow up his neighbors' houses, and therefore the police are trying to stop him from buying these weapons on the black market.

The BBC would, of course, say the convicted murderer should never be allowed to acquire these weapons systems. The nuclear negotiations with Iran are exactly the same kind of situation, except that the stakes are much greater and the cost of stopping Iran is much greater than the cost of stopping the murderer from buying the weapons. The big difference in these two situations is the cost to the world to stop Iran, and it's only because of this high cost that the BBC would even consider allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons. The BBC writer and many others in the west are focused primarily on the cost of stopping Iran and they're not correctly assessing the cost of not stopping Iran and the gravity of the threat from a nuclear-armed terrorist state such as Iran. The west needs to wake up and take a long, serious, analytical look at the short-term and long-term threat to the civilized world from Iranian nuclear weapons.

[familyop]

"If Iran does not go down the military road, and it says it will not, there will be many governments around the world who will argue that it should be allowed to enrich fuel, under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."

The BBC doesn't care if Britain is nuked.

New Iran missiles can reach London
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227123/posts

"The timetable is uncertain but an assessment by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington says that Iran might be able to assemble enough centrifuges by 2007, and enrich significant amounts of fuel by 2008."

Iran defies calls for freeze on nuclear research, restarts program-(50,000 centrifuges to be built)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1555690/posts

Iran may have received advanced centrifuges: diplomats
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1561797/posts

Iran has built 5,000 centrifuges, says opposition
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1555554/posts

Iran has built 5,000 centrifuges, says opposition
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1555896/posts

[expatpat]

I don't know about your Iraq comment -- the Iraqis and the Iranians do not like each other at all.

[expatpat]

Ther lefties are going to get a very nasty shock if and when they ever become subjects of Sha'ria law.

[cccp_hater]

"I don't know about your Iraq comment -- the Iraqis and the Iranians do not like each other at all."

You'd be surprised how folks pull together when they are fighting a common "enemy".

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Especially the Feminazis......