[jveritas]

In my humble opinion only one military force in the world would be able to destroy ALL of Iran nuclear facilities and that is the United States military. The terrorist regime in Iran must be punished with a massive Air Campaign that will destroy its nuclear facilities, military infrastructures, and command and control centers. The islamic terrorist regime in Tehran must understand once and for all that they are not going to control the Middle East, and thus this terrorist regime must be broken and humiliated via an intensive and severe Air War against it.

[Nathan Zachary]

That's a better assessment. It can't be simply a strike on nuclear facilities, because that doesn't even guarantee that Iran's nuclear abilities will be taken out. Iran needs to be smashed a lot harder, everything has to be taken out, and Israel doesn't have the ability to do that.

Besides, Iran's goals aren't limited to Israel, they would attempt to bring about an econimic blow to all of Europe and Pacific coast Asia by blocking the narrow shipping lanes and stopping oil flow. That isn't that hard to do either, a couple of ships sunk in the right places could do it. Iran knows it can't win a war, and they won't try to at this point. But they are prepared to take a pummeling as long as they accomplish this goal. Then later on they could start attacking the other oil producing countries, forcing them into an alliance perhaps.

[arthurus]

We don't need to destroy ALL of Iran's nuke facilities. Getting the major ones would effectively knock out the program and taking out the Iranian military at the same time would give us access to any part of the country we might choose to send a unit to take care of another site. The chance that Iranians will retain a nuke or two or be able to develop one or obtain one no matter whatour presence in Iran is or how destroyed we have rendered their nuke program does not go to zero and need not. We will have taken out a major source and a State sponsor of nukes. Requiring that we eliminate the last vestige of capability or potential capability or not do it at all is just as silly as requiring that we take out every last mullah or terrorist or not fight the war at all. A 95% strike or an 80% strike pushes the threat back to the level we have to live with constantly anyway, the level of secret groups of madmen operating in mountains and cities wherever.