Creepy on so many levels
4 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Sunday, February 25 at Sunday, February 25, 2007.
"Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon." (The Daily Telegraph)
Thank god Iraq has regained its freedom and national dignity. Must have been a bitch back in the days when it had a say in whether its own airspace could be used to start WWIII...
So true!!
do you think that if US attack Iran, WWIII will start?
does Iran have that many allies?
darko - I think it could cause the start of the worst conflict since ww2.
It won't be WWIII in that the great powers will not go to war with each other, massive armies marching across borders etc. But I think there is a pretty significant chance that the bombing of Iran could lead to all hell breaking loose in the middle east
I explain how I can imagine this going down in this comments thread...
Iran has a much better ability to strike back at the US than Iraq does/did. And I'd say they view Israel as essentially US territory in the middle east.
Iran could quite easily cause a lot of damage to Israel, and Israel would no doubt cause much more damage to Iran in return, and from there onward, things get horrible, and unpredictable.
Yeah, this is incredibly creepy...
What do you think about the influence of Ayatollah Khamenei on the Iranian government's actions vis-a-vis the nuclear program? Apparently he's issued a fatwah against nuclear weapons. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4031603.stm)
Also, I heard Bill Clinton speaking of other ways to generate nuclear power that did not generate the enriched uranium/plutonium that could be used for a nuclear weapon - do you know anything about this?
I also heard an analysis that Iran is really not the problem, in terms of it possessing nukes, simply because, as a state, it is a real target for retaliation and thus is subject to the mutually assured destruction doctrine of prevention, which makes sense. A nuke coming from Iran, especially towards the US or an ally, would basically be an assured obliteration of Iran. The real problem is instead the likelihood that Iran would leak nuclear weapon materials to more intangible terrorist networks, who have no concerns about retaliation, simply because they have no stable physical location which can be targetted in response.
This is a relatively scary scenario also, and I think it is part of the logic that senior US leaders are using for 'not taking the military option off the table.' (aside from the obvious political points that a presidential candidate with a perceived weak spot in defense - ahem, Hillary Clinton - gets from talking tough) That said, this same analysis should also be used towards the conclusion that simply preventing Iran from getting nukes for the time being does not solve the real problem. The US has proved that they are unable to play the 'international policeman' role that they assumed in the past, and so there needs to be a different approach to both the problems of nuclear proliferation as well as terrorism.
The reality is that nuclear proliferation (at least of nuclear energy technology) is, as you said in an earlier posting, to some extent inevitable, barring new technologies or way faster adoption of energy-saving methodologies than can be reasonable expected. So, how can the actual causes of the risks that come from nuclear proliferation be reduced, even though the tools that those risky elements use to propogate their ideologies may not be reduced?
I think one of the scariest things about this whole situation is the vicious perceptual cycle that we're seeing. Every action is caused by, and reinforces and underlying perception of the other side's evil. We are drawn further and further apart and as our perceptions become more absolute our solutions become less sophisticated. If the dude on the other side of the pond wants only to kill us, is pure evil, and has no rationality, then the logical conclusion is we need a really, really big stick. If, on the other hand, we just have some differences that have probably been blown out of proportion, then let's sit down and talk. The very attitude of not wanting to talk to the other side because they're just plain bad (see the negotiation policy of the US) reminds me of some of the arguments I had with my brother... when I was four. If we're going to stop this whole vicious cycle, we've got to take a second, see what's going on at least somewhat objectively, and come to the table.