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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - World Affairs/Debate - War with Iran? |
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Arwon Bazu                Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| Rom, you make the mistake of assuming every scary Muslim is the same, and in league with each other. Iran had about as much to do with September 11 as Turkey or Indonesia did.
And, more broadly, al Qaeda isn't Iran, and I suspect its activities would be brutally opposed if it tried to operate in Iran. Iran's stogidly repressive Shiite regime, with its ultraconservative Ayatollahs and mouthy populist president (whose talk is crazy but largely for domestic consomption and playing internal power games with the ayatollahs) has about as much to do with Al Qaeda as the Greek Orthodox Chruch has to do with Jerry Fallwell. Iran is a storm in a teacup for two reasons. 1) we can't stop them, and 2) they're not really a huge threat of using their weapons. We can't stop them through a bombing campaign because their sites are too diffuse and protected and close to population centres, this is not Iraq in the 1980s. This is a country 5 times its size, militarily stronger relative to Israel, and which has learned those lessons well in terms of making their nuclear sites hard to destroy. We can't stop them through the UN unless they want to stop, and a full-on regime-change war won't happen--Iran is militarily strong and its regime is secure. The US would be in a real danger of not being able to win such a war. Even ignoring how incredibly over-stretched its military is, the US would have a hell of a time doing anything, even just airstrikes, and no-one else would support them. Oh, and there's the fact that the entire south of Iraq would erupt in revolt... I once heard a quote that went along the lines of "Iran could take Basra with a truck full of clerics and a loudspeaker" and that's about the size of it. War on Iran = incredibly stupid to the point that it just can't happen. But as I say, whatever, nuclear weapons suck but the world situation won't substantially change when Iran gets the bomb. Iran has no geopolitical reason to start a nuclear war, they'd be erased very quickly. It wouldn't even be anything close to an ICBM, and they'd only get to use a bomb once and then... BAM. Iran knows that there are several countries that can hurl times the kilotonnage at them, from around the world, in a few minutes. Mutually Assured Destruction still applies here, it kept the peace in the Cold War, even though both sides had thousands of weapons and people thought the Commies were fucking nuts. It'll keep the peace with an isolated country with only the barest of nuclear arsenals. The "oh they might help terrorists" thing is also a weak argument, ignorant and vaguely racist allusions to the WTC nonwithstanding. Firstly, not all terrorism is equal, and in the ME a distinction must be drawn between anti-Israel stuff like Hezbollah, which is worlds away from the multinational revolutionary death cults such as Al Qaeda. Supporting the former is common policy, yes, but supporting the latter isn't. Moreover, in a world where more than one country is threatening to use nukes on a country which sponsors an act of terrorism on its soil (go check out Chirac's policy regarding state-sponsored terrorism and nuclear responses), this'd be too risky. Iran's run by conservative assholes, but it's not run by crazy people. Iran wants nuclear weapons for exactly the same reason Israel does. It's a security thang, the open secret of nuclear weapons strengthens one's bargaining position and makes one secure in what is an extremely unstable region. Looking at Iran's geopolitical position, they've got Central Asia including Afghanistan on one side, the Caucasus region up there as well, the shambles that is Iraq on another side, and a Pakistan rife with Sunni extremists on a third. I'd be pretty big on security too. Iran is after its own security and prestige within the world, and with their stogidly conservative government they're no more a nuclear danger than Israel or China. And we can't stop them anyway. Frankly I'd be much more worried about India and Pakistan. That's nuclear danger number one. They've got a readymade TRIGGER for a war with a scarily short fuse, and they both already have nuclear weapons. (edited by Arwon on 05-10-06 09:30 AM) |
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