The coming war against Iran - Part 13

[helderheid]

The coming war against Iran - Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Various units of the U.S. Navy have been informed that they must achieve a state of readiness by October 1st. The planning as it relates to Iran has been sent on to the White House. Sam Gardiner concludes: 'I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran'. U.S. President George Bush was recently quoted as saying: 'It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force.' In his column in The Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer notes that '"Before" implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option. The costs will be terrible'. This article picks up right where part 12 of this series left off.

The Dutch in the original article has been translated into English by Ben Kearney.
Israeli Premier Olmert in a recent interview: '"Israel can't accept the possibility of Iranians having nuclear weapons and we will act together with the international forces, starting with America, in order to prevent it. And as I also said, I believe that President Bush is absolutely determined to prevent it, and America has the capabilities to actually prevent it."' Bush has already indicated that a nuclear-armed Iran would 'not be tolerated'. 'Reagan conservative' Paul Craig Roberts writes: 'The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of US (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East. <...> Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack. Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed US war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran.' 'Eighteen hundred of our fellow physicists have joined in a petition opposing new U.S. nuclear- weapons policies that open the door to the use of nuclear weapons for situations like Iran. As members of the profession that brought nuclear weapons into existence, we urge the administration to abandon such policies, which would have grave consequences for America and for the world', according to a letter to the editor in the International Herald Tribune.

Air war against Iran could deteriorate into ground war
Time Magazine reaches the same conclusion that can be drawn from this DeepJounal series on Iran: 'No one is talking about a ground invasion of Iran. Too many U.S. troops are tied down elsewhere to make it possible, and besides, it isn't necessary. If the U.S. goal is simply to stunt Iran's nuclear program, it can be done better and more safely by air. An attack limited to Iran's nuclear facilities would nonetheless require a massive campaign. Experts say that Iran has between 18 and 30 nuclear-related facilities. The sites are dispersed around the country - some in the open, some cloaked in the guise of conventional factories, some buried deep underground. <...> It's possible that U.S. warplanes could destroy every known nuclear site - while Tehran's nuclear wizards, operating at other, undiscovered sites even deeper underground, continued their work. "We don't know where it all is," said a White House official, "so we can't get it all." <...>
Zinni, for one, believes an attack on Iran could eventually lead to U.S. troops on the ground. "You've got to be careful with your assumptions," he says. "In Iraq, the assumption was that it would be a liberation, not an occupation. You've got to be prepared for the worst case, and the worst case involving Iran takes you down to boots on the ground." All that, he says, makes an attack on Iran a "dumb idea." Abizaid, the current Centcom boss, chose his words carefully last May. "Look, any war with a country that is as big as Iran, that has a terrorist capability along its borders, that has a missile capability that is external to its own borders and that has the ability to affect the world's oil markets is something that everyone needs to contemplate with a great degree of clarity."'
Regarding an air and/or ground war with Iran, Seymour Hersh writes: 'The Israeli plan , according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)'.

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http://www.deepjournal.com/p/2/a/en/123.html

[populistdriven]

1. Israeli diplomacy begins and ends with America

[dkofos]

2. How many ships and how many sailors will we loose when Iran

let's loose with their anti ship missles.

This will be a bigger defeat than Iraq.