iran to build 10 new enrichment sites...

EZee

BBC News - Iran 'planning 10 new uranium enrichment sites'

if they built them by populated areas it would make a pre-emptive sttike a very politically difficult move id imagiine

AdZzUtd

They're certainly playing a very dangerous game that I foresee won't end very well.

MikeUpNorth

Decision time with regards to Iran is coming up. It's looking more and more likely that it will come to a military intervention.

RedKaos

From the Israelis or the yanks?

MikeUpNorth

US lead coalition probably. Hope it doesn't come to that, but if they keep with their nuclear weapons programme there won't be much choice in the end.

RedKaos

I dont see them halting their nuclear aspirations, not when Israel maintains an arsenal of nukes at its disposal.

Raoul

Or as long as they have an opportunity to smuggle a nuke to Hezbollah or Hamas for detonation inside Israel, as is their current policy with conventional weapons. Creating nukes to wipe Israel off the map. Not a wise policy.

esmufc10

I blame religion.

And VidaRed.

RedKaos

Hamas are not linked to Iran and Hezbollah are not based in Israel, unless you're talking about occupied territory. Expansionism also isnt a wise policy but nothing's been done about that now is it.

Raoul

Iran funds and supplies Hezbollah with arms, either directly or via proxies. If that's not reason enough why they shouldn't have nukes then I don't know what is.

RedKaos

I'm all for Iran ceasing their nuclear weapons programme if Israel were to follow suit, we've seen the devastation Israel were capable of in both Beirut and Gaza, I wouldnt even want to contemplate what would happen should they deem it necessary to fire off one of their nukes.

Israel is hostile towards Iran, Israel has nukes...what would you do in Iran's position?

MikeUpNorth

Once a country has nuclear weapons, the cat is pretty much out of the bag and there's no going back. But we should definitely try to prevent nations without nuclear weapons acquiring them, especially nut-cases like Iran.

Raoul

Unfortunately the gaping hole in your argument is that Israel isn't hostile towards Iran. Its the other way around. Iran is the expansionist aggressor via its proxies in Lebanon. Khamenai and Ahmadinejad's obsession with wiping Israel off the map and creating nukes to do it is the problem the world needs to deal with. There's no case for the weak, moral relativist argument made by Muslim countries that they should be allowed nukes simply because Israel has them. The region and the world wouldn't benefit from such an arms race. Furthermore, there's no way the west is going to stand by while a Muslim nation thats run by fanatics acquires nukes, whether for their own self esteem or for use against others.

VidaRed

They should negotiate it....everything has a price.

Raoul

Unfortunately, there are some pro-jihadi CAF intellectuals who would like Muslim countires to develop nukes in order to use them as leverage against Israel on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, under the funny if not sad argument that nukes are somehow a right.

VidaRed

Muslim country already has nukes

Raoul

Not in the middle east they don't.

VidaRed

How does that matter ?

Sultan

Having weapons of mass destruction is not the Islamic route.

We do not need or are allowed to use weapons which do not differentiate between innocents and combatants.

VidaRed

Nukes are more of an insurance. For instance if pak didn't have nukes India would have taken some military action against those terrorist camps.

Sultan

There's no guarantees of nukes never to be used.

You sound like a broken record with your constant Pakistan bashing.

RedKaos

Iran funding Hezbollah is not an expansionist stance, you can hardly say it is regarded expansionist when a country is funding an organisation that is fighting it's occupiers, if anything its combating expansionism. Thats why a lot of people in the middle east respect and support Hezbollah - they're seen a barrier in preventing Israel from occupying their lands beyond Lebanon.

Israel has always been hostile towards Iran since the 1979 revolution, any Israeli caught doing business in Iran would be severely punished, as was evident with that businessman who got 16 years jail as a result. So really it's natural that Iran would be threatened by Israel's nukes. And besides I seriously do doubt that the second Iran do get a nuke (if they get em), that theyre going to trigger happy on Israel, surely that would result in some serious retaliations from the western world, if not from Israel who would inevitably fire one back in return; it would be stupid to fire first unprovoked. So its safe to assume its a defensive measure to warn and deter Israel from being tempted into a nuclear strike.

Raoul

Wouldn't be the first time VR is accused of sounding like a broken record.

MikeUpNorth

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doesn't apply if you can't rely on the powers to behave rationally. It especially doesn't apply when people believe they will survive their own death and where martyrdom is seen as virtuous. Basically it just doesn't apply.

RedKaos

You're suggesting Iran is content to sacrifice it's whole nation just for the sake of destroying Israel, which is what... less than tenth the size of Iran? I'm also doubtful that Iran would be happy to nuke a good few million Palestinians in the process too.

MikeUpNorth

I'm suggesting that the whole MAD doctrine is bollocks and we are pretty fortunate no one has used nukes since WWII. All it takes is some nutter on the trigger. Also, if you look how close Russia came to nuking the US in the cold war due to a technological malfunction, you'd see how it can't be guaranteed that the weapons won't be used.

Plechazunga

I don't think the mullahs are that irrational, they've tended to be pretty canny politically. Things might be different if Ahmadinejad and his confreres got control of the military - he really is a nutjob.

Besides, Israel's a tiny place, a nuclear strike on it would also be a nuclear strike on the Palestinians. A 'dirty bomb' in Tel Aviv might be possible I suppose... it would kill an awful lot of Muslims, but that doesn't seem to bother Islamic terrorists.

I think the main fear here is Iranian regional leverage more than actual use. That's why the Saudis and Egyptians want the issue sorted out as much as the yanks or Israelis.

MikeUpNorth

No, they're mental by my standards. They have ruled the country into a situation where the people hate them for repressing their freedoms, they are a few years away from military action by the west and even most of their Muslim neighbours dislike them.

If there is a public uprising and it looks like the Islamic regime will be overthrown, then I could see them thinking "fuck it" and firing some nukes if they had them. People don't behave rationally in pressured situations.

Plechazunga

Yeah, I think the Israelis and Saudis probably see it that way too. Either way you wouldn't want to take the chance.

On the other hand, if I was in their position, with a nuclear Israel a few hundred miles away rattling sabres and the Americans occupying two of their neighbouring countries and bombing a third, trying to get nukes would seem pretty fecking rational to me.

To the extent that their neighbours hate them, it's because Persians and Arabs have a history of mistrust, not because its regime is irrational. Some of the Arab regimes are as bad or worse, and I think there's a lot of admiration on the 'Arab Street' for the way they've stood up to the yanks and fought the Israelis by proxy.

MikeUpNorth

You know what would seem even more rational than trying to stand up to the world's superpower? Siding with America and reforming their country.

VidaRed

Its hard to ignore them considering my tagline

Sultan

The late Shah was pretty much in US/UK pockets.

Where did the animosity begin?

Shooting down of a civilian airliner was probably the biggest factor - an attack that the US has never apologised for, or even admitted it made a mistake, worse still the US navy even decorated the ship's captain to pretty much rub Iranian noses. The incident is crucial in understanding Iran's hatred of the US which intensified further with it's support for Iraq during Iran/Iraq war.

Sultan

The tagline is very recent. Your irrational hatred for Pakistan has been well documented since you began posting in the CE forum.

Raoul

It began with Khomeini labeling the US the Great Satan, shortly after installing his autocratic theocracy of Velayat al-Faqih in 1979. The U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and Khomeini's remaining decade in power cemented the hatred.

Raoul

Israel had fairly good relations with Iran before the 79 Revolution, at which point Khomeini declared it the "Enemy of Islam". Hardly Israel's fault. Secondly, i fail to see how Israel preventing its citizens from doing business in Iran is tantamount to the Iranians feeling threatened by Israel's nukes.


Yes, it would be stupid of them but then again you can't underestimate the logic of religious fanatics who equate martyrdom with God's will. Its simply not a gamble the world is interested in.

Plechazunga

I don't think that is necessarily more rational. It's seems sensible to you and me, but that's because we have a totally different value-system. While you could convincingly argue that atheism is more rational than religion as a belief-system, I don't think you can position entire value-systems, like American-style consumer capitalism, on a hierarchy of rationality.

Why is the Revolution your Point Zero? I have no love for Iranian theocracy, but you've elided the entire history of British and American imperialism/meddling in Iran, including propping up the hated Shah for years.

Raoul

Fat chance when their system is predicated on playing the victim card against "western imperialism". Such is the system that Khomeini set up and Khamenai is continuing. At least one positive sign is that the younger generation of Iranians coming up now are getting fed up with it. Their election crisis was just the tip of the iceberg. Their system can't deal with a populist uprising from within, which is why i think they will have another relatively peaceful revolution initiated from within in the next decade.

Raoul

Quite simply because the system that Khomeini set in motion in 1979 remains intact today, and continues to propagate the policies he preached during his decade in power. I don't believe that the common Iranian is interested in retrospective indictments of the West's imperial past, as much as they are obliged to believe the rhetoric of what the Ayatollahs tell them they should believe.

Plechazunga

Well, it seems fairly selective to me. The US still has the same system too: thirty years on, they've got an army in Iraq, another in Afghanistan, bombs falling on Pakistan, billions in arms supplying the Israelis, billions in aid propping up Mubarak in Egypt, bases in Qatar, Kuwait and Djibouti...

The Green protesters increasingly despise the regime in Iran, and would no doubt improve relations if they ever got any power, but I think it's a mistake to think they trust the US. They know the Ayatollahs are bullshitting them, but they know the reality of the global balance of power too.

VidaRed

I wouldn't call it irrational because there gun tottling terrorists have set off dozens of bombs over the years in my city/country.

Also can you change my tagline