Iran leadership has learned not to worry about a U.S. attack

Leading U.S. military officers and strategists have assessed that Iran no longer fears a military attack by Washington. A symposium by U.S. Central Command and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy concluded that the leadership in Teheran does not fear the prospect of an American military strike. The participants in the joint conference asserted that the Iranian concern over a U.S. attack dissipated in 2005 when Washington was seen as heavily engaged in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq.

"From 2002 to 2005, Iran sought to prevent UN Security Council action on the issue, believing that resolutions or similar measures would serve as a stepping stone to regime change through military force — Teheran's reading of what happened to Iraq under Saddam Hussein," a report on the conference said.

"The elite have since lost that fear, however. They now believe that a military attack is unlikely with the United States bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The report on the conference, titled "The Perfect Handshake With Iran," asserted that Teheran's assessment was bolstered when the administrations of then-President George Bush and his successor, Barack Obama, ignored international deadlines for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. The report, authored by Patrick Clawson, said Iran, under domination of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was no longer under the threat of military action or the prospect of harsh sanctions.

"Whenever Iran crossed a red line, the international community continued to engage without enforcing negative consequences," the report, released on April 9, said.

The U.S. military officers and strategists agreed that Israel's warnings of Iranian nuclear weapons "have lost their punch." As a result, the report said, the Iranian strategy of playing for time as Teheran continues nuclear development has worked.

My first reaction is that no Muslim bully is going to fear Obama.

But this started under Bush. I think they’re right about that. Not that Bush wouldn’t have acted if he could have. But the media and the Dems did everything they could to sabotage the war effort and use it to make Bush unpopular, and in his last years there wasn’t much that he could easily do.

Iran operates as they have for the last 30 years.

It’s US and Western governments that change their policies, try to pretend Iran to be anything different. The Ayatollah Khomeini openly stated what they are about. There’s no secret. The meaning of the “Islamic Revolution,” what it intends to accomplish, it’s stated goals....... Most simply have no idea what they openly say they are about. Americans are to busy watching dancing with the stars I suppose.

As with the bombing of Iran in 1988 under Reagan, they understand causality and for a while played by the rules. Iran operates on the bottom most rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They have no regard for life, they are no free nation, and there isn’t a free media. This regime understands when you create an environment of “cause and effect” that pertains to things that matter to them. The lives of 700,000 Iranians that are burnt up in a war with Iraq are nameless and meaningless to such a regime. like so often the West assumes that because we see something a certain way others will see it similarly.

Appeals to higher philosophical ideals; asking them to respect international agreements, conventions; political isolation or economic consequences are all inconsequential because they don’t effect those power brokers running this nation who are guided by an ideological belief and have no real concern for their own people. Talk is cheap, and the regime in Tehran knows the importance the West lays on conflict resolution in non-violent ways. Their talk of negotiation is NEVER sincere, they are simply buying time and playing those like the Euro’s some years ago that were sending special envoys like chess pieces in a game.

Unfortunately they are right. While the Euro’s talk a lot, at the end of the day they are incompetent cowards with no political will nor military capability. The Israeli’s have the will but no capability. And the US has the capability but no will.

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