BREAKING on FOX [Israel believes] Missile that hit Haifa was fired by Iranian Guard

[RDTF]

more to follow

[Paul R.]

Good points, and no disrespect was taken! However, I think most (though not all here) surely recognize that there are various factions, power struggles, etc., in Iran. In fact, I at one point was pretty fascinated by what I learned on a blog run by a young Iranian woman who was not at all happy with the lack of freedom there. Later, she wanted to come to the U.S. and was angry because "we" wouldn't let her immigrate quickly -- I ended up writing her to explain how long it took my WIFE to come here from the Philippines, after we were married there. "We" weren't being racist: "we" just can't let everybody who wants to come in, do so, right away... Sadly, this girl simply "vanished" -- I always have wondered what happened to her. But I digress.

At any rate, "we" or "they" simply refers to whoever has the final say. Until the dissidents can "boot Ahmadinajab out of power" "we" have to deal with those who are now in control on any given issue. They would be my "they".

I wasn't aware of the Iranian's situation on gasoline. That makes it sound to me like an oil embargo would mess them up badly -- in the case of an Iranian led embargo, would any refined products be allowed (by "us") to go back into Iran?

As far as rationality goes, it sounds to me like the Iranians should be building refineries, not working on nukes.

[bwteim]

It is quite disturbing. IMO, those who call for Israel to stand down and negotiate are naive. A position of strength is needed to deal with armed killers.

[Marine_Uncle]

"... would any refined products be allowed (by "us") to go back into Iran? "
Various articles in the past year have indicated they require the European's to refine 50% of their gasoline. I am not sure how much of their own refineries contribute to cuts/fractions that are then sent to petrochemical plants for converting the myriad of things like plastics, pre-cursors for many industrial processes, for pharmeceuticals etc..
They sell the crude oil to the Europeans and expect a given amount of gasoline to be shipped back.
So if we cut them off from this vital need they are going to really start hurting.
Now. We could always throw in the Russians into the equation. Would the Ruskies make arrangements to ship gas to the Iranians despite sanctions that would include cutting off exporting gasoline to them. I have not a clue as to what could happen in that department.
Obviously the Russians want some thirty percent ownership in joint gas pipelines that would be built that would include a line to service the Chinese.
As for the use of "they". Understand. Your feedback is quite understandable/clearity.
I am no expert on the Iranians by any means. But surely enough stuff posted here over a period of time has indicated there is plenty of disent, and downright mistrust in the government and mullah overseers as how this guy is conducting himself. Most of them simply want no parts of his Messianic thougts. They rather maintain their nice positions of power and wealth. Their president may just be pushing things to a point where he will have to be removed, and have a quieter clown put in his place.
And lets face it. Most of the ME Arab muslims want nothing to do with this Iranian regime. They do not trust them nor by culture want to embrace them as friends. The Saudi's for instance are amoung the most outspoken in the negative of Iran.
Yemen, Suadi Arabia, UAE, Baran, Qatar, Kuwait, want to move as far away from the old ways and modernize as they can. They don't like it one bit when this crack head says he will destroy the oil shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf, and send missles into the refineries on the western coasts.
He is as isolated at this point as NK is. He screams his head off to detract some of his people from their current miseries and not appear like the raving *sshole he really is, when it comes to planning on taking their remaining freedoms away. That is one reason I think why this administration and quite frankly previous ones, are bidding time.
We are waiting for a counter revolution to take place in Iran and overthrow the mullahs and allow for a truely freely elected governing body to materialize, with the prime goal of moving away from Islamic rule.
As for as nukes. They may be a few years away from actually constructing a reliable low yield device.
To much had been written, often quite contrary as to how well their uranium gas diffusion processes are progressing. It is a long way between being able to manufacture enough say 5% enriched U235 for fueling one reactor, and producing enough U235 of weapon grade.
Unless they have really come up with the final manufacturing facilities to provide the required amount of UF gas (remember it was discovered that they had 90 tons stored but it turns out it was tainted and could not be used for feed stock to their existing series/parallel cascade system), and that they had actually gotten enough HF6 from Pakistan to produce that small amount of reactor grade uranium the nut case made such a big deal over.
There are many steps required to produce the HF6 in a pure enough form for use as feed stock. And I don't think they have all those manufacturing steps down pat yet. From the initial refining and processing of crude uranium ore into yellow cake, then the acidification steps into the HF6 gas, proper storage, then proper automated manufacturing techniques required for a full blown large gas diffusion processing plant (say the 50,000 units they claim to have).
And I think our government and others fully understand there may be a year or two before they really have to start to worry if Iran could get close to building a bomb.
Meanwhile IMHO, I think a lot of what we have seen are the politics and posturing taking place due to the Iraqi syndrom.
We got them all really scared at this point. It is no longer business as usual in the ME. The governments are not going to start to be held accountable for the welfare of the peoples. And the Iranian mullahs realize their days are numbered. So they rigged things for this goon to become the president, but know must be wondering what the hell did they do. He could get them all killed.

[mugs99]

And you wouldn't want to miss Hamilton Jordan's vomiting in the White House toilet either.

LOL!
You sold me...I had to order the book!
.

[RunningWolf]

Iran has painted a line in the sand. It won't move against Israel unless Israel attacks Syria.

The question then becomes just what/how much is Iran doing to provoke Israel into a Syrian (or any other) attacks?

The latest series of news reports, and diplomatic actions indicate the conflict is entering a lull (temporarily ?)

W.

[RunningWolf]

While all of those points could be argued either way (see both sides of) on the nuclear capability issue, they are still good points.

As to the rest of what you wrote, (not counting Iranian oil refinery-petrochemical capability's) it touches on the vast complexities=unknowns to the dynamics/parameters of the situation.

BTW Thx for the post & your Service.

Wolf

[RunningWolf]

There was a report of many Arabs trying to bumrush from Egypt to the south also

If they think its going to like Schwarzkopf's left hook they're are wrong ;) Thats a good way to die in the desert LOL.

W.

[Marine_Uncle]

I did not serve in uniform. Am a uncle to an active serving Marine.
I agree there are many complex issues involved. And no one action comes close to addressing how best to deal with Iran or for that matter Syria in the whole. Gotta get ready for work so I can not provide a more quality response at this time. Do have a great day.

[dynoman]

A senior IDF intelligence official says that Iran has approximately 100 soldiers in Lebanon and that they helped Hizbullah hit an Israel Navy ship with an anti-ship missile.

Another Hizbullah missile also hit and sank a nearby civilian merchant ship at around the same time, Nehushtan said. He said that ship apparently was Egyptian, but he had no other information about it.

[dynoman]

Fox news;

A senior Israeli intelligence official said Iranian troops helped Hezbollah fire a missile that damaged an Israeli warship off the Lebanese coast Friday night.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship that killed one and left three missing.

It seems clear there are Iranian troops there, I wonder how Iran feels about that now since it looks like they might be at risk.

[RDTF]

Thanks for those! Make sure you join us on the live threads if you haven't already

[Paul R.]

"It is no longer business as usual in the ME. The governments are not going to start to be held accountable for the welfare of the peoples. And the Iranian mullahs realize their days are numbered. So they rigged things for this goon to become the president, but know must be wondering what the hell did they do. He could get them all killed."

Um, I thought the ME governments not being accountable for the welfare of the people WAS business as usual. But I would agree with you that we and our allies have changed the picture there, at least somewhat...

Am I correct that the prior Iranian regime seemed to be moderating a bit, but before that, the regime(s) were still pretty radical / counter to U.S. interests?

Another angle: Let's say I include "dirty bombs" as a type of nuke. 10 dirty bombs on the "right" day with the wind in the "right" direction. Pretty well wipes out Israel, I would guess? Not that the reaction / retaliation would be any different. So is all the current effort to "keep Iran from getting nukes" just for show? Maybe we expect 'em to violate any U.N. resolution, but figure sanctions might bring down the regime sooner? (Seems iffy -- sanctions did not bring down Saddam Hussein.)

I follow you on the nukes manufacturing, though. (Am an EE, and, unrelated, regularly pass by a large gaseous diffusion plant in our area - quite a facility.)

Interesting point about the Russians. I wonder how much spare refining capacity they have.

Also an interesting point about the ME countries that want to modernize. With all that oil wealth, a path more like China's (grow economically) would be far more successful than Iran's current path.

Pretty interesting weapons Hezbollah seems to have acquired.

Elections: Seems like a mixed bag in the ME. The dweeb I heard on CNN (or was it Fox) last night used Iran as an example of elections giving a bad result, which I think is silly: Those were not free elections. On the other hand, the Palis elected Hamas. I know that's largely because they were the only alternative to the (highly corrupt) PLO, but, still... And, how would a truly free election in, say, Egypt, come out if held today? (Rhetorical question.)

[Marine_Uncle]

"Am I correct that the prior Iranian regime seemed to be moderating a bit, but before that, the regime(s) were still pretty radical / counter to U.S. interests?"
Answer: Yes. The mullahs elected to put this clown in because to many Iranians where tasting what basic freedoms where like, and it is obviously contrary to Sharia to allow humans to be free from the yoke they inherit.
As for your suggestion of them planting a lot of dirty bombs in various high density population centers in Israel. Obviously your concerns are totally realistic as well as justified.
And this could end up being a reality Israel will have to deal with. So much medical nuclear waste is easy to obtain anyone can rig a crude device up that could if properly designed disperse bad stuff into neighborhoods.
And I don't discount their wanting to obtain fully functional nuclear devices, just a matter of how soon and by what means.
As for the Russkies refinery capacity. It is unknown to me. But I assume they are building new plants based on their ever increasing ability to extract crude oil and gas from their lands. Perhaps they would not be up to replacing the European refineries capacity to export gasoline, fuel oil, jet fuel etc., to Iran. As you are well aware oil refineries and petrochemical plants take years to build and get on line and are subject to supply and demand etc..
Your comments on modernizing ME countries to be more in line with how China has bailed itself out are right on the money. Some of them are doing just that in essence. A place like Qatar realizes it can with all it's naturual gas money build many types of industrial complexes as well as services. The UAI's growing ship building/maintenance/container shipping business are just some examples as how they are putting their money to build their infrastructure.
Surely these guys are not the common knuckle draggers some would believe they are. Their sons continue to be educated in western colleges. They continue to modernize. So it is in Iran.
As you indicated. Sadly with with the high level of college grads the Iranians have in all areas, they can modernize and build thriving industistrial centers as well as financial and other service industries.
They are not backward in this respect. But this current regime is not keeping up with the very moderate gains they had made in the past. To many hardliner Islamos are now in key positions. And the presidential elections and consolidation of power seems to be driving them deeper into a mode where they will digress. Their large educated work force see all their personal freedoms under attack. And apparently the anti-government movements grow in size.
Sadly they would require a total bloody armed revolution to toss the mullahs and their croonies from power.
It does not appear this will not happen any time soon. As dissent continues to grow, the rulers shall clamp down so much the more.
But write about stuff you are most likely aware off, perhaps moreso then I.
I just feel that their president continues to sabre rattle as their economy gets worse. And with all the knowns about them breaking agreements in the past to disclose all nuclear work projects, they are caught in the lie. So like any good dictator, they arrange for the heat to be taken off them.
If the Persians feel threatened by the west, then the mullahs and this crack pot can appear to have their best interests at hand. Meanwhile they continue to force more Sharia on the people, obviously removing those few freedoms the people started to get a taste of prior to a few years back.
Where this is all going to lead. I have no idea that would reveal anyting most of us could not conjure up at this point.
One thing is for sure. Iran and Syria are not going to show any favor in the eyes of most of the world. Only a real bozo would actually believe they are benevolent well meaning nations at heart.
Hopefully the Russians and Chinese are not going to be able to control/counter what the other security council members believe must ultimately be done. Sanctions must be imposed that will make them (Iran), so helpless, that they will have to lose face and go along with the wishes of the majority on this nuclear issue. The Iranian people hopefully shall in the majority slowly see just how stupid their leaders have been acting and demand (national work strikes etc., to close the whole place down), their leaders go along with the wishes of the Europeans and Americans.
How do we get the russkies and chicoms to finally side with us for very strong sanctions? I don't know, short of a very dramatic change in trade relations, that would make them lose huge amounts of revenue.

[justshutupandtakeit]

And you learned this through a crystal ball?

[Allan]

Over the past months The John Batchelor Show on WABC has had almost nightly reports on the activities of Iran in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Iranian troops in Lebanon?

[Allan]

Probably not in uniform.

[Allan]

See also #473.

Obviously the Iranians would not just leave the missiles at the airport and fly back to Iran.

Hezbollah would need 'advisors' for the installation and training.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I only question the statements that Iranian Guard troops fired these missles. It is unlikely that they require much in terms of setup and apparatus to fire or the Israelis could spot them and eliminate the personnel and equipment. I would imagine they are using weapons which can be quickly fired without having to lug around launchers.

[Syncro]

Nonsense.

You been watching the events in the Mid East?

It's a no nonsense fact now.