Asia Times: "How Iran will fight back"

[Minstrel Boy]

How Iran will fight back
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Dec 16
Asia Times

TEHRAN - The United States and Israel may be contemplating military operations against Iran, as per recent media reports, yet Iran is not wasting any time in preparing its own counter-operations in the event an attack materializes.

A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just concluded in five of the southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing foreign observers, who have described as "spectacular" the
massive display of high-tech, mobile operations, including rapid-deployment forces relying on squadrons of helicopters, air lifts, missiles, as well as hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of well-coordinated personnel using live munition. Simultaneously, some 25,000 volunteers have so far signed up at newly established draft centers for "suicide attacks" against any potential intruders in what is commonly termed "asymmetrical warfare".

...

Henceforth, any US attack on Iran will likely be met first and foremost by missile counter-attacks engulfing the southern Persian Gulf states playing host to US forces, as well as any other country, eg, Azerbaijan, Iraq or Turkey, allowing their territory or airspace to be used against Iran. The rationale for this strategy is precisely to pre-warn Iran's neighbors of the dire consequences, with potential debilitating impacts on their economies for a long time, should they become accomplices of foreign invaders of Iran.

Another key element of Iran's strategy is to "increase the arch of crisis" in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where it has considerable influence, to undermine the United States' foothold in the region, hoping to create a counter-domino effect wherein instead of gaining inside Iran, the US would actually lose territory partly as a result of thinning its forces and military "overstretch".
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL16Ak01.html

[joeybee12]

1. Oh, they needn't worry--by the time Dumbo gets around to attacking them

we'll have about three soldiers left standing.

You have to wonder if he really is TRYING to destroy our military.

[firebee]

3. This is why we call it the Military Industrial Complex.

If we don't engage in battles that cost us soldiers and military equipment, how would the military industry encourage our government to buy more military equipment and more ammunition. Unfortunately, more war just means more profit for these people and they could really care less about the blood spilled for their money. Think about it... These people make money off of war... Do you really think they care about people dying needlessly and do you think they want to keep our military equipment in good condition. The more military equipment that gets blown up or lost, the more money they make off of manufacturing more military equipment. It's literally a vicious cycle.

[DireStrike]

2. Attacking Iran would be suicide

Political, Military, Economic.

I can't believe it would happen.

[OneMoreDemocrat]

4. I've given up on my..........

"I can't believe it would happens" with this group of thugs a long time ago.

It is precisely because it is such a ridiculous notion that I can only imagine that the plans are drawn up and we'll be in Iran by the Summer.

[DireStrike]

6. Yeah, I was like that

yesterday.

And I'll probably be like that tomorrow. I'm shocked and/or awed, I guess.

[Geek_Girl]

11. I think so too

But if you look at the idiots in Washington running the show. I bet they're dumb enough to do it.

[JanMichael]

5. Ask Paul Van Riper how they'll do it, he already has.

Yep.

[whirlygigspin]

7. sheer folly

Iranians still get angry at Alexander,

only a fool would attack them, W.

[IranianDemocrat]

24. so true

.

[seemslikeadream]

8. BUSH WARNS SYRIA AND IRAN ON IRAQ

"We will continue to make it clear, to both Syria and Iran, that — as will other nations in our coalition, including our friends the Italians — that meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their interest," said Mr Bush at a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

....

As for Syria, he noted President Bashar Al-Assad's categorical statements that he would not support those supporting the insurgency in Iraq, and reports that Syria has arrested between 1,000 and 2,000 people crossing the border.

"Iran is the most dangerous enemy of Iraq and all Arabs," said Mr Shaalan.

"The source of terrorism in Iraq is Iran."

"Terrorism is Iraq is orchestrated by Iranian intelligence, Syrian intelligence and Saddam (Hussein) loyalists, in collaboration with Zarqawi," Shaalan said of Iraq's most-wanted man, Islamist fugitive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

more
http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=101275®ion=6


U.S. wants Japan to take Iran as seriously as it does N Korea

Friday, December 17, 2004 at 06:00 JST
TOKYO — The United States wants Japan to take Iran's suspected nuclear arms program as seriously as North Korea's nuclear activities, a senior U.S. administration official said Thursday. "As North Korea is testing the boundary of international norm against developing nuclear weapons and deliberate capability, so is Iran," said Lincoln Bloomfield, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.

more
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=9&id=322162


Bolting on Iran
Thu Dec 16,10:34 AM ET
Ari Berman

A reliance on dubious intelligence and contempt for international diplomacy has marked the Bush Administration's policy (or lack thereof) on Iran to date. And, in certain neoconservative circles, calls for military aggression are slowly surfacing.

"The clock is ticking for Iran," writes Michael Rubin, a former advisor to the Office of Special Plans--the outfit responsible for much of the US's faulty pre-war intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites). "Bush may have no choice but to order a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities." Neocon academics and policy advisors such as Reuel Marc Gerecht, Orde Kittrie and Norman Podhoretz have also called for decisive action.

Washington seems responsive. On a recent visit to the region, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith--Rumsfeld's number three man--told the Jerusalem Post that even the nuclear strike option remains on the table.

The de facto leader of the right's hawkish philosophy on Iran is John Bolton, a longtime hard-liner and current Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms called his protege, "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final battle between good and evil."

Under Bolton's watch, North Korea (news - web sites) rapidly accelerated its nuclear weapons production (building as many as six new nukes), Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan sold nuclear secrets on the black market, and Iran may be closer to developing the bomb than ever before. Apparently, Bolton takes issue with the "Arms Control" part of his job title.

more
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2281&ncid=742&e=1&u=/thenation/20041216/cm_thenation/132075

[charlie]

9. A little taste of what what we could face

if Bush persists with his insane hardon for Iran (from Bob Cringely, of all people):

I eventually finished the piece and decided to go see the war since I had been in Beirut and Angola, but had never seen trench warfare, which is what I was told they had going in Iran. So I took a taxi to the front, introduced myself to the local commander, who had gone, as I recall, to Iowa State, and spent a couple days waiting for the impending human wave attack. That attack was to be conducted primarily with 11-and 12-year-old boys as troops, nearly all of them unarmed. There were several thousand kids and their job was to rise out of the trench, praising Allah, run across No Man's Land, be killed by the Iraqi machine gunners, then go directly to Paradise, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 dinars. And that's exactly what happened in a battle lasting less than 10 minutes. None of the kids fired a shot or made it all the way to the other side. And when I asked the purpose of this exercise, I was told it was to demoralize the cowardly Iraqi soldiers.

It was the most horrific event I have ever seen, and I once covered a cholera epidemic in Bangladesh that killed 40,000 people.

Waiting those two nights for the attack was surreal. Some kids acted as though nothing was wrong while others cried and puked. But when the time came to praise Allah and enter Paradise, not a single boy tried to stay behind.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041104.html

[Minstrel Boy]

10. Iran has Sunburn missiles, virtually impossible to defend against,

"the most lethal missile in the world today."


US Navy Gets Sunburned

In August 1999, the first of two 8,480-ton Russian Navy Project 956A destroyers built for China conducted trials in the eastern Baltic. Each 956A warship is armed with eight supersonic 3M82 Moskit sea-skimming missiles (NATO code-name SS-N-22 "Sunburn").

The 3M82 MOSKIT anti-ship missile is produced by the Raduga Machine Building Design Bureau located in Dubna. Raduga developed the widely exported SS-N-2 Styx missile which sank an Israeli destroyer during the six day war.

The Raduga Moskit anti-ship missile is perhaps the most lethal anti-ship missile in the world. The MOSKIT is designed to fly as low as 9 feet at over 1,500 miles per hour, faster than a rifle bullet. The missile uses a violent pop-up maneuver for its terminal approach to throw off Phalanx and other anti-missile defense.

http://www.softwar.net/3m82.html



Many years ago, Soviet planners gave up trying to match the US Navy ship for ship, gun for gun, and dollar for dollar. The Soviets simply could not compete with the high levels of US spending required to build up and maintain a huge naval armada. They shrewdly adopted an alternative approach based on strategic defense. They searched for weaknesses, and sought relatively inexpensive ways to exploit those weaknesses. The Soviets succeeded: by developing several supersonic anti-ship missiles, one of which, the SS-N-22 Sunburn, has been called "the most lethal missile in the world today."

...

The Sunburn can deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear payload, or: a 750-pound conventional warhead, within a range of 100 miles, more than twice the range of the Exocet. The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.1 speed (two times the speed of sound) with a flight pattern that hugs the deck and includes "violent end maneuvers" to elude enemy defenses. The missile was specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis radar defense system. Should a US Navy Phalanx point defense somehow manage to detect an incoming Sunburn missile, the system has only seconds to calculate a fire solution not enough time to take out the intruding missile. The US Phalanx defense employs a six-barreled gun that fires 3,000 depleted-uranium rounds a minute, but the gun must have precise coordinates to destroy an intruder "just in time."

The Sunburn's combined supersonic speed and payload size produce tremendous kinetic energy on impact, with devastating consequences for ship and crew. A single one of these missiles can sink a large warship, yet costs considerably less than a fighter jet. Although the Navy has been phasing out the older Phalanx defense system, its replacement, known as the Rolling Action Missile (RAM) has never been tested against the weapon it seems destined to one day face in combat. Implications For US Forces in the Gulf

The US Navy's only plausible defense against a robust weapon like the Sunburn missile is to detect the enemy's approach well ahead of time, whether destroyers, subs, or fighter-bombers, and defeat them before they can get in range and launch their deadly cargo. For this purpose US AWACs radar planes assigned to each naval battle group are kept aloft on a rotating schedule. The planes "see" everything within two hundred miles of the fleet, and are complemented with intelligence from orbiting satellites.
http://www.rense.com/general59/theSunburniransawesome.htm

[Lone Pawn]

12. But Iran would have to get within range to fire

and there's the kicker. You'd have to negate US air superiority to project naval power even within your own territorial waters.

[Minstrel Boy]

14. True, but they do have mobile launch platforms

and a range of 90 miles. Doesn't sound like much, but the Strait of Hormuz is only 20 miles wide.

[Strelnikov_]

19. And The 90 Miles Will Get Halfway Across Most Of The Gulf

Conflict with Iran would be a disaster, for both countries, and I do not think we could defeat them militarily. Just look at a map, mountains are not tank country. We could probably occupy the flatlands at the head of the gulf (which, coincidentally is where most of the oil is), but that would be about it.

[Lone Pawn]

21. We'd be an idiot to park anything within 100 miles of Iran's coast.

it's not like the military's never heard of anti-ship missiles.

[Lone Pawn]

20. It would be extremely difficult to get within range of a carrier

impossible, I'd say. But certainly we could lose a support ship or two if we weren't careful and/or didn't have adequate intelligence before invasion--and that would be a hell of a PR coup for the Iranians.

[IranianDemocrat]

23. They also have s-400 anti-air missile batteries...

The same thing used to shoot down the U.S. stealth bomber over serbia I believe...

[Lone Pawn]

13. We could win an outright conventional military war no problem...

but it's Iraq that makes things an issue. We'd find ourselves trying to occupy half the mideast, rebellions and suicide attacks every half hour. We simply can't hold Iraq and Iran, especially when their people unite to throw us off.

[Minstrel Boy]

15. That's like saying we'll win if they play by our rules.

They won't. Iraq - smaller, and worn down by sanctions - didn't either. And you can't hold Iraq, period.

[Lone Pawn]

18. No, I agree.

We'll destroy every bit of fancy hardware in the first month, and then find that we're still getting our asses handed to us.

[alfredo]

16. Look at a map of the region. Iran can make resupplying our

troops very difficult. They can cut off the Persian gulf, or greatly slow supply ships through the region.

[sweetheart]

17. and then iraq is quicksand

You have to imagine the boot on the other foot. Were an aggressive
asian superpower trying to supress a rebellion in mexico using
occupying forces, and threatening to invade the USA, do you not
think that every single covert dollar of the forces would be
formenting a quagmire for said asian superpower in mexico?

Now put the boot back on the other foot. The only way out of iraq
is withdraw, or a bodybag. Iran is a local power, one with local
ability to insert opposition that the texans will never ever defeat,
and rather, will only empty the treasury trying, defeating the
country strategically.

In a way, we can enjoy the bankruptcy of the death star, as bush'll
be left holding the bag, as ultimately, despite his shirking all
responsibility, the buck really does stop at his desk, and his GOP
asshole party will be responisble for the horrible fiscal disaster
as this snowball rolls foward 4 years in to the unknown.

[IranianDemocrat]

22. I don't know who I'd support if Iran fought with USA!

US and Iran have a whole lot in common. I feel at home in either country.

Both ther Iranian Leader and the US Leader take orders from God.

Both countries limit free speech when it is against national security.

Both make people disapper if they suspect ties with the enemy or if there is no law on the books to charge the guy.

Both fingerprint each others citizens upon arrival.

Both are against Gay marriage.

Both cheat on elections and the big business decides who wins.

I am sure you can add a lot more.

[bobthedrummer]

25. A timely kick.

:dem::kick: