Israel to World: "Suck It."

I think MWhite is right. Israel attacks using airstrike and US doesn't commit troops but does open fuel/ammo reserves to Israel until the job is done. I don't know what happens after that. Not good stuff, I'm sure.

I think it is a good question to ask what game Iran is playing. Obviously Iran knows Israel will not allow it, and that the US will support Israel. So why beg the conflict?

why pursue nukes at all if they have no intention of using them? seriously, idg why they are so fixated/dedicated to their nuke program. it seems thoroughly irrational/self-destructive.

― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, September 6, 2012 4:55 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a little too foreign policy 101 to even warrant a response, come on Shakey.

I get why Israel is scared of Iran and their rhetoric, but anybody who thinks they want nukes only to kill Israelis is dumb. Israel does have nukes so MAD makes a certain amount of sense to the IRI regime. Being able to tell the Saudis to fuck off and telling the Turks to leave Iranian Kurdish questions and Iranian influence in Syria alone makes sense, too. Everyone here gets Israeli fear/paranoia but can you fathom what it's like to be a Shia and a Persian surrounded by ppl who aren't? Esp after several thousand years of rooted history where everybody from the Greeks to the Romans to the Arabs to the Mongols to the Russians, Brits and Americans have either conquered you or fucked you over?

why pursue nukes at all if they have no intention of using them?

Hey, the PRK have nukes...

I think those are good points, but I also don't buy that the Israeli regime's fear of Iran having nuclear weapons is limited to "they'll nuke us"

yeah yeah I get all that, but the short-term politics dictate that their program will never reach the stage where they get to flex their regional muscle with their nukes, because that will all be preceded by a massive conflict with the US/Israel which is likely to destabilize their regime and country and relegate them to an even weaker position.

xp

Hey, the PRK have nukes...

right but someone suggested that the IRI is NOT a crazy despot regime, unlike the PRK.

Let's separate crazy from incapable of acting rational. Hitler was crazy and irrational. Stalin was crazy and quite rational. The way the IRI has played the West isn't the fruit of smoking pcp; it's been quite clever even if the goal is one I can't quite figure out.

it's been clever in a "courting disaster" way... I think you spelled out what their goal is in a previous post, it's just that their present course has no chance of getting there. that's the disconnect I can't fathom.

What if their real goal is to sprint past the post, get the nukes, and brandish them in view of keeping Turkey/US/Israel/SA/maybe even Russia at bay?

Can't imagine any of those players allowing Iran to be in that position.

so not gonna happen

In fact, that would be the stupidest thing Iran can do. "Hmm, now that we have a nuke, what should we do? I know! Provoke a coalition into stopping us at any cost!"

Like I said, a crazy IRI regime may think it's a form of insurance. Khameinei, Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad all crazy but not just pious fools. Heck even the Green revolution leaders supported Iran having a nuclear program, as much from 'we're as entitled as any of you countries' nationalism as anything else.

I bet you there's someone in the WH praying that any attack can be postponed till next Nowruz

I can quite easily imagine why Iranians who lived through the war with Iraq would want a massive defence mechanism. Not being in a position where your neighbour, with the connivance of the west, can kill 750,000 - 1,000,000 of your people would probably count as "rational".

In the grand scheme of things it's still not a good idea but i can't really see any practical way of stopping it. For all the rhetoric, there is probably an awareness that Iran would use nuclear weapons in a defensive capacity only and that provoking a pre-emptive war with no guarantee of stopping them in the long term would be counter-productive.

Also, teh US has them in bind in the Gulf and I can't imagien what it was like having teh US on either border after '03.

In the grand scheme of things it's still not a good idea but i can't really see any practical way of stopping it.

What does practical mean?

For all the rhetoric, there is probably an awareness that Iran would use nuclear weapons in a defensive capacity only

I don't know how anyone could know this with any level of certainty.

An attempt at "regime change" might be the only way to stop it from happening but that would not be practical. Targeted strikes against suspected facilities wouldn't necessarily work and could provoke a war - again not necessarily practical.

If Iran used nuclear weapons in an offensive capacity it would be annihilated.

The worst-case scenario i could see would be increased defensive abilities emboldening Iran to do a lot more of the sneaky, underhand stuff they're up to in Lebanon, Iraq, etc and putting more pressure on Israel through even more overt support of its enemies. Obviously not a good thing, but idk what the other options are.

That's best case scenario imho.

There have been what? Half a dozen global conflicts where the participants got nuclear weapons. Not exactly a huge set of statistics to make any kind of absolute statement about what a particular country would do. I'm sure we can all think of things that have happened in history that seemed to be completely unpredictable - actions taken by governments that defied logic or human feeling. Mutually assured self destruction is very persuasive, but is not the "truth."

I don't know how that "self" slipped in there but I guess it makes as much sense as without.

Perfect Rationality for example major issue undermining MAD - and one obv in play here since I don't know how you know that Iran is rational actor.

There's defying logic and there's signing a death warrant for every man, woman and child in the country. Absolutes are impossible - we can't know that China isn't going to launch missiles at the US or India isn't going to launch them at Pakistan - but we can assume the probability is extremely low. I don't really see it being much higher here.

That remote risk has to be weighed against the probability of extended hostilities if anyone took a shot at Iran now.

The best case scenario for Iran, as far as i can see, is a gradual process of democratisation and the eventual normalisation of relations with the rest of the world. Starting another war is not going to help that process.

Tbh, my opinion on what Iran will and won't do with nukes doesn't really matter. I would certainly rate it as very low possibility but I'm glad I don't have to make a decision based on that possibility. What matters is Bibi's belief. I think he thinks Iran would use a nuke. Or at least thinks it's possible enough that he needs to intervene. Obama may or may not agree, but until now he's been signaling that containment is unacceptable aka chance of Iran using a nuke is high enough that they can't be allowed to get one.

You may be right. The pressure on Bibi to act upon the assumption that Iran would use nuclear weapons, leaving aside any strategic analysis which might cloud the issue, must be enormous.

The timing is just so weird, seeing as Iran has no real arch enemies right now ... except the countries that would bomb it if it got nuclear weapons. It's some self-fulfilling saber rattling.

The region is so unpredictable, it's not necessarily possible to assess who could pose a threat to Iran in the near future.

It's worth remembering that provoking Israel, at least to some extent, also plays into the hands of the current government. The economy isn't performing well and getting people distracted by national security issues helps keep them in power.

Israel is very easily provoked. I could imagine cheaper, less nuclear weapon-y ways to do it. Like giving a speech and calling them jerks and saying Israel deserves to drown in a sea of blood or something. That'd do it. No need for a nuclear program, if it's just a matter of kicking the hornet nest to rally nationalist fervor.

Like giving a speech and calling them jerks and saying Israel deserves to drown in a sea of blood or something.

They've tried this approach numerous times! That's probably a big part of why Israel is so concerned about them getting nukes. It's hard to make a counter-factual here bc I imagine Israel would be concerned about Iranian nukes no matter what Ahmadinejad said, but I wonder if it would be quite so frightening if he hadn't spent the last seven years denying the Holocaust, threatening to wipe Israel from the map, from the pages of time, and calling Israel a cancer that needs to be cut out.

The usual counterargument is that the rhetoric from Ahmadinejad calls for the state of Israel to stop existing in the form it does now, rather than being a direct threat to blow it up, but it's understandable if it's not interpreted that way in Tel Aviv.

Both sides have been over-playing the other as a threat in order to shore up domestic support. Unfortunately, it makes it harder for either of them to step away from that now.

Yeah, I've always found that argument to be specious apologetics. He only wants to metaphorically cut out the cancerous tumor of Israel.

I'd sooner believe that Iranian threats are all talk and no action before believing that they're not actually threats. I was thinking the other day that I hadn't heard that particular argument in awhile (how 'wipe off the map' shouldn't be understood as literal threat of violence) and I thought it was because Iranian rhetoric has become too obvious to downplay. Certainly no one still believes that the threats are diplomatic as opposed to militaristic in intent, right?

Actually the famous Ahmadinejad quote is an example of pretty poor translation. Its really a call for regime change, such as would happen with a democratic vote in a one state solution.

Arash Nourouzi translates "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." as "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

Probably an unending problem for translators of the figurative language of Hafez and Rumi.

http://www.ynetnews.com/PicServer3/2012/05/17/3931629/cover0528_wa.jpg

xp lol, yes, I remember that meme quite well. What's the explanation for the comment that Israel is a cancerous tumor that will soon be destroyed? Is he talking about Bibi's cabinet?

Yeah I don't necessarily think that it literally means "we're going to destroy Israel" but it certainly doesn't sound like "we hope a different party wins the election" either.

Sticks and stones, though, etc. Iran makes a lot of threats, but is it really a threat? Even hypothetically backed a nuke, it's not clear. North Korea has nukes, or something close to nukes, and I don't think anyone considers NK a legit threat. Threatening, sure, but not an active threat. Like, Iran is saber rattling, and wants a nuke, but I have no clue what it would do with atomic leverage.

I think these comments mean "we're going to destroy Israel" but I don't think it's necessarily true. I don't get the impression that Ahmadinejad is so bad at his job that he carelessly makes these provocative statements w/out grasping what they might imply. I do think earlier on he might've hedged rhetorically so that he'd have plausible deniability, but I don't believe he misspeaks.

"Iran makes a lot of threats, but is it really a threat?"

that's only a part of the problem. the other part is for israel to show the area that they wont and cant tolerate nukes in Iran, a situation that might have a domino effect, causing other arab countries (like Syria that already tried) to develop their own nukes, making the middle-east an unbearable place to live in for israelis in the future, and a real threat for sure.
also, the fear is that the Hezbolla might have access to the nukes (is that possible?) which is far scarier than Iran.

North Korea actually has 13,000 artillery tubes in range of Seoul. Iran hasn't invaded a neighbor since 1826.

Yeah, I've always found that argument to be specious apologetics. He only wants to metaphorically cut out the cancerous tumor of Israel.

― Mordy, Friday, September 7, 2012 9:03 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't doubt that ahmadinejad would like to personally blow up israel, but even over the top rhetoric is still rhetoric, and commonly deployed. like, some guy in the US called some other countries the axis of evil, and we only invaded one of them! and it wasn't because anyone that was in charge of anything actually thought they were evil, a cancer, and needed to be erased from time itself, it was because it suited that guy's ends, and 'evil-ness' was expedient.

i am not as much of a wonk as y'all, so forgive me if i'm off base here, but i'm not sure why realpolitik suddenly evaporates whenever iran flexes nuts at israel (or, like, when cuba says the US is horrible and very bad). the cultural rift may be larger in the case of iran v israel, but, as sanpaku pointed out, n korea is better positioned to really kill some people they say that they hate a lot and they're not doing it. and it's not because of some failure of character ("if you're going to hate someone that bad then you should at least do something about it"), it's because they know that shelling seoul would mean the complete and total destruction of their thin carapace of existence. p confident the same holds in tehran -- getting nukes (nb i am against anyone getting nukes) and rattling sabers is ~at least~ as much keeping up with the joneses as it is drafting up a psychotic plan for israel's actual destruction and its own murder-suicide. most people do not shoot up movie theaters, most countries do not initiate nuclear war.

nb cuba actually got nukes (sorta) and the thing that we or anyone else didn't do was blow anyone up

also by 'most countries do not initiate nuclear war' i mean 'zero countries to date'

The theory from the right that seems to underpin a lot of this is that Iranians, and Shi'ites in general, value martyrdom above all else and think getting everyone martyred at the same time would be awesome. It's silly.

also, the fear is that the Hezbolla might have access to the nukes (is that possible?) which is far scarier than Iran.

― nostormo, Friday, September 7, 2012 10:00 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this btw is otm -- reliable nation-states (say what you will, but iran is by and large just another place that basically-sensible people live, it is not a 'failed nation' by any stretch) with nukes are alarming if they are your enemy, but they are at least more predictable than a terrorist cell. i would tend to believe that iran is stable enough, from top to bottom, that no one is going to slip someone else the keys to a nuke. i'd be more worried about the russian failure to keep tabs on ALREADY EXISTING nukes than i would iran getting them.

there's a bunch of claims as to what a nuclearized iran would mean: bombing israel directly (the most apocalyptic), giving a "suitcase bomb" to the hizb (middle ground), to merely allowing hizb and other anti-israel elements to act under an iranian nuclear umbrella.

however all of these things currently exist under an israeli nuclear umbrella, right? i wonder if it would even be different.

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/09/can_israel_make_peace/

I pointed out to Shavit that Khamenei’s mentor, the Ayatollah Khomeini, acted rationally in the long Iran-Iraq War (…1980-88).

Shavit countered that Khomeini ended the war only after sending hundreds of thousands of teenage volunteers — the baseej –to their certain death in battles they could not win. To Shavit, Iran’s ayatollahs did not value life. They would do what is necessary, he said, to bring on the global conflagration in which the Hidden Imam will emerge to rebuild the Islamic empire.

“As a practitioner,” Shavit said, “I have to come to my political leadership and recommend what to do. Can I afford to give a recommendation based on a working assumption that is less than worst case?”

His words made me think of Dayan and the intelligence chiefs under Ben-Gurion. They, too, had reached for the worst-case assessment of Nasser’s intentions in the …1950s, which undermined the efforts of Moshe Sharett to open secret negotiations in Paris to reach an accommodation with Egypt.

“Israel cannot afford except to prepare itself according to the worst case scenario,” Shavit said, leveling his gaze to emphasize the point. “If they [Iran] acquire it [the bomb], they will use it. Okay, maybe they will use coercion first, or other steps in between, but they would not hesitate to use it. Iran is eighty million now, and for them to absorb a nuclear strike is not too high a price for achieving their religious goals.

“This is the nature of the threat, and the world is doing next to nothing,” Shavit complained. “My concern,” he added, “especially after the strike in Syria, is that people will say, `What the heck? Let Israel take care of it.’ ”

On September, Kadima’s delegates were set to make their choice. The day before the vote, Olmert summoned Mahmoud Abbas secretly to the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. Olmert spread out a map of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. He said he was putting an offer of Palestinian statehood on the table that was new and historic.

Under the terms he proposed, Israel would withdraw from all but 6.3 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinian state would receive an equivalent amount of land from Israel as compensation for the 6.3 percent Israel retained. To join the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel would build a twenty-five-mile tunnel through the Negev Desert.

The capital of Palestine would be the Arab portion of Jerusalem, but the Old City, including the sacred mosques of the Noble Sanctuary and Temple Mount, would be governed under an international consortium. Five thousand displaced Palestinians would be allowed to return to Israel proper. The rest would move to the Palestinian state or take compensation and relocate elsewhere.

Abbas stared across the table at Olmert, who was trying to conceal the desperation he must have felt. His premiership was in its final hours. Even a peace agreement with Abbas might not save him; indeed, it might lead to a government collapse and a rejection of the terms Olmert had offered. The thin reed that Olmert was grasping was his belief that an Olmert-Abbas accord would render the world awestruck, that the Bush administration would immediately embrace it, and that the seismic magnitude of peace would overpower the poisonous politics of the right wing and create a centrist, pro-peace majority where none had existed since Rabin’s time.

Olmert could even call a special election to ratify peace.

Abbas sat there silently, evaluating where he and Olmert stood.

When he spoke, he told the Israeli leader that he could not decide immediately. The gaps were still large and questions hung in the air about a myriad of details. Abbas needed time.

“I told him he was making a historic mistake,” Olmert later wrote. Abbas repeated that he needed time to consult.

“No,” Olmert said, perhaps surprising his guest with his bluntness. “Take the pen and sign now. You will never get a more fair or just offer.”

Still nothing.

“Even in another fifty years there will not be a government in Israel that will offer you what I offered,” Olmert insisted.