Posted on 04/17/2006 7:29:23 AM PDT by Dark Skies
The hardest thing in times of crisis is not to panic—- to hang on and think very hard about the options. “Don’t shoot ‘till you see the whites of their eyes” is the old phrase. It signals mental clarity, readiness to act, and also patience and calm. It is not a bad slogan for coping with today’s rise of a new Hitlerite regime, soon to be armed with nuclear weapons.
Caroline Glick, writing in the Jerusalem Post, is understandably anxious about Tehran’s constant stream of threats against Israel. In an editorial called “The fateful hour has arrived,” she sounds a Churchillian alarm.
This week Iran presented the US with the ultimate challenge and Washington must now make a decision. Is it fighting to win?
If I were the target of Iranian nuclear threats I’d be just as nervous. When your life and the lives of your children seem in danger, we are all wired to go into instant action.
But that is precisely what the madman of the moment, Mahmoud Ahmadiinejad, is trying to accomplish: To sow fear, appeasement, and panicky reactions. This is a guy who sent thousands of young boys to blow up minefields with their own bodies during the Iran-Iraq War, deluded by a promise of eternal paradise for martyrs. He knows all about threats and intimidation. That’s how he got where he is.
Our first reaction must be to hold our fire until we pinpoint Tehran’s weak spots. In fact, the regime has some real vulnerabilities as well as a kind of mad determination to dominate the world. If the time comes to respond, it should be at a time and place of our choosing. Not Ahmadinejad’s.
That is as true for Israel as it is for the United States. Threats to destroy our two countries are hardly new. The difference, of course, is the advent of nuclear weapons that give nearby targets, like Israel and the US 5th fleet, only a few dozen seconds to respond. (The same applies to Saudi Arabia and Iran’s other neighbors, who feel scared to death).
Here are a few of Iran’s vulnerabilities.
First, production of a real nuclear weapon will take some time. If Tehran has a running cascade of thousands of uranium centrifuges it might produce a weapon very quickly. Iran has missiles, but these cannot carry the sort of low tech nuclear weapons it migth produce. Publicly available intelligence indicates the moment of real threat is still a few years off. Tehran cannot strike with nuclear weapons for some time.
Second, Israel has a formidable array of nukes, and the means to deliver them accurately. With its three missile-firing subs, it has a second strike capacity that is more than adequate. Even if Iran gets a single nuclear weapon, Israel has an estimated 200, and can produce enough to roast every Mullah in the land many times over. On the defense side, only two updated Patriot batteries may be enough to lower the chances of an Iranian missile attack. But any mad Iranian attack would justify a nuclear response.
Third, the US military have amazing conventional and nuclear capacities, as General McInerney just pointed out. The US 5th Fleet is patrolling the neighborhood, which puts US forces at risk, and on standby to respond instantly. A missile attack on Israel would instantly threaten every other neighboring countries, and indeed European countries as well.
Fourth, a constant flow of oil tankers goes through the Gulf. Every country that needs that oil has a vital stake in US naval protection. Suppliers are just as dependent as buyers. Nobody trusts Tehran to protect the Gulf—- nobody.
Fifth, there are plausible time boundaries to the nuclear threat. It will become real in two or three years, with the first Iranian nuclear weapon. It will rise over subsequent years as Tehran amasses more weapons. And it is likely to decline over a ten to twenty year period, as we have seen with equally frightening regimes during the Cold War.
Today we see China and Russia as deeply invested in international stability. We do not fear a nuclear strike from them, because we know that they know it would be instant suicide. They have become rational actors. We know that many Iranians are quite Westernized. Over time, the modernists may begin to prevail by slow degrees.
The maniacs of Tehran sound profoundly irrational. However, we have dealt with irrational-sounding regimes before, even ones armed with nukes. Early in the Cold War the USSR and Mao’s China used pretty much the same words Ahmadinejad is using today. That doesn’t make the mounting danger easy to tolerate, but it gives us grounds for long-term hope.
Sixth, we know something about Tehran’s strategy behind the provocative language. Amir Taheri has a great depth of knowledge about Tehran; writing in the London Telegraph, he sounds alarmed, as is only sensible. But he believes the mullahs are playing long-term chess, not Russian roulette.
Ahmadinejad is just the latest creature of the mullahs to make nuclear threats—- it goes all the way back to Ayatollah Khomeini, Rafsanjani, and the current Supremo, Khamenei. In reality, in the last 25 years the Iranians have made war by proxy, using terorrist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. The mullahs practice patience and long-term strategy. So did Mao Zedong and Khrushchev. We don’t know with complete certainty, but chances are that they will ratchet up the pressure slowly, taking their gains incrementally, rather than in a single suicidal toss of the dice. These people think long-term.
Here is a prediction. Within the next 24 months the West will come to a decision that crazy maniacs armed with nukes are not acceptable, anywhere in the world. That consensus will have the tacit consent of Arab countries, which are even more at risk than Israel – believe it or not – because they have no nuclear retaliatory capacity. As the first enriched uranium is produced in Natanz or Isfahan, actions will be taken by several nations. Many of them will be covert. At some point they will become visible.
The United States and the civilized world must seize the right moment, with the right actions.
Iran’s nuclear threat is not immediate. We must never panic or react impulsively.
Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.
How so? Just by making threats? The problem with that logic is that because there is no hard evidence that they actually have them, it could just as easily be a bluff. They don't need actual weapons to "use" them they way you claim they are using them. Now if they would detonate one first to prove they had one, that's a different story. But absent that kind of evidence, they could be bluffing whether or not they actually have them.
Merely "Having them" upsets the delicate mirage of peaceful diplomacy.
That would be true if they demonstrated that they actually had them. They haven't done so yet, so its a hollow boast. And its not even a boast, really, because they haven't even claimed that they actually have any nuke weapons yet.
Good message--Al Qaeda set a trap for us 4 1/2 years ago, we had no choice but respond, and ever since, at great human, political and economic cost, we have been trying to get out from the vortex that threatens to swallow us--a lesson should be learned, and that is to NOT allow people like binLaden or Iran's new lunatic to set a timetable for us, or panic us into first strike response. We already have enough to deal with.
Even if they strike Israel or the US, I doubt that we would do anything to them. IMHO, Iran will most certainly make its first strike with some kind of deniability. I'm not sure how, or what pretext they will use, but they know that if the first strike can be traced directly to them, they'll be obliterated before they get a chance to follow up with any other blows.
They may not care about their own ultimate destruction, but they certainly want to make sure that they destroy us first.
That's a fer shure!
"Many of them will be covert." The money quote.
Wonder what intelligenc there is on how much of Iraq's capabilities were secreted across Iran's border.
What this article does not talk about in the run up by Iran to develop nuke weapons is their very 'un-cold war like' committment to martyrdom. Their ability to destabilize the region in the immediate term via the palestinians (witness today's suicide bombing) and the terrorists in Iraq. Also, their partnering up with AQ to launch attacks against the West. Working hand in hand with Russia, China, North Korea to further destablize the West and the UN by playing us for patsys against our weaknesses of showing strength and resolve against our enemies.
Couple these with their rush to exterminate Israel and knock the US from superpower status, I think we need to act fast, or be caught with our head up our sphincters.
Sorry but I think we'll be caught with our head us our sphincters. We'll be busy moaning about the high cost of gasoline, whether or not Iraq is really part of the war on terror. We'll be angry that Mexicans want our social welfare system; we'll gripe that whoever is in charge was late to get storm assistance in place, that mistakes were made and someone needs to take responsibility, that someone might be racist, we'll complain about federal spending and threaten to sit out the next election, blah, blah, blah. We drop our pants every day for a test fit.
Not suicide, just hundreds of thousands of preventable innocents being killed.
Given western political paralysis I am gaming we wait to see the mushroom cloud before any action is taken.
I just hope they try to isolate the US by hitting Europe first; Israel will absorb a fatal first strike and send out a hundred or so city busters all over the ME, while Europe will simply surrender.
I truly believe that there are WMDs from Saddam in Syria and while everyone is getting spooked into thinking that Iran will use Nukes on Isreal, the attack will come from Syria or Palestine and be bio or chem. Thousands will die, but the retaliation against Iran and Syria will formidable.
The problem is that there is no consensus in the U.S. or West that action needs to be taken. So, no matter how sure the foresighted are, the U.S. cannot safely take preemptive action.
Go back to the 1936-1941 period. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Germany & Japan intended to launch a major war. Yet, there was no way politically to support any preemptive action. FDR was correct that he would have to maneuver the other side into firing the first shot in order to gain sufficient political support for effective action. Granted, this made the ultimate price much higher than it would've been had action been taken earlier. But there was no way around it.
The same is true today. The weasels among us--Democrats and Euro-weanies--will make America the villain if the U.S. takes preemptive action. This is true even if it saves these weasels from pain or death. The U.S., Israel, Europe will have to absorb the first blow before there will be sufficient political support for annihilating the threat. So, we must wait. If we are lucky, time will bring some sense to Iranian leaders. If we are unlucky, tens of thousands, maybe millions of American civilians will die in a terror attack. The result won't be the surrender the Islamic fanatics envision. The U.S. is no more likely to surrender to Iran than it was to surrender to Japan after Pearl Harbor. The result will be the crushing defeat of the fanatics.
There isn't any one objective going here but multiple ones. Prestige, of course, and a military credibility that everyone in the government is aware that Iran does not posess. For all the Irannian bluster of late our whacking Iraq in three weeks (twice in a bit more than a decade, same result) highlighted the remarkable gulf in performance between conventional Middle East militaries and that of the U.S. and its allies. There isn't really any comparison and with air supremacy still out of the question it doesn't look to change anytime soon. Against this a nuclear arsenal provides the only feasible, cogent reply.
There is Israel. Against Israel no great arsenal is really necessary - as others have pointed out a single bomb properly placed by any means will have an effect of national impact on Israel. Israel's reply is her only protection - in this sense we already have a MAD doctrine at work.
There is oil. An Iran that may block the Straits of Hormuz and defend itself against major powers is an Iran that is instantly much more the player than it now is. The ability to produce an acute worldwide economic crisis at will is a useful tool in international extortion. One need not strike Saudi oilfields (although the threat would be useful) if one may make it impossible to ship. Unfortunately this is likely to engender a response on the part of the Saudis (at least) in the form of their own nuclear program. They can certainly afford an arms race out of pocket change. Too bad for the rest of the world.
There is, in addition, the leadership of militant Islam. Ahmadinejad is reportedly quite sincere about destabilizing the world in pursuit of some sort of apocalyptic Islamic vision, 12th imam or whatever. The fact that Qom, Mecca, and Medina are at the top of the target list for Israeli retaliation really does have an effect here in my estimation. Again, here we have a form of MAD already in place. Would wiping out Israel be worth a city or two? It seems so. Would it be worth Israel wiping out the cradle of Islam and the seat from which it will supposedly rule the world? Very different question.
I don't see an attack on Iranian facilities doing much more than buying time, and taking away any possibility, however remote, of a post-strike diplomatic effort. That may be one reason we haven't done so already. Now that Iran has declared itself a nuclear power (whether it actually is so or not) I think it's time for the big boys to have a little sit-down with Ahmadinejad and apprise him of just how costly starting a nuclear war in the Middle East would be to Iran and to Islam. He isn't just the enemy of Israel or the United States at this point, he's the enemy of everyone in the world who uses oil. And money talks.
You risk much with nuclear weapons, so "if" is an unacceptable possibility with Iran. Last week Iran's President again stated that Iran would annihilate the state of Israel. "Wipe off the map" and "annihilate" aren't ambiguous words. Like Hitler, take the President of Iran at his word.
This statement is based on the conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons sufficiently advanced to fit to a missile require significant know-how that takes a long time to develop. Unfortunately, in the case of Iran, this statement is probably not true.
The person heading up Pakistan's nuclear weapons program sold the technology to make nukes at a moderately sophisticated level (i.e., missile warheads) to a number of other Islamic nations, presumably including Iran. This has been widely reported in the media, and is not in dispute.
If Iran was one of the buyers, then Iran ALREADY HAS the technological know-how to build nukes that could be fitted to the missiles they have recently tested.
The only things Iran needs are the fissile material and the specific components. We know they can make the material themselves. The only other question is whether they can make (or buy) the parts they need.
This willingness to sacrifice potentially millions of innocent civilians (whom they are sworn to defend) in order to save a little diplomatic face is downright criminal... ALL Western governments, including our own, are behaving in a downright cowardly manner. They will rot in Hell for their choices, should the worst happen.
Bump!
Yup..don't use birth control...wait til you're preggers then get an abortion. A 'Big Bang' in downtown Metropolis will be just the wake up call we need...right?
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