Roadmap To War Against Iran #22 : "Vernietiging Israel nabij"

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Op dinsdag 31 juli 2007 12:42 schreef DrWolffenstein het volgende:
Ja, het is allemaal de schuld van de Amerikanen. Originele conclusie, M.

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VS vragen Arabische bondgenoten om steun

Sharm el-Sheikh - De Verenigde Staten willen dat hun Arabische bondgenoten één front vormen tegen Iran en andere vijanden van de VS in het Midden-Oosten. Om dat te bereiken praten minister van buitenlandse zaken Condoleezza Rice en minister van defensie Robert Gates dinsdag in Sharm el-Sheikh met de ministers van buitenlandse zaken van Egypte, Jordanië en nog zes landen. Ook Irak zal aan de orde komen. De VS vinden dat hun Arabische bondgenoten meer moeten doen om de situatie in dat land te stabiliseren. Met name Saudi-Arabië zou de Iraakse regering in de ogen van de VS niet voldoende steunen.
Maandag werd bekend dat de VS hun Arabische bondgenoten voor miljarden dollars aan militaire steun gaan geven. Volgens Rice en Gates wordt daarvoor geen tegenprestatie verwacht.

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Engage and Deter: A Judicious Path with Iran

By Malou Innocent | Tuesday, August 14, 2007

U.S.-Iranian relations are becoming increasingly relevant to the situation in Iraq. As Malou Innocent argues, diplomatic engagement and military deterrence — not armed intervention — will provide the most effective means of mitigating Iranian threats to U.S. interests in the Middle East.


Since January 2007, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker have been engaged in a series of bilateral meetings with their Iranian counterparts to focus on ways both countries can pacify the carnage in Iraq.

Rather than support this modest diplomatic effort, some influential politicians, such as presidential candidates John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, believe the United States should take decisive action against Iran by executing military strikes.

Different reality

On the surface, the United States has Iran right where it wants it. With 25,000 U.S. soldiers on its eastern border in Afghanistan and 160,000 U.S. soldiers to the west in Iraq, the Islamic Republic is sandwiched militarily by the United States.

But the wear-and-tear on U.S. forces, especially because of the Iraq mission, indicates that using our military should not be a policy option of first resort in dealing with Iran. Rather, a policy of diplomatic engagement and military deterrence — should Iran acquire a nuclear weapon in the future — is the path the United States should pave.

Diplomacy is difficult, but breaking the U.S. military is easy. In a classified report submitted to Congress in February, General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that the strains of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may prevent the United States from fully responding to another international crisis. But being thinly stretched is not the U.S. military’s only source of concern.

Less time at home

Qualitative concerns matter as well. Continual rotations into and out of theater has overworked America’s All Volunteer Force. “Dwell time” at home has fallen sharply, while deployments in war zones have lengthened.

In some cases, deployments are lasting up to 15, 18 and even 22 months. The Pentagon reports that many soldiers are returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and heavy alcohol dependency.

Not enough resources

To add insult to injury, crisis response at home is also being hampered. National Guardsmen, Reserves
and their equipment are being pulled out of the United States, where their presence is needed.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and May's tornado cleanup efforts in Kansas are but a few examples of the lack of first responders. They also highlight the problems that might be encountered if the United States were struck by another terrorist attack.

The current state of U.S. ground forces is relevant because a conflict with Iran could quickly escalate if Iran decided to retaliate in the wake of a U.S. air strike.

Dangerous situation

Tehran could shell U.S. forces in Central Command with medium-range missiles, unleash the wrath of its terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Afghanistan, as well as attack the civilian-inhabited Green Zone (Baghdad is less than 30 minutes flying time for some Iranian fighter aircraft).

The United States could respond by expanding its bombardment, but that certainly would not pacify Tehran. And since it would be unlikely that the United States would simply turn the other cheek, an inevitable pressure to escalate the conflict could quickly suck the United States into a ground war with Iran.

Prepared enemy

Even if one dismisses the possibility that ground forces would have to be used at some point, an over-reliance on the Air Force would be equally naïve, especially since the Iranians are preparing themselves for a number of contingencies.

Recent satellite photos indicate that Iran is constructing an elaborate tunnel complex near its uranium enrichment plant of Natanz. These mountainside fortifications could be used to evacuate nuclear material in the event of a military attack, and reduce the likelihood that a strike would deliver a decisive setback to Iran’s nuclear program.

Although the most effective U.S. conventional “bunker-busters” can penetrate six meters of rock and concrete, some of Iran’s most sensitive nuclear material is buried 15 to 18 meters underground. So while it may appear that a U.S. military campaign could eventually yield fruit, the clerics in Tehran get a vote.

Not much time

These distressing facts point to the folly of military hubris. Rather than striking Iran, the United States should engage it. Delaying diplomacy will intensify the crisis and ultimately make the military option more appealing to hawks.

A comprehensive strategy would consist of both diplomatic engagement and military deterrence. Each lever provides an effective means of mitigating Iranian threats to U.S. interests in the region.

Diplomatic efforts

Engagement would consist of wide-ranging bilateral dialogue with the goal of normalizing diplomatic
and economic relations between Washington and Tehran.

That would discourage Iran from adopting belligerent foreign policies, especially if in the future its “peaceful” nuclear program ever grows into a means of manufacturing nuclear weapons.

Perhaps most important, when compared to Iran, the troublesome nuclear powers of the past, such as Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia, Iran is extremely weak: politically, economically and militarily. That makes Iran deterrable and ripe for wide-ranging bilateral negotiations.

Taking seriously

Iran’s weaknesses, however, should not lead us to conclude that it could be easily neutralized with military force. U.S. troubles in Iraq may not even serve as an accurate point of comparison: Iran has three times the population and four times the territory of Iraq, as well as a network of terrorist allies in almost every country in the region — something the secular tyrant Saddam Hussein never had.

In hindsight, attacking Iraq was a policy blunder of the highest magnitude. A similar policy should not be executed with Iran, lest we Americans find ourselves repeating our own mistakes — times ten.

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The White House hawks in Dick Cheney's office and elsewhere who want to stage an attack on Iran are clearly winning the internal power stuggle. And an often overlooked sub-plot on the long road toward war with Tehran is this: How could Bush stage an attack on Iran without the authorization of a skeptical, Democratic Congress?

Today, the White House has solved that pesky problem in one fell swoop. By explicitly linking the Iranian elite guard into the post 9/11 "global war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's lawyers would certainly now argue that any military strike on Iran is now covered by the October 2002 authorization to use military force in Iraq, as part of their overly sweeping response to the 2001 attacks.

(...)

This Mother Jones article, also published this spring, lays out the whole scenario:

Both of the Authorizations to Use Military Force (aumfs) passed by Congress—in September 2001 for Afghanistan, and October 2002 for Iraq—contain language that might conceivably be used to justify an attack on Iran. The 2001 aumf authorized the president to use force not just against the perpetrators of 9/11 but also against anyone who "harbored such organizations or persons." After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Iran arrested several senior members of Al Qaeda. Though they are apparently being held as bargaining chips with the United States, someone could argue that Iran is in fact "harboring" them.

Attacking Iran under the 2002 AUMF, which gave the president power to defend against "the continuing threat posed by Iraq," is even more of a reach. But squaring that kind of circle is what executive branch lawyers are for. As a former Bush administration official told me, "If I had to make the case for war with Iran, I would definitely look to the 2002 authorization. So that's one loophole Congress would want to nail shut." Congress would be prudent to rewrite both AUMFs to explicitly exclude action against Iran.

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Op donderdag 16 augustus 2007 12:36 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
Iran waarschuwt: raketschild bedreigt Azië

BISHKEK - Het plan van de Verenigde Staten om in Centraal-Europa een raketschild te bouwen, vormt een bedreiging voor heel Azië. Dat heeft de Iraanse president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad donderdag gezegd tijdens een topontmoeting in Kirgizië met regionale leiders.

Het Amerikaanse raketschild is volgens Washington vooral bedoeld tegen eventuele raketten vanuit 'schurkenstaten' als Iran en Noord-Korea. Volgens Ahmadinejad vormt het schild niet alleen een bedreiging voor Iran, maar voor alle landen die deelnemen aan de Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Tot de SCO behoren naast Iran ook Rusland, China en de Centraal-Aziatische staten Kirgizië, Tadzjikistan, Oezbekistan en Kazachstan.

Ook Rusland is fel gekant tegen het raketschild. De Russische president Poetin noemde samenwerking op het gebied van veiligheid en bestrijding van terrorisme het belangrijkste doel van de SCO-top.

http://www.telegraaf.nl/b(...)d_bedreigt_Azië.html

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Op donderdag 16 augustus 2007 12:42 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

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wat een verrasing natuurlijk is dat schild gewoon bedoeld tegen elke raket

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Op woensdag 11 juli 2007 02:19 schreef Romney het volgende:
Iran zou met een kernwapen heel het machtsevenwicht in het M-O ontwrichten. Allemaal leuk en aardig, maar zeker niet prettig zo'n land.

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Op dinsdag 31 juli 2007 12:38 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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. Mogelijke aanval op Saoedi-Arabië? Er is geen noemenswaardig conflict^*, was er zeker niet voor 2003 of 2001, maar de Amerikanen zijn nu gewoon lekker bezig met hun self-fulfilling prophecy te creëren. Gekkenwerk. En inderdaad, om onze toetsenbordstrijder Erwin tevreden te stellen, Iran heeft de laatste tijd ook weinig constructiefs gedaan. Maar ja... er is best wel een verschil.
[..]

Dan is dertig miljard dollar steun aan Egypte en Saoedi-Arabië het middel, ja, en voor de propaganda van Al-Qaeda en Hezbollah uiterst funest, zeker als Israël ook nog eens enkele tientallen miljarden dollars krijgt.

_{*: Ja, ik weet het: raketten met 'dood aan Amerika', geen contact, moeizame relaties, etcetera... lastig allemaal, maar nog geen conflict en het ging de goede kant op, voor 2000...}

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Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.

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An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

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Op donderdag 23 augustus 2007 17:30 schreef francorex het volgende:
Former CIA officer: US to attack Iran within 6 months

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The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East" – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo

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Report: Iran Less Than 10 Years Away From 2016

WASHINGTON, DC—According to an alarming new Department of Defense report combining civilian, military, and calendric evidence, Iran may be as few as nine years away from the year 2016.

"Every day they get one day closer," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a White House press conference Tuesday. "At the rate they're going, they will reach 2016 at the same time as the United States—and given their geographic position relative to the international date line, possibly even sooner."

The report recommended that the U.S. engage in bellicose international posturing, careless brinksmanship, and an eventual overwhelming series of nuclear strikes in order to prevent Iran from reaching this milestone.